"Sis, it's coming along kind of hot in the summer. How'd you like to go
to White Sulphur or somewheres for a few months?" says he. "You're
looking kind of pale now for the last few weeks," says he, "and I don't
like to see it."
She turns and looks at him square in the eyes for a minute, and pointed
out the window.
"With that thing going on?" says she. "I'll see them damned first!" says
she.
That was the first time I ever heard Bonnie Bell cuss. I liked her for
saying it, and so did her pa.
"It's a hard game we got to play, sis," says he; "but we'll play it."
She nods, and we let it go at that.
That fence ruined the street, as far as our end of it was concerned.
Them that lived north of it could look on up the lake for quite a ways,
but for more than a quarter of a mile down toward the park there
couldn't nobody see down that part of the street at all. The papers got
to talking about it, and some complaints was printed too. Old Man Wright
he only sort of laughed. The papers made fun of the Wisners for building
that fence--sort of treating the whole thing like a joke.
About now the campaign for alderman got busier. Old Man Wright printed
a full page in all the papers, with a picture of hisself, and saying
that J. W. Wright was running for alderman in that ward. Right opposite
his full-page ad was about six or eight inches, with a smaller picture
of Old Man Wisner with it; and he said that Mr. David Abraham Wisner
begged to submit his name as a candidate for the sufferedges for
alderman in that ward. I didn't know what sufferedges was at first, but
I knew what my boss was out after--it was votes, and he was liable to
get 'em.
From that time on the boss was busier than he had been before. He got
better acquainted over on the west side of our ward. Sometimes he
wouldn't get back till midnight, but he always come home under his own
steam. In his office I saw all sorts of people. He seemed to take to
this alderman business natural.
Anyways he was a hard man to buck in any kind of a game. He had his own
idea all the time maybe about that fence in Millionaire Row. One day he
taken a little pasear down the lake front toward the head of the park,
where there was some vacant land below us. He was sizing things up. Two
or three weeks after he told me he'd bought that tract--the whole works,
clear down to the end of the park. I don't know what he paid for it, but
it must have been a lot of money.
"You see," says he, "all them people up there north of us on the row
they ain't got only a little bit of land for their houses. Me, I'm going
to have a place with half a mile or so of ground to it. Bonnie Bell has
got to have a place to herself for to raise crocuses and other flowers,"
says he, "and to cultivate her Boston dog."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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