Middle West -- Fiction; Real estate developers -- Fiction; Suburbs -- Fiction
“Good heavens!” Mr. Shelby interrupted. “I chopped wood there thirty
years before you were born! D’you think I got to hitch up and go
buggy-ridin’ to know where Ranse Ornaby’s farm is?”
“It isn’t his, sir,” Dan reminded him. “It belongs to me. I only meant,
if you’d come out there I think you’d see some changes since I’ve been
layin’ it out in city lots.”
“City lots? What city you talkin’ about? Where’s any city in that part
o’ the county? _I_ never knew there was any city up that way.”
“But there is, sir!”
“What’s the name of it?”
“The city of the future!” Dan proclaimed, his eyes brightening as he
heard his own phrase. “_This_ city when it begins to reach its growth!
Why, in ten years from now——”
“Ten years from now!” the old man echoed, with angry mockery. “What in
Constantinople you talkin’ about? D’you know you’re gettin’ to be a
regular by-word in this town? Old George Rowe told me yesterday at his
bank, he says you got a nickname like some Indian. It’s ‘Young
Ten-Years-From-Now.’ That’s what they call you: ‘Young
Ten-Years-From-Now’! George Rowe asked me: he says, ‘Has Young
Ten-Years-From-Now been around your way makin’ any more speeches?’ he
says. He says that’s the nickname everybody’s got for you. It’s all over
town, he says.”
Dan’s colour heightened, but he laughed and said: “Well, I expect I can
stand it. It isn’t a mean nickname, particularly, and I don’t guess they
intend any harm by it. I shouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be
good advertisin’ for the Addition, Mr. Shelby.”
“_I_ should,” the old man remarked promptly. “I’d be surprised if
anything turned out good for the Addition!”
“No,” said Dan. “That nickname might do a lot o’ good; though the truth
is I’m not talkin’ about ten years from now nearly as much as I am about
only two or three years from now. _Ten_ years from now this city’ll be
way out _beyond_ Ornaby Addition!”
“Oh, lord! Hear him holler!”
“It will,” Dan insisted, his colour glowing the more. “It will! Why, you
go down to the East Side in New York and look at the way people are
crowded, with millions and millions more every year tryin’ to find
footroom. They can’t do it! They’ve _got_ to go _some_where. They’ve got
to spread all over the country. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of
’em have got to come _here_. That’s not all; we’ve got the finest
climate in the world, and the babies that get born here practically all
of ’em _live_, and there’s tens of thousands of ’em born every year.
Besides that, this city’s not only the natural market of a tremendous
agricultural area, but the railroads make it an absolutely ideal
manufacturing centre. Why, it’s just naturally impossible to _stop_ the
growth that’s comin’, even if anybody wanted to, and the funny thing to
me is that so few of you business men see it!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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