So pervasive, indeed, was the spirit of the times that the Hon. Sam Budd actually got old Buck Falin and old Dave Tolliver to sign a truce, agreeing to a complete cessation of hostilities until he carried through a land deal in which both were interested. And after that was concluded, nobody had time, even the Red Fox, for deviltry and private vengeance--so busy was everybody picking up the manna which was dropping straight from the clouds. Hale bought all of old Judd's land, formed a stock company and in the trade gave June a bonus of the stock. Money was plentiful as grains of sand, and the cashier of the bank in the back of the furniture store at the Gap chuckled to his beardless directors as he locked the wooden door on the day before the great land sale: “Capital stock paid in--thirteen thousand dollars; “Deposits--three hundred thousand; “Loans--two hundred and sixty thousand--interest from eight to twelve per cent.” And, beardless though those directors were, that statement made them reel. A club was formed and the like of it was not below Mason and Dixon's line in the way of furniture, periodicals, liquors and cigars. Poker ceased--it was too tame in competition with this new game of town-lots. On the top of High Knob a kingdom was bought. The young bloods of the town would build a lake up there, run a road up and build a Swiss chalet on the very top for a country club. The “booming” editor was discharged. A new paper was started, and the ex-editor of a New York Daily was got to run it. If anybody wanted anything, he got it from no matter where, nor at what cost. Nor were the arts wholly neglected. One man, who was proud of his voice, thought he would like to take singing lessons. An emissary was sent to Boston to bring back the best teacher he could find. The teacher came with a method of placing the voice by trying to say “Come!” at the base of the nose and between the eyes. This was with the lips closed. He charged two dollars per half hour for this effort, he had each pupil try it twice for half an hour each day, and for six weeks the town was humming like a beehive. At the end of that period, the teacher fell ill and went his way with a fat pocket-book and not a warbling soul had got the chance to open his mouth. The experience dampened nobody. Generosity was limitless. It was equally easy to raise money for a roulette wheel, a cathedral or an expedition to Africa. And even yet the railroad was miles away and even yet in February, the Improvement Company had a great land sale. The day before it, competing purchasers had deposited cheques aggregating three times the sum asked for by the company for the land. So the buyers spent the night organizing a pool to keep down competition and drawing lots for the privilege of bidding. For fairness, the sale was an auction, and one old farmer who had sold some of the land originally for a hundred dollars an acre, bought back some of that land at a thousand dollars a lot.