VOL. III.

No. I.

From the very year that Elcott was settled, its people assumed that their town was to become a city, perhaps one of the great cities of its region-the northwest. Of a certainty, the site of Elcott was fine. Broadside on the north was a range of high hills, shielding the place from the winds of winter; along on the south ran a winding river, emptying into a lake whose waters shimmered on the horizon. The broad slopes extending from the uplands to the lake meadows became in time studded with farm houses and checkered with rich fields. Elcott enjoyed a good climate and had excellent water; residence and business streets could be laid out on its long stretches of level surface as easily as on a sheet of drawing paper, and the contiguous agricultural lands could be relied on for abundant and cheap products of the soil. Aye; no reason why in time the town should not grow to cityhood.

For years, however, the residents of Elcott contented themselves with contemplating the possible future greatness of their town as a pleasant dream rather than as an object to be striven for. Many of Elcott's townspeople were farmers, tilling lands of their own near the place, some of the more successful as they advanced in years merely superintending their acres or letting them out on shares. The householder in the town itself commonly had a vegetable garden in the rear of his dwelling, with a stable beyond standing on a back alley. The business interests of the place were small, no attempt being made to set up manufactures. The railroad, of course, brought with it a few changes and some new people. But, on the whole, Elcott was looked on by boastful rivals as a sleepy town, lacking the energy to develop its natural opportunities.

This reputation gave no offense to the elders of Elcott. Their opinion was that if Elcott was slow it was also sure. In its first forty years the town never had a real estate foreclosure. Indeed, mortgages were never in much demand; Elcott's merchants paid their debts promptly. Life was independent in the town, if not

aspiring. Nearly every family possessed its own home, however humble. Even the laboring man, owner of his own garden patch, his cow, his pigs, and his fruit trees, raised produce enough to keep his family table supplied the year round; and from his wages came comfortable clothing and something for the rainy day. To the least well off in Elcott the present was secure, and the future as certain as mother nature's bounty. Leading men there were in Elcott, regarded by their neighbors as wise men, who held that the town, rated behind the times though it might be, was having its full share of the world's happiness.

Whatever material progress came to Elcott, however, was not unappreciated. In time its cheap living brought a large boarding school and several modest hotels; and the same cause, with the steadiness of its working people, once in a while induced a man with capital to set up a factory. The farmers who came to live in town also helped to build up the place. On the whole, the population of Elcott kept abreast with that of the region.

In the course of years some of the active business men grew moderately well off, even rich, as riches are counted in small communities. At length a time came when certain worldly-wise observers gave it out that in Elcott both real estate and money in trade were yielding on the average better returns than elsewhere in the northwest. Knowledge of this circumstance gradually spread among the gossipy members of the bar and their class about the town, and it came also to be mentioned in the local newspaper.

"Why, this fact signifies that your whole place is under-capitalized!" The judgment, this, of a guest at the Antelope Hotel, given one evening to an Elcott lawyer who had told him of these high returns on local investments. "The prices on all properties here ought to be marked up; and the town ought to do a larger volume of business. Your people need experienced outside capitalists to come in and develop you.”

On looking into the matter further, this Antelope guest, a promoter of enterprises, promised to enlist moneyed Eastern friends of his in the benevolent scheme of developing Elcott.

Returning to Chicago, the speculator drew up a prospectus for "The Elcott Land and Improvement Company." In the rose-colored phraseology of this document, Elcott had 10,000 inhabitants (it had in fact barely 6,000); its situation was unrivaled; its climate