PAPERS OF GENERAL INTEREST 57 



This is explained on the ground that great secrecy was 

 maintained by the owners. True or untrue, here is a story 

 to stir the imagination. 



The magic change from water mill and spinning wheel 

 to the modern hum of motors and the busy life in coal and 

 spar mine, all coming within a generation, has so woven the 

 realities of the present with the uncertainties of the past 

 that the poet or writer of fiction could create a classic from 

 the setting afforded by the facts and hearsay, recorded and 

 unrecorded, in Southern Illinois. 



