100 THE COUNTRY BOY 



me when he wasn't in my lap and looked 

 intently into my face as much as to say: 

 ".When all others fail me, I can always count 

 on you." Mile after mile he followed me over 

 the poor board sidewalk until one day he just 

 died of old age. But as John Wolfard said, 

 "Homer, as you wasn't around, he died lean- 

 ing towards a cat." 



Silverton was a queer place socially; while 

 the townspeople were all of one set and there 

 was little of any class hatred, the rich seldom 

 ever lined up against the poor. Still if a very 

 beautiful girl came to town all of us boys sort 

 of took it for granted that she would turn 

 us down if we did attempt to take her any 

 place, so no one ever gave her the opportunity. 

 We admired her and talked of her at the 

 swimming holes and in fact everywhere we 

 met, but no one ever had the nerve to approach 

 her with a proposal of a "Let's go to the dance, 

 or the party or the entertainment." We 

 started to several times, but every time we got 

 close enough to smell the beautiful odor of per- 

 fumery our nerve always went back on us, and 

 as a result she wasn't kept out nights much. 

 For a long time the girls in town had been 



