THE COUNTRY BOY 121 



hose nearly all the time. I washed the streets 

 from morning till it was too dark to see the 

 stream. We caused a few runaways, but that 

 had to be expected; we couldn't stay old- 

 fashioned just to suit the farmers with shy 

 teams. Silverton had most everj^thing from 

 a Good Templar's lodge to a bank. The 

 bankers in Silverton were rather unusual as 

 they didn't look like the bankers at Salem. 

 And the fact of Jake JNlcClaine in that bank- 

 ing firm made the name of Coolidge & JVlc- 

 Claine, Bankers, the greatest banking institu- 

 tion in the world by a big wide margin; that 

 is, if you count all the deeds that bankers do, 

 both in and out of the bank. They were poor 

 young men when they stopped their covered 

 wagons on the banks of a stream called Silver 

 Creek, and began to look around for better 

 country. They made a few short rides around 

 the valley and mountains, but they came back 

 and finally settled and called the settlement 

 Silverton, and finally people stopped there 

 and took corner lots without crowding. These 

 men were great workers and knew the art of 

 saving. They bought the first crop of calves 

 in their neighborhood and kept them until 



