became objects of much importance. If they desired to sell they had only to let it be known, and a buyer was soon on hand.
The atmosphere seemed charged with drunken enthusiasm. Everybody had it. There was nothing to fear. Little Crow land was the best property to be had, better, they would declare, than government bonds, for its value was increasing in leaps and bounds. Choice farms close to town, if bought at fifty dollars per acre, could be sold at a good profit in a short time.
This was done, and good old eastern capital continued to be paid for the land.
The spirit of unrest that seem to pervade the atmosphere of the community was not altogether the desire to have and to hold, but more, to buy and to sell. Homesteads were sold in Megory county and the proceeds were immediately reinvested in Tipp, where considerable dead Indian land could be purchased at half the price.
At about that time the auto fever began to infect the restless and over-prosperous settlers, and business men alike. That was the day of the many two-cylinder cars. They made a dreadful noise but they moved and moved faster than horses. They sailed over the country, the exhaust of the engine making a cracking noise. The motion, added to the speed, seemed to thrill and enthuse the investor until he bought whether he cared to or not.
In previous years, when capital was not so plentiful, and when land was much cheaper and slower to sell, the agent drove the buyer over the land from corner to corner, cross-wise and angling, and the
