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 leaning 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 perfumery 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
