Scott Hobart, and in the evening of a great day, as grandmother and “Aunt Frank” Coolidge sat rocking and visiting on the back porch, I got their permission to go on to the sidewalk some distance from their big house. I remember I was all dressed up with new little boots that had copper toes. I followed the sidewalk to the old covered bridge and finally ventured through it, and there saw a great city for once without grandmother holding me. I was in a trance of delight watching it, when a big handsome man, named Marshall Dudley, came up to me and in a bass voice, said; “Are you so and so.” I said, “yes.” “What then are you doing in Silverton alone? You get back to Aunt Frank Coolidge’s as hard as you can run.” I did and found to my horror that I had bumped a copper toe off one of my new boots somewhere enroute.
From that moment Silverton has always been to me the greatest city in the world. I saw in it that evening a dignity, possibly radiating from the giant oak tree, that no other place ever could have. Its people were so kind, its stores filled with such good things,
