There would have to be another colloquy after
I had regained my commercialism. But I spoke of my mission, and three
o'clock of the next afternoon was set for the discussion of the business
proposition.
"Your town," I said, as I began to make ready to depart (which is the
time for smooth generalities), "seems to be a quiet, sedate place. A
home town, I should say, where few things out of the ordinary ever
happen."
It carries on an extensive trade in stoves and hollow ware with
the West and South, and its flouring mills have a daily capacity
of more than 2,000 barrels.
Azalea Adair seemed to reflect.
"I have never thought of it that way," she said, with a kind of sincere
intensity that seemed to belong to her. "Isn't it in the still, quiet
places that things do happen? I fancy that when God began to create the
earth on the first Monday morning one could have leaned out one's window
and heard the drops of mud splashing from His trowel as He built up the
everlasting hills. What did the noisiest project in the world--I mean
the building of the Tower of Babel--result in finally? A page and a half
of Esperanto in the _North American Review_."
"Of course," said I platitudinously, "human nature is the same
everywhere; but there is more color--er--more drama and movement
and--er--romance in some cities than in others.
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