In the Heart of a Fool

Excerpt: ...understanding I could have it any time inside of six months, and the Captain 308 could use it afterward. That's where the Captain got his money to build his shop." It cost Daniel Sands five thousand dollars in hard earned money, not that he earned the money, but it was hard-earned nevertheless, to undo the work of that convention, and nominate and elect Thomas Van Dorn district Judge upon an independent ticket. And even when the work was done, the emptiness of the honor did not convince the Judge that this is not a material world. He hugged the empty honor to his heart and made a vast pretense that it was real. 309 CHAPTER XXIX BEING NOT A CHAPTER BUT AN INTERLUDE Here and now this story must pause for a moment. It has come far from the sunshine and prairie grass where it started. Tall elm trees have grown from the saplings that were stuck in the sod thirty years before, and they limit the vision. No longer can one see over the town across the roofs of Market Street into the prairie. No longer even can one see from Harvey the painted sky at night that marks South Harvey and the industrial towns of the Wahoo Valley. Harvey is shut in; we all are sometimes by our comforts. The dreams of the pioneers that haloed the heads of those who came to Harvey in those first days-those dreams are gone. Here and there one is trapped in brick or wood or stone or iron; and another glows in a child or walks the weary ways of man as a custom or an institution or as a law that brought only a part of the blessings which it promised. And the equality of opportunity for which these pioneers crossed the Mississippi and came into the prairie uplands of the West-where is that evanescent spirit? Certainly it touched Daniel Sands's shoulder and he followed it; it beckoned Dr. Nesbit and he followed it a part of the journey. Surely Kyle Perry saw it for years, and Captain Morton was destined to find it, gorgeous and iridescent. Amos Adams might...