Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town | Page 6

just like it.
There it lies in the sunlight, sloping up from the little lake that spreads
out at the foot of the hillside on which the town is built. There is a
wharf beside the lake, and lying alongside of it a steamer that is tied to
the wharf with two ropes of about the same size as they use on the
Lusitania. The steamer goes nowhere in particular, for the lake is
landlocked and there is no navigation for the Mariposa Belle except to
"run trips" on the first of July and the Queen's Birthday, and to take
excursions of the Knights of Pythias and the Sons of Temperance to
and from the Local Option Townships.
In point of geography the lake is called Lake Wissanotti and the river
running out of it the Ossawippi, just as the main street of Mariposa is

called Missinaba Street and the county Missinaba County. But these
names do not really matter. Nobody uses them. People simply speak of
the "lake" and the "river" and the "main street," much in the same way
as they always call the Continental Hotel, "Pete Robinson's" and the
Pharmaceutical Hall, "Eliot's Drug Store." But I suppose this is just the
same in every one else's town as in mine, so I need lay no stress on it.
The town, I say, has one broad street that runs up from the lake,
commonly called the Main Street. There is no doubt about its width.
When Mariposa was laid out there was none of that shortsightedness
which is seen in the cramped dimensions of Wall Street and Piccadilly.
Missinaba Street is so wide that if you were to roll Jeff Thorpe's barber
shop over on its face it wouldn't reach half way across. Up and down
the Main Street are telegraph poles of cedar of colossal thickness,
standing at a variety of angles and carrying rather more wires than are
commonly seen at a transatlantic cable station.
On the Main Street itself are a number of buildings of extraordinary
importance,--Smith's Hotel and the Continental and the Mariposa
House, and the two banks (the Commercial and the Exchange), to say
nothing of McCarthy's Block (erected in 1878), and Glover's Hardware
Store with the Oddfellows' Hall above it. Then on the "cross" street that
intersects Missinaba Street at the main corner there is the Post Office
and the Fire Hall and the Young Men's Christian Association and the
office of the Mariposa Newspacket,--in fact, to the eye of discernment a
perfect jostle of public institutions comparable only to Threadneedle
Street or Lower Broadway. On all the side streets there are maple trees
and broad sidewalks, trim gardens with upright calla lilies, houses with
verandahs, which are here and there being replaced by residences with
piazzas.
To the careless eye the scene on the Main Street of a summer afternoon
is one of deep and unbroken peace. The empty street sleeps in the
sunshine. There is a horse and buggy tied to the hitching post in front
of Glover's hardware store. There is, usually and commonly, the burly
figure of Mr. Smith, proprietor of Smith's Hotel, standing in his
chequered waistcoat on the steps of his hostelry, and perhaps, further
up the street, Lawyer Macartney going for his afternoon mail, or the
Rev. Mr. Drone, the Rural Dean of the Church of England Church,
going home to get his fishing rod after a mothers' auxiliary meeting.

But this quiet is mere appearance. In reality, and to those who know it,
the place is a perfect hive of activity. Why, at Netley's butcher shop
(established in 1882) there are no less than four men working on the
sausage machines in the basement; at the Newspacket office there are
as many more job-printing; there is a long distance telephone with four
distracting girls on high stools wearing steel caps and talking
incessantly; in the offices in McCarthy's block are dentists and lawyers
with their coats off, ready to work at any moment; and from the big
planing factory down beside the lake where the railroad siding is, you
may hear all through the hours of the summer afternoon the long-drawn
music of the running saw.
Busy--well, I should think so! Ask any of its inhabitants if Mariposa
isn't a busy, hustling, thriving town. Ask Mullins, the manager of the
Exchange Bank, who comes hustling over to his office from the
Mariposa House every day at 10.30 and has scarcely time all morning
to go out and take a drink with the manager of the Commercial; or
ask--well, for the matter of that, ask any of them if they ever knew a
more rushing go-a-head town than Mariposa.
Of course if you come to the place fresh from New York, you are
deceived. Your standard of