Friendships begun between boys and girls
in the fields ripened into love. Couples walked along residence streets
under the trees and talked with subdued voices. They became silent and
embarrassed. The bolder ones kissed. The end of the berry picking season
brought each year a new outbreak of marriages to the town of Bidwell.
In all the towns of mid-western America it was a time of waiting. The
country having been cleared and the Indians driven away into a vast distant
place spoken of vaguely as the West, the Civil War having been fought and
won, and there being no great national problems that touched closely their
lives, the minds of men were turned in upon themselves. The soul and its
destiny was spoken of openly on the streets. Robert Ingersoll came to
Bidwell to speak in Terry's Hall, and after he had gone the question of
the divinity of Christ for months occupied the minds of the citizens. The
ministers preached sermons on the subject and in the evening it was talked
about in the stores. Every one had something to say. Even Charley Mook, who
dug ditches, who stuttered so that not a half dozen people in town could
understand him, expressed his opinion.
In all the great Mississippi Valley each town came to have a character of
its own, and the people who lived in the towns were to each other like
members of a great family. The individual idiosyncrasies of each member of
the great family stood forth.
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