It has
a public school, a town hall, a motion-picture house (with last
year's reels), a drug store where you can get soda water, a grain
elevator, and a wonderful old log hut that was built by the very
first settler, making it nearly a hundred years old. Miss Alix Crown,
who owns nearly everything in sight,--including the log hut,--has
had the latter restored and turned into the quaintest little town
library you've ever seen. But you ought to see the librarian! She
is a dried-up, squinty old maid of some seventy summers, and so
full of Jane Austen and the Bronte women and Mrs. Southworth that
she hasn't an inch of room left in her for the modern writers. Her
name caps the climax. It is Alaska Spigg. Can you beat it? No one
ever calls her Miss Spigg,--not even the kids,--nor is she ever
spoken of or to as Alaska. It is always Alaska Spigg. I wish you
could see her. Miss Crown is the girl I wrote you about, the one
with the dime novel history back of her. She has a house on the
edge of the town,--a very attractive place. I have not seen her
yet. She is up in Michigan,--Harbor Point, I believe,--but I hear
she is expected home within a week or two. I am rather curious to
see her. The place where I have taken a room is run by a couple of
old maids named Dowd. It is really a sort of hotel. At least, you
would insult them if you called it a boarding house.
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