THAT LITTLE GIRL OF MISS ELIZA’S JEAN K. BAIRD Augustana Book Concern AUGUSTANA BOOK CONCERN, PRINTERS AND BINDERS ROCK ISLAND, ILLINOIS CHAPTER I. “The poorest farming land in all the country,” someone called it. “The best crop of stones and stumps, I ever saw,” someone else had said. Everyone smiled and drove on, and Shintown and its people passed from their knowledge. “Shintown? Where in the name of goodness did they get such a name?” the elderly gentleman in the touring car asked his companion. “Have to use your shins to get here. It used to be that Shank’s mare was the only one that could travel the miserable roads. They were mere foot-paths. Even the railroads have shot clear of it. See over there.” There was truth in the words. Shintown, which was no town at all, but a few isolated farmhouses, looked down from its heights on one side upon the main line of the Susquehanna Valley, five miles away. On the other side, at a little more than half the distance, the branch of the W. N. P. and P. wound along the edge of the river. Both roads avoided Shintown as though it had the plague. The name was quite enough to discourage anyone. Nature had done its best for the place, the people had done their worst. It stood in the valley, and yet on a higher elevation than the country adjacent, the mountain being twenty miles distant. It was as though a broad table had been set in a wide country, with the mountain peaks as decorous waiters standing at the outer edge. The houses were sagging affairs. They were well enough at one time, but were now like a good intention gone wrong. The storm had beaten upon them for so many years that all trace of paint was gone. The chimneys sloped as far as the law of gravity allowed. Gates hung on one hinge, and the fences had the same angle as an old man suffering with lumbago. The corners of the fields were
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