Miss Kilburn saw them in the spring, when their usefulness was least
apparent, and she did not know whether to praise the spirit of progress
which showed itself in them as well as in other things at Hatboro'. She
had come prepared to have misgivings, but she had promised herself to be
just; she thought she could bear the old ugliness, if not the new. Some
of the new things, however, were not so ugly; the young station-master
was handsome in his railroad uniform, and pleasanter to the eye than the
veteran baggage-master, incongruous in his stiff silk cap and his shirt
sleeves and spectacles. The station itself, one of Richardson's, massive
and low, with red-tiled, spreading veranda roofs, impressed her with
its fitness, and strengthened her for her encounter with the business
architecture of Hatboro', which was of the florid, ambitious New York type,
prevalent with every American town in the early stages of its prosperity.
The buildings were of pink brick, faced with granite, and supported in the
first story by columns of painted iron; flat-roofed blocks looked down over
the low-wooden structures of earlier Hatboro', and a large hotel had pushed
back the old-time tavern, and planted itself flush upon the sidewalk. But
the stores seemed very good, as she glanced at them from her carriage,
and their show-windows were tastefully arranged; the apothecary's had an
interior of glittering neatness unsurpassed by an Italian apothecary's; and
the provision-man's, besides its symmetrical array of pendent sides and
quarters indoors, had banks of fruit and vegetables without, and a large
aquarium with a spraying fountain in its window.
Bolton, the farmer who had always taken care of the Kilburn place, came
to meet her at the station and drive her home. Miss Kilburn had bidden
him drive slowly, so that she could see all the changes, and she noticed
the new town-hall, with which she could find no fault; the Baptist and
Methodist churches were the same as of old; the Unitarian church seemed to
have shrunk as if the architecture had sympathised with its dwindling body
of worshippers; just beyond it was the village green, with the soldiers'
monument, and the tall white-painted flag-pole, and the four small brass
cannon threatening the points of the compass at its base.
"Stop a moment, Mr. Bolton," said Miss Kilburn; and she put her head quite
out of the carriage, and stared at the figure on the monument.
It was strange that the first misgiving she could really make sure of
concerning Hatboro' should relate to this figure, which she herself was
mainly responsible for placing there. When the money was subscribed and
voted for the statue, the committee wrote out to her at Rome as one who
would naturally feel an interest in getting something fit and economical
for them. She accepted the trust with zeal and pleasure; but she overruled
their simple notion of an American volunteer at rest, with his hands folded
on the muzzle of his gun, as intolerably hackneyed and commonplace. Her
conscience, she said, would not let her add another recruit to the regiment
of stone soldiers standing about in that posture on the tops of pedestals
all over the country; and so, instead of going to an Italian statuary with
her fellow-townsmen's letter, and getting him to make the figure they
wanted, she doubled the money and gave the commission to a young girl
from Kansas, who had come out to develop at Rome the genius recognised
at Topeka. They decided together that it would be best to have something
ideal, and the sculptor promptly imagined and rapidly executed a design
for a winged Victory, poising on the summit of a white marble shaft, and
clasping its hands under its chin, in expression of the grief that mingled
with the popular exultation. Miss Kilburn had her doubts while the work
went on, but she silenced them with the theory that when the figure was in
position it would be all right.