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Everybody's Chance, by John Habberton

The Naked Word electronic edition of
Everybody's Chance
by John Habberton, 1904



IЧ HOW THEY HEARD OF IT
BRUNDY was the deadest town in the United States; so all the residents of Brundy
said. It had not even a railway station, although several other villages in the
county had two each. It was natural, therefore, that manufacturers' capital
avoided Brundy. There was a large woolen mill at Yarn City, eight miles to the
westward, and Yarn City was growing so fast that some of the farmers on the
outskirts of the town were selling off their estates in building lots at prices
which justified the sellers in going to the city to end their days. At Magic
Falls, five miles to the northward, there was water power and a hardwood forest,
which between them made business for several manufacturers of wooden-ware, as
well as markets, with good prices for all farmers of the vicinity.
But Brundy had only land and people. The latter, according to themselves, were
as good as the people anywhere, but the soil was so poor that no one could get a
living out of it without very hard work. There was no chance of any kind for any
of the natives. Young men were afraid to marry, and young women were afraid to
marry them; for what girl wanted to go through the routine of drudgery in which
she had pitied her own mother, and what lover wanted to ask his sweetheart to
descend from the position of assistant at her old home to slave of all work in a
new one?
The lack of a chance for any one had made itself manifest at Brundy many years
before the date at which this story opens, so many of the natives had gone
elsewhere to better their condition. The great majority of them had not been
heard from afterward, so Brundy did not doubt that they had become too
prosperous to think of their simple old friends and neighbors. Some, however,
who had gone to great cities and the great West, had returned to the place of
their birth to end their days, and they were so reserved as to how they had made
their money, and how much they had made, that Brundy agreed that there were some
great secrets of wealth to be discovered in the outside world, could the
inhabitants of Brundy ever get away and search for it.
For instance, there was old Pruffett; he had gone to Chicago when barely
twenty-one, remained there forty years, and been so busy all the while that he
declared that he never had found time to look about him for a wife. He had made
money, too; no one knew how much, and Pruffett never would tell, but as he paid
cash for whatever he bought in the village and never haggled about prices, it
seemed evident that he was very well off, for Squire Thomas, the richest native
who had always remained at home, would never buy even a pound of butter until a
penny or two of the price had been abated.
Sad though it be to relate, there were pretty and good young women in Brundy who
would gladly have married old Pruffett for his money, and loving mothers who
would have advised and helped them in that direction had old Pruffett given them
any encouragement, but what could any one do with a millionaireЧ so they called
himЧ who was satisfied to do his own work and do his own cooking in the cottage