"Sure! What you doin'?"
"Nothing."
"Goin' to stay long?"
"No."
"Well, see you again. So long. Git up!"
Wheel-spokes whirred in the air and he saw a buggy, with the top
down, rattling down another street in a cloud of dust. It was the
same buggy in which he had first seen the black-bearded Senator
seven years before. It was the same horse, too, and the Arab-like
face and the bushy black whiskers, save for streaks of gray, were
the same. This was the man who used to buy watches and pianos by
the dozen, who one Xmas gave a present to every living man, woman
and child in the town, and under whose colossal schemes the
pillars of the church throughout the State stood as supports. That
far away the eagle-nosed face looked haggard, haunted and all but
spent, and even now he struck Hale as being driven downward like a
madman by the same relentless energy that once had driven him
upward. It was the same story everywhere. Nearly everybody who
could get away was gone. Some of these were young enough to profit
by the lesson and take surer root elsewhere--others were too old
for transplanting, and of them would be heard no more.
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