The streets of any county town were like this on any sunshiny afternoon in summer; they were like this fifty odd years ago, and yesterday. But the fences were still in place fifty odd years ago, and when we stood on the gate to look over, the sidewalk under our eyes was not cement but two rows of paving stones with grass between and on both sides. The curb was a line of stone laid edgewise in the dirt and tilted this way and that by frost in the ground or the roots of trees. Opposite every gate was a hitching post or a stone carriage step, set with a rusty iron ring for tying a horse. The street was unpaved and rose steeply toward the center; it was mud in wet weather and dust, ankle-deep, in dry, and could be crossed only at the corner where there were stepping stones. It had a bucolic atmosphere that it has lost long since. The hoofmarks of cattle and the prints of bare feet in the mud or in the dust were as numerous as the traces of shod horses. Cows were kept in backyard barns, boys were hired to drive them to and from the pasture on the edge of town, and familiar to the ear, morning and evening, were the boys' coaxing voices, the thud of hooves, and the thwack of a stick on cowhide.