He's written 'Patent to original grantee,' and signed it
'Georgia Summerfield, Comr."'
The speech of the Commissioner rebounded lightly from the impregnable
Hamlin and Avery. They smiled, rose gracefully, spoke of the baseball
team, and argued feelingly that quite a perceptible breeze had arisen
from the east. They lit fresh fat brown cigars, and drifted
courteously away. But later they made another tiger-spring for their
quarry in the courts. But the courts, according to reports in the
papers, "coolly roasted them" (a remarkable performance, suggestive of
liquid-air didoes), and sustained the Commissioner's Ruling.
And this Ruling itself grew to be a Precedent, and the Actual Settler
framed it, and taught his children to spell from it, and there was
sound sleep o' nights from the pines to the sage-brush, and from the
chaparral to the great brown river of the north.
But I think, and I am sure the Commissioner never thought otherwise,
that whether Kampfer was a snuffy old instrument of destiny, or
whether the meanders of the Chiquito accidentally platted themselves
into that memorable sweet profile or not, there was brought about
"something good for a whole lot of children," and the result ought
to be called "Georgia's Ruling."
XXIII
BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY
Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of
perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the
landscape shall rise up and confound the other.
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