Widely separated from each other are small frame railway
stations--sometimes with no other building in sight, which indicates that
somewhere behind the adjacent woods a few shanties and thin cottages are
grouped about a couple of brick stores.
On the station platforms there are always two or three wooden packing-
boxes, apparently marked for travel, but they are sacred from disturbance
and remain on the platform forever; possibly the right train never comes
along. They serve to enthrone a few station loafers, who look out from
under their hat-brims at the faces in the car-windows with the languid
scorn a permanent fixture always has for a transient, and the pity an
American feels for a fellow-being who does not live in his town. Now and
then the train passes a town built scatteringly about a court-house, with
a mill or two humming near the tracks. This is a county-seat, and the
inhabitants and the local papers refer to it confidently as "our city."
The heart of the flat lands is a central area called Carlow County, and
the county-seat of Carlow is a town unhappily named in honor of its first
settler, William Platt, who christened it with his blood. Natives of this
place have sometimes remarked, easily, that their city had a population of
from five to six thousand souls. It is easy to forgive them for such
statements; civic pride is a virtue.
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