David Harum by Edward Noyes Westcott — Read

It was the latter part of John's fifth winter in Homeville. The business of the office had largely increased. The new manufactories which had been established did their banking with Mr. Harum, and the older concerns, including nearly all the merchants in the village, had transferred their accounts from Syrchester banks to David's. The callow Hopkins had fledged and developed into a competent all-'round man, able to do anything in the office, and there was a new "skeezicks" discharging Peleg's former functions. Considerable impetus had been given to the business of the town by the new road whose rails had been laid the previous summer. There had been a strong and acrimonious controversy over the route which the road should take into and through the village. There was the party of the "nabobs" (as they were characterized by Mr. Harum) and their following, and the party of the "village people," and the former had carried their point; but now the road was an accomplished fact, and most of the bitterness which had been engendered had died away. Yet the struggle was still matter for talk.

"Did I ever tell you," said David, as he and his cashier were sitting in the rear room of the bank, "how Lawyer Staples come to switch round in that there railroad jangle last spring?"