Much like that is growing Newbern.

There was gasping aplenty when Winona Penniman abandoned the higher life and bought a flagrant pair of satin dancing slippers, but now the town lets far more sensational doings go almost unremarked.
The place tosses even with the modern fever of unrest.

It has its bourgeoisie, its proletariat, its radicals, but also a city-beautiful association and a rather captious sanitary league.

Lately a visiting radical, on the occasion of a certain patriotic celebration, expressed a conventional wish to spit upon the abundantly displayed flag.

A knowing friend was quick to dissuade him.
"Don't do it! Don't try it! Here, now, you got no freedom! Should you spit only on their sidewalk, they fine the heart's blood out of you." * * * * * Midway between these periods of very early and very late Newbern there was once a shining summer morning on which the Cowan twins, being then nine years old, set out from the Penniman home to pick wild blackberries along certain wooded lanes that environed the town.