Of course the younger generation were not silenced by this. They began a complaint about the weekly paper, a ridiculous affair running three-year-old detective serials and month-old national happenings, telling whose veranda was to be painted and who had bought a pair of new earlaps! To which the older generation magnanimously remarked that, as long as “Ali Baba” and Betsey Pilrig had their health, there would be no need for an up-to-date daily newspaper. One did not have to wait until news was gathered, edited and printed. Ali Baba, Abby Clergy’s coachman, and Betsey Pilrig, who lived in the yellow house across from Thurley Precore’s box-car wagon, kept the village informed of every happening in such rapid-fire fashion that the need for a daily sheet was never experienced!
Granting this—where was there any society? To which the older generation answered, indignantly, that nowhere in the United States of America HAD there existed such society, elegance and grandeur as at the summer colony on Birge’s Lake, and, if those days were contemporary with Abigail Clergy’s great sorrow, what mattered it? The aroma of past grandeur lingers long, and even yet the stately mansions with endless turrets and towers stood about the shores of the lake causing one to respect their closed shutters.
To this the younger generation, although protesting that the society was entirely a memory, had no reply. For the older generation had spoken the truth. About the perfect little lake, an emerald in its coloring and flanked by pungent pine woods and an amphitheater of tiny hills, some half a century before, had been built the summer homes of the oldest of America’s aristocracy. In those days when Birge’s Corners was but a post office and a few stray dogs, the lake had been an oasis for the tired rich; here families came to grow tanned and rosy, while love affairs ripened and wedding bells were listened for and the elders sat back in pleased approval. The rich owned the lake, so the saying went—but Daniel Birge owned the Corners and the rich! Daniel Birge was steward to the rich. If they desired an improvement in the way of carriage sheds or certain grades of merchandise which were daily necessities, Daniel Birge, founder of Birge’s Corners, saw to it that it was accomplished. The lake had been named for his great-great-grandfather, who discovered it, and, when the richest of the rich suggested that “Birge’s Lake” was a trifle commonplace name for such a bit of paradise—“Fairy Lake” would be more appropriate—they met their Waterloo. This was the only thing Daniel Birge refused the rich—the re-naming of the little lake.