On another side of the common was Squire Allen’s place. This was a great white house, altogether the grandest in the town,—or in the world, for that matter, so we children believed. It was set back from the road, in the midst of a grove of trees, and there was a big gate where carriages could drive into the front yard along the curving roadway and up to the large front door. Beneath the overhanging porch were four or five great square white pillars, and the door had a large brass knocker, and there were big square stone steps that came down to the road. Back of the house were a barn and a carriage-house, the latter the only building of the kind in Farmington.
Squire Allen was a tall man with white hair and a clean-shaven face. He carried a gold-headed cane, and when you met him on the street he never looked to the right or left. Everyone knew he was the greatest man in the place,—in fact, the greatest man in all the world. He had a large carriage, with two seats and big wheels and a top, and two horses; and he was nearly always riding in the carriage. I do not remember much about his family; I know that he had a little boy, but I was not acquainted with him, although I knew all the rest of the little boys in town. I would often see the Squire and his whole family out driving in their great carriage. I remember standing on the little bridge and looking down at the fishes in the brook; and I hear the rumble of wheels coming down the hill. I glance up, and there comes Squire Allen; his little boy is sitting on the front seat with him, and on the back seat are some ladies that I do not know. They drive down the hill, the old Squire looking neither to the right nor left. I am afraid of being run over, and I go as near the edge of the bridge as I dare, to escape the great rolling wheels. The little boy peers out at me as the carriage passes by, as if he wondered who could dare stand in the road when his father drove that way; but neither the Squire nor the ladies ever knew that I was there.
A few months ago, this same little boy called on me at my office in the city. He, like myself, had wandered far and wide since he passed me on the bridge. He came to ask me to help him get a job. Somehow, as I saw him then, and recalled the arrogance and pride that old Squire Allen and his family always had, I am afraid I almost felt glad that he had been obliged to come, I am almost sure I felt that at last fortune was making things right and even. I cannot find in my philosophy any good reason why the scheme is any more just if he was rich and I was poor when we were young, and I am rich and he is poor when we are growing old,—but still I believe I felt this way.