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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Friendly Road, by 
+(AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Friendly Road
+       New Adventures in Contentment
+
+Author: (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
+
+Posting Date: December 13, 2008 [EBook #2479]
+Release Date: February, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRIENDLY ROAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aaron Cannon
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FRIENDLY ROAD
+
+New Adventures in Contentment
+
+By David Grayson (Pseud. of Ray Stannard Baker)
+
+
+      Author of
+     "Adventure in Contentment,"
+     "Adventures in Friendship"
+
+Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty
+
+Copyright, 1913, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+
+     "Surely it is good to be alive at a time like this."
+
+
+
+
+THE FRIENDLY ROAD
+
+
+
+
+A WORD TO HIM WHO OPENS THIS BOOK
+
+I did not plan when I began writing these chapters to make an entire
+book, but only to put down the more or less unusual impressions, the
+events and adventures, of certain quiet pilgrimages in country roads.
+But when I had written down all of these things, I found I had material
+in plenty.
+
+"What shall I call it now that I have written it?" I asked myself.
+
+At first I thought I should call it "Adventures on the Road," or "The
+Country Road," or something equally simple, for I would not have the
+title arouse any appetite which the book itself could not satisfy. One
+pleasant evening I was sitting on my porch with my dog sleeping near me,
+and Harriet not far away rocking and sewing, and as I looked out across
+the quiet fields I could see in the distance a curving bit of the town
+road. I could see the valley below it and the green hill beyond, and
+my mind went out swiftly along the country road which I had so recently
+travelled on foot, and I thought with deep satisfaction of all the
+people I had met on my pilgrimages--the Country Minister with his
+problems, the buoyant Stanleys, Bill Hahn the Socialist, the Vedders in
+their garden, the Brush Peddler. I thought of the Wonderful City, and of
+how for a time I had been caught up into its life. I thought of the
+men I met at the livery stable, especially Healy, the wit, and of that
+strange Girl of the Street. And it was good to think of them all living
+around me, not so very far away, connected with me through darkness and
+space by a certain mysterious human cord. Most of all I love that which
+I cannot see beyond the hill.
+
+"Harriet," I said aloud, "it grows more wonderful every year how full
+the world is of friendly people!"
+
+So I got up quickly and came in here to my room, and taking a fresh
+sheet of paper I wrote down the title of my new book:
+
+"The Friendly Road."
+
+I invite you to travel with me upon this friendly road. You may find,
+as I did, something which will cause you for a time, to forget yourself
+into contentment. But if you chance to be a truly serious person, put
+down my book. Let nothing stay your hurried steps, nor keep you from
+your way.
+
+As for those of us who remain, we will loiter as much as ever we please.
+We'll take toll of these spring days, we'll stop wherever evening
+overtakes us, we'll eat the food of hospitality--and make friends for
+life!
+
+DAVID GRAYSON.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+Preface
+
+   I.    I Leave My Farm
+
+   II.   I Whistle
+
+   III.  The House by the Side of the Road
+
+   IV.   I Am the Spectator of a Mighty Battle, in which Christian
+         Meets Apollyon
+
+   V.    I Play the Part of a Spectacle Peddler
+
+   VI.   An Experiment in Human Nature
+
+   VII.  The Undiscovered Country
+
+   VIII. The Hedge
+
+   IX.   The Man Possessed
+
+   X.    I Am Caught Up Into Life
+
+   XI.   I Come to Grapple with the City
+
+   XII.  The Return
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. I LEAVE MY FARM
+
+     "Is it so small a thing
+     To have enjoyed the sun,
+     To have lived light in spring?"
+
+It is eight o'clock of a sunny spring morning. I have been on the road
+for almost three hours. At five I left the town of Holt, before six I
+had crossed the railroad at a place called Martin's Landing, and an hour
+ago, at seven, I could see in the distance the spires of Nortontown. And
+all the morning as I came tramping along the fine country roads with my
+pack-strap resting warmly on my shoulder, and a song in my throat--just
+nameless words to a nameless tune--and all the birds singing, and all
+the brooks bright under their little bridges, I knew that I must soon
+step aside and put down, if I could, some faint impression of the
+feeling of this time and place. I cannot hope to convey any adequate
+sense of it all--of the feeling of lightness, strength, clearness, I
+have as I sit here under this maple tree--but I am going to write as
+long as ever I am happy at it, and when I am no longer happy at it, why,
+here at my very hand lies the pleasant country road, stretching away
+toward newer hills and richer scenes.
+
+Until to-day I have not really been quite clear in my own mind as to the
+step I have taken. My sober friend, have you ever tried to do anything
+that the world at large considers not quite sensible, not quite sane?
+Try it! It is easier to commit a thundering crime. A friend of mine
+delights in walking to town bareheaded, and I fully believe the
+neighbourhood is more disquieted thereby than it would be if my friend
+came home drunken or failed to pay his debts.
+
+Here I am then, a farmer, forty miles from home in planting time, taking
+his ease under a maple tree and writing in a little book held on his
+knee! Is not that the height of absurdity? Of all my friends the Scotch
+Preacher was the only one who seemed to understand why it was that I
+must go away for a time. Oh, I am a sinful and revolutionary person!
+
+When I left home last week, if you could have had a truthful picture of
+me--for is there not a photography so delicate that it will catch the
+dim thought-shapes which attend upon our lives?--if you could have had
+such a truthful picture of me, you would have seen, besides a farmer
+named Grayson with a gray bag hanging from his shoulder, a strange
+company following close upon his steps. Among this crew you would have
+made out easily:
+
+Two fine cows. Four Berkshire pigs. One team of gray horses, the
+old mare a little lame in her right foreleg. About fifty hens, four
+cockerels, and a number of ducks and geese.
+
+More than this--I shall offer no explanation in these writings of any
+miracles that may appear--you would have seen an entirely respectable
+old farmhouse bumping and hobbling along as best it might in the rear.
+And in the doorway, Harriet Grayson, in her immaculate white apron, with
+the veritable look in her eyes which she wears when I am not comporting
+myself with quite the proper decorum.
+
+Oh, they would not let me go! How they all followed clamoring after me.
+My thoughts coursed backward faster than ever I could run away. If you
+could have heard that motley crew of the barnyard as I did--the hens
+all cackling, the ducks quacking, the pigs grunting, and the old mare
+neighing and stamping, you would have thought it a miracle that I
+escaped at all.
+
+So often we think in a superior and lordly manner of our possessions,
+when, as a matter of fact, we do not really possess them, they possess
+us. For ten years I have been the humble servant, attending upon the
+commonest daily needs of sundry hens, ducks, geese, pigs, bees, and of
+a fussy and exacting old gray mare. And the habit of servitude, I find,
+has worn deep scars upon me. I am almost like the life prisoner who
+finds the door of his cell suddenly open, and fears to escape. Why, I
+had almost become ALL farmer.
+
+On the first morning after I left home I awoke as usual about five
+o'clock with the irresistible feeling that I must do the milking. So
+well disciplined had I become in my servitude that I instinctively
+thrust my leg out of bed--but pulled it quickly back in again, turned
+over, drew a long, luxurious breath, and said to myself:
+
+"Avaunt cows! Get thee behind me, swine! Shoo, hens!"
+
+Instantly the clatter of mastery to which I had responded so quickly
+for so many years grew perceptibly fainter, the hens cackled less
+domineeringly, the pigs squealed less insistently, and as for the
+strutting cockerel, that lordly and despotic bird stopped fairly in the
+middle of a crow, and his voice gurgled away in a spasm of astonishment.
+As for the old farmhouse, it grew so dim I could scarcely see it at all!
+Having thus published abroad my Declaration of Independence, nailed my
+defiance to the door, and otherwise established myself as a free person,
+I turned over in my bed and took another delicious nap.
+
+Do you know, friend, we can be free of many things that dominate our
+lives by merely crying out a rebellious "Avaunt!"
+
+But in spite of this bold beginning, I assure you it required several
+days to break the habit of cows and hens. The second morning I awakened
+again at five o'clock, but my leg did not make for the side of the
+bed; the third morning I was only partially awakened, and on the fourth
+morning I slept like a millionaire (or at least I slept as a millionaire
+is supposed to sleep!) until the clock struck seven.
+
+For some days after I left home--and I walked out as casually that
+morning as though I were going to the barn--I scarcely thought or
+tried to think of anything but the Road. Such an unrestrained sense of
+liberty, such an exaltation of freedom, I have not known since I was a
+lad. When I came to my farm from the city many years ago it was as one
+bound, as one who had lost out in the World's battle and was seeking
+to get hold again somewhere upon the realities of life. I have related
+elsewhere how I thus came creeping like one sore wounded from the field
+of battle, and how, among our hills, in the hard, steady labour in the
+soil of the fields, with new and simple friends around me, I found a
+sort of rebirth or resurrection. I that was worn out, bankrupt both
+physically and morally, learned to live again. I have achieved something
+of high happiness in these years, something I know of pure contentment;
+and I have learned two or three deep and simple things about life: I
+have learned that happiness is not to be had for the seeking, but comes
+quietly to him who pauses at his difficult task and looks upward. I have
+learned that friendship is very simple, and, more than all else, I have
+learned the lesson of being quiet, of looking out across the meadows and
+hills, and of trusting a little in God.
+
+And now, for the moment, I am regaining another of the joys of
+youth--that of the sense of perfect freedom. I made no plans when I
+left home, I scarcely chose the direction in which I was to travel,
+but drifted out, as a boy might, into the great busy world. Oh, I have
+dreamed of that! It seems almost as though, after ten years, I might
+again really touch the highest joys of adventure!
+
+So I took the Road as it came, as a man takes a woman, for better or
+worse--I took the Road, and the farms along it, and the sleepy little
+villages, and the streams from the hillsides--all with high enjoyment.
+They were good coin in my purse! And when I had passed the narrow
+horizon of my acquaintanceship, and reached country new to me, it seemed
+as though every sense I had began to awaken. I must have grown dull,
+unconsciously, in the last years there on my farm. I cannot describe the
+eagerness of discovery I felt at climbing each new hill, nor the long
+breath I took at the top of it as I surveyed new stretches of pleasant
+countryside.
+
+Assuredly this is one of the royal moments of all the year--fine, cool,
+sparkling spring weather. I think I never saw the meadows richer and
+greener--and the lilacs are still blooming, and the catbirds and orioles
+are here. The oaks are not yet in full leaf, but the maples have nearly
+reached their full mantle of verdure--they are very beautiful and
+charming to see.
+
+It is curious how at this moment of the year all the world seems astir.
+I suppose there is no moment in any of the seasons when the whole army
+of agriculture, regulars and reserves, is so fully drafted for service
+in the fields. And all the doors and windows, both in the little
+villages and on the farms, stand wide open to the sunshine, and all the
+women and girls are busy in the yards and gardens. Such a fine, active,
+gossipy, adventurous world as it is at this moment of the year!
+
+It is the time, too, when all sorts of travelling people are afoot.
+People who have been mewed up in the cities for the winter now take to
+the open road--all the peddlers and agents and umbrella-menders, all the
+nursery salesmen and fertilizer agents, all the tramps and scientists
+and poets--all abroad in the wide sunny roads. They, too, know well this
+hospitable moment of the spring; they, too, know that doors and hearts
+are open and that even into dull lives creeps a bit of the spirit of
+adventure. Why, a farmer will buy a corn planter, feed a tramp, or
+listen to a poet twice as easily at this time of year as at any other!
+
+For several days I found myself so fully occupied with the bustling life
+of the Road that I scarcely spoke to a living soul, but strode straight
+ahead. The spring has been late and cold: most of the corn and some of
+the potatoes are not yet in, and the tobacco lands are still bare and
+brown. Occasionally I stopped to watch some ploughman in the fields:
+I saw with a curious, deep satisfaction how the moist furrows, freshly
+turned, glistened in the warm sunshine. There seemed to be something
+right and fit about it, as well as human and beautiful. Or at evening
+I would stop to watch a ploughman driving homeward across his new brown
+fields, raising a cloud of fine dust from the fast drying furrow
+crests. The low sun shining through the dust and glorifying it, the
+weary-stepping horses, the man all sombre-coloured like the earth
+itself and knit into the scene as though a part of it, made a picture
+exquisitely fine to see.
+
+And what a joy I had also of the lilacs blooming in many a dooryard, the
+odour often trailing after me for a long distance in the road, and of
+the pungent scent at evening in the cool hollows of burning brush
+heaps and the smell of barnyards as I went by--not unpleasant, not
+offensive--and above all, the deep, earthy, moist odour of new-ploughed
+fields.
+
+And then, at evening, to hear the sound of voices from the dooryards as
+I pass quite unseen; no words, but just pleasant, quiet intonations of
+human voices, borne through the still air, or the low sounds of cattle
+in the barnyards, quieting down for the night, and often, if near a
+village, the distant, slumbrous sound of a church bell, or even the
+rumble of a train--how good all these sounds are! They have all come
+to me again this week with renewed freshness and impressiveness. I am
+living deep again!
+
+It was not, indeed, until last Wednesday that I began to get my fill,
+temporarily, of the outward satisfaction of the Road--the primeval
+takings of the senses--the mere joys of seeing, hearing, smelling,
+touching. But on that day I began to wake up; I began to have a desire
+to know something of all the strange and interesting people who are
+working in their fields, or standing invitingly in their doorways, or so
+busily afoot in the country roads. Let me add, also, for this is one of
+the most important parts of my present experience, that this new desire
+was far from being wholly esoteric. I had also begun to have cravings
+which would not in the least be satisfied by landscapes or dulled by the
+sights and sounds of the road. A whiff here and there from a doorway
+at mealtime had made me long for my own home, for the sight of Harriet
+calling from the steps:
+
+"Dinner, David."
+
+But I had covenanted with myself long before starting that I would
+literally "live light in spring." It was the one and primary condition I
+made with myself--and made with serious purpose--and when I came away I
+had only enough money in my pocket and sandwiches in my pack to see me
+through the first three or four days. Any man may brutally pay his way
+anywhere, but it is quite another thing to be accepted by your humankind
+not as a paid lodger but as a friend. Always, it seems to me, I have
+wanted to submit myself, and indeed submit the stranger, to that test.
+Moreover, how can any man look for true adventure in life if he always
+knows to a certainty where his next meal is coming from? In a world so
+completely dominated by goods, by things, by possessions, and smothered
+by security, what fine adventure is left to a man of spirit save the
+adventure of poverty?
+
+I do not mean by this the adventure of involuntary poverty, for I
+maintain that involuntary poverty, like involuntary riches, is a credit
+to no man. It is only as we dominate life that we really live. What I
+mean here, if I may so express it, is an adventure in achieved poverty.
+In the lives of such true men as Francis of Assisi and Tolstoi, that
+which draws the world to them in secret sympathy is not that they lived
+lives of poverty, but rather, having riches at their hands, or for the
+very asking, that they chose poverty as the better way of life.
+
+As for me, I do not in the least pretend to have accepted the final
+logic of an achieved poverty. I have merely abolished temporarily from
+my life a few hens and cows, a comfortable old farmhouse, and--certain
+other emoluments and hereditaments--but remain the slave of sundry cloth
+upon my back and sundry articles in my gray bag--including a fat pocket
+volume or so, and a tin whistle. Let them pass now. To-morrow I may wish
+to attempt life with still less. I might survive without my battered
+copy of "Montaigne" or even submit to existence without that sense
+of distant companionship symbolized by a postage-stamp, and as for
+trousers--
+
+In this deceptive world, how difficult of attainment is perfection!
+
+No, I expect I shall continue for a long time to owe the worm his silk,
+the beast his hide, the sheep his wool, and the cat his perfume! What
+I am seeking is something as simple and as quiet as the trees or the
+hills--just to look out around me at the pleasant countryside, to enjoy
+a little of this show, to meet (and to help a little if I may) a few
+human beings, and thus to get nearly into the sweet kernel of human
+life. My friend, you may or may not think this a worthy object; if
+you do not, stop here, go no further with me; but if you do, why, we'll
+exchange great words on the road; we'll look up at the sky together,
+we'll see and hear the finest things in this world! We'll enjoy the sun!
+We'll live light in spring!
+
+Until last Tuesday, then, I was carried easily and comfortably onward
+by the corn, the eggs, and the honey of my past labours, and before
+Wednesday noon I began to experience in certain vital centres
+recognizable symptoms of a variety of discomfort anciently familiar to
+man. And it was all the sharper because I did not know how or where I
+could assuage it. In all my life, in spite of various ups and downs in
+a fat world, I don't think I was ever before genuinely hungry. Oh, I've
+been hungry in a reasonable, civilized way, but I have always known
+where in an hour or so I could get all I wanted to eat--a condition
+accountable, in this world, I am convinced, for no end of stupidity. But
+to be both physically and, let us say, psychologically hungry, and not
+to know where or how to get anything to eat, adds something to the zest
+of life.
+
+By noon on Wednesday, then, I was reduced quite to a point of necessity.
+But where was I to begin, and how? I know from long experience the
+suspicion with which the ordinary farmer meets the Man of the Road--the
+man who appears to wish to enjoy the fruits of the earth without working
+for them with his hands. It is a distrust deep-seated and ages old. Nor
+can the Man of the Road ever quite understand the Man of the Fields. And
+here was I, for so long the stationary Man of the Fields, essaying
+the role of the Man of the Road. I experienced a sudden sense of the
+enlivenment of the faculties: I must now depend upon wit or cunning or
+human nature to win my way, not upon mere skill of the hand or strength
+in the bent back. Whereas in my former life, when I was assailed by a
+Man of the Road, whether tramp or peddler or poet, I had only to stand
+stock-still within my fences and say nothing--though indeed I never
+could do that, being far too much interested in every one who came my
+way--and the invader was soon repelled. There is nothing so resistant as
+the dull security of possession the stolidity of ownership!
+
+Many times that day I stopped by a field side or at the end of a lane,
+or at a house-gate, and considered the possibilities of making an
+attack. Oh, I measured the houses and barns I saw with a new eye! The
+kind of country I had known so long and familiarly became a new and
+foreign land, full of strange possibilities. I spied out the men in the
+fields and did not fail, also, to see what I could of the commissary
+department of each farmstead as I passed. I walked for miles looking
+thus for a favourable opening--and with a sensation of embarrassment at
+once disagreeable and pleasurable. As the afternoon began to deepen I
+saw that I must absolutely do something: a whole day tramping in the
+open air without a bite to eat is an irresistible argument.
+
+Presently I saw from the road a farmer and his son planting potatoes in
+a sloping field. There was no house at all in view. At the bars stood a
+light wagon half filled with bags of seed potatoes, and the horse which
+had drawn it stood quietly, not far off, tied to the fence. The man and
+the boy, each with a basket on his arm, were at the farther end of the
+field, dropping potatoes. I stood quietly watching them. They stepped
+quickly and kept their eyes on the furrows: good workers. I liked the
+looks of them. I liked also the straight, clean furrows; I liked the
+appearance of the horse.
+
+"I will stop here," I said to myself.
+
+I cannot at all convey the sense of high adventure I had as I stood
+there. Though I had not the slightest idea of what I should do or say,
+yet I was determined upon the attack.
+
+Neither father nor son saw me until they had nearly reached the end of
+the field.
+
+"Step lively, Ben," I heard the man say with some impatience; "we've got
+to finish this field to-day."
+
+"I AM steppin' lively, dad," responded the boy, "but it's awful hot. We
+can't possibly finish to-day. It's too much."
+
+"We've got to get through here to-day," the man replied grimly; "we're
+already two weeks late."
+
+I know just how the man felt; for I knew well the difficulty a farmer
+has in getting help in planting time. The spring waits for no man. My
+heart went out to the man and boy struggling there in the heat of their
+field. For this is the real warfare of the common life.
+
+"Why," I said to myself with a curious lift of the heart, "they have
+need of a fellow just like me."
+
+At that moment the boy saw me and, missing a step in the rhythm of the
+planting, the father also looked up and saw me. But neither said a word
+until the furrows were finished, and the planters came to refill their
+baskets.
+
+"Fine afternoon," I said, sparring for an opening.
+
+"Fine," responded the man rather shortly, glancing up from his work. I
+recalled the scores of times I had been exactly in his place, and had
+glanced up to see the stranger in the road.
+
+"Got another basket handy?" I asked.
+
+"There is one somewhere around here," he answered not too cordially. The
+boy said nothing at all, but eyed me with absorbing interest. The gloomy
+look had already gone from his face.
+
+I slipped my gray bag from my shoulder, took off my coat, and put them
+both down inside the fence. Then I found the basket and began to fill it
+from one of the bags. Both man and boy looked up at me questioningly. I
+enjoyed the situation immensely.
+
+"I heard you say to your son," I said, "that you'd have to hurry in
+order to get in your potatoes to-day. I can see that for myself. Let me
+take a hand for a row or two."
+
+The unmistakable shrewd look of the bargainer came suddenly into the
+man's face, but when I went about my business without hesitation or
+questioning, he said nothing at all. As for the boy, the change in his
+countenance was marvellous to see. Something new and astonishing had
+come into the world. Oh, I know what a thing it is to be a boy and to
+work in trouting time!
+
+"How near are you planting, Ben?" I asked.
+
+"About fourteen inches."
+
+So we began in fine spirits. I was delighted with the favourable
+beginning of my enterprise; there is nothing which so draws men together
+as their employment at a common task.
+
+Ben was a lad some fifteen years old-very stout and stocky, with a fine
+open countenance and a frank blue eye--all boy. His nose was as freckled
+as the belly of a trout. The whole situation, including the prospect of
+help in finishing a tiresome job, pleased him hugely. He stole a glimpse
+from time to time at me then at his father. Finally he said:
+
+"Say, you'll have to step lively to keep up with dad."
+
+"I'll show you," I said, "how we used to drop potatoes when I was a
+boy."
+
+And with that I began to step ahead more quickly and make the pieces
+fairly fly.
+
+"We old fellows," I said to the father, "must give these young sprouts a
+lesson once in a while."
+
+"You will, will you?" responded the boy, and instantly began to drop the
+potatoes at a prodigious speed. The father followed with more dignity,
+but with evident amusement, and so we all came with a rush to the end of
+the row.
+
+"I guess that beats the record across THIS field!" remarked the lad,
+puffing and wiping his forehead. "Say, but you're a good one!"
+
+It gave me a peculiar thrill of pleasure; there is nothing more pleasing
+than the frank admiration of a boy.
+
+We paused a moment and I said to the man: "This looks like fine potato
+land."
+
+"The' ain't any better in these parts," he replied with some pride in
+his voice.
+
+And so we went at the planting again: and as we planted we had great
+talk of seed potatoes and the advantages and disadvantages of mechanical
+planters, of cultivating and spraying, and all the lore of prices and
+profits. Once we stopped at the lower end of the field to get a drink
+from a jug of water set in the shade of a fence corner, and once we set
+the horse in the thills and moved the seed farther up the field. And
+tired and hungry as I felt I really enjoyed the work; I really enjoyed
+talking with this busy father and son, and I wondered what their home
+life was like and what were their real ambitions and hopes. Thus the sun
+sank lower and lower, the long shadows began to creep into the valleys,
+and we came finally toward the end of the field. Suddenly the boy Ben
+cried out:
+
+"There's Sis!"
+
+I glanced up and saw standing near the gateway a slim, bright girl of
+about twelve in a fresh gingham dress.
+
+"We're coming!" roared Ben, exultantly.
+
+While we were hitching up the horse, the man said to me:
+
+"You'll come down with us and have some supper."
+
+"Indeed I will," I replied, trying not to make my response too eager.
+
+"Did mother make gingerbread to-day?" I heard the boy whisper audibly.
+
+"Sh-h--" replied the girl, "who is that man?"
+
+"_I_ don't know" with a great accent of mystery--"and dad don't know.
+Did mother make gingerbread?"
+
+"Sh-h--he'll hear you."
+
+"Gee! but he can plant potatoes. He dropped down on us out of a clear
+sky."
+
+"What is he?" she asked. "A tramp?"
+
+"Nope, not a tramp. He works. But, Sis, did mother make gingerbread?"
+
+So we all got into the light wagon and drove briskly out along the shady
+country road. The evening was coming on, and the air was full of the
+scent of blossoms. We turned finally into a lane and thus came promptly,
+for the horse was as eager as we, to the capacious farmyard. A motherly
+woman came out from the house, spoke to her son, and nodded pleasantly
+to me. There was no especial introduction. I said merely, "My name is
+Grayson," and I was accepted without a word.
+
+I waited to help the man, whose name I had now learned--it was
+Stanley--with his horse and wagon, and then we came up to the house.
+Near the back door there was a pump, with a bench and basin set just
+within a little cleanly swept, open shed. Rolling back my collar and
+baring my arms I washed myself in the cool water, dashing it over my
+head until I gasped, and then stepping back, breathless and refreshed,
+I found the slim girl, Mary, at my elbow with a clean soft towel. As
+I stood wiping quietly I could smell the ambrosial odours from the
+kitchen. In all my life I never enjoyed a moment more than that, I
+think.
+
+"Come in now," said the motherly Mrs. Stanley.
+
+So we filed into the roomy kitchen, where an older girl, called Kate,
+was flying about placing steaming dishes upon the table. There was also
+an older son, who had been at the farm chores. It was altogether a fine,
+vigorous, independent American family. So we all sat down and drew up
+our chairs. Then we paused a moment, and the father, bowing his head,
+said in a low voice:
+
+"For all Thy good gifts, Lord, we thank Thee. Preserve us and keep us
+through another night."
+
+I suppose it was a very ordinary farm meal, but it seems to me I never
+tasted a better one. The huge piles of new baked bread, the sweet farm
+butter, already delicious with the flavour of new grass, the bacon and
+eggs, the potatoes, the rhubarb sauce, the great plates of new, hot
+gingerbread and, at the last, the custard pie--a great wedge of it, with
+fresh cheese. After the first ravenous appetite of hardworking men was
+satisfied, there came to be a good deal of lively conversation. The
+girls had some joke between them which Ben was trying in vain to fathom.
+The older son told how much milk a certain Alderney cow had given,
+and Mr. Stanley, quite changed now as he sat at his own table from the
+rather grim farmer of the afternoon, revealed a capacity for a husky
+sort of fun, joking Ben about his potato-planting and telling in a
+lively way of his race with me. As for Mrs. Stanley, she sat smiling
+behind her tall coffee pot, radiating good cheer and hospitality. They
+asked me no questions at all, and I was so hungry and tired that I
+volunteered no information.
+
+After supper we went out for half or three quarters of an hour to do
+some final chores, and Mr. Stanley and I stopped in the cattle yard and
+looked over the cows, and talked learnedly about the pigs, and I admired
+his spring calves to his hearts content, for they really were a
+fine lot. When we came in again the lamps had been lighted in the
+sitting-room and the older daughter was at the telephone exchanging
+the news of the day with some neighbour--and with great laughter and
+enjoyment. Occasionally she would turn and repeat some bit of gossip to
+the family, and Mrs. Stanley would claim:
+
+"Do tell!"
+
+"Can't we have a bit of music to-night?" inquired Mr. Stanley.
+
+Instantly Ben and the slim girl, Mary, made a wild dive for the front
+room--the parlour--and came out with a first-rate phonograph which they
+placed on the table.
+
+"Something lively now," said Mr. Stanley.
+
+So they put on a rollicking negro song called. "My Georgia Belle,"
+which, besides the tuneful voices, introduced a steamboat whistle and
+a musical clangour of bells. When it wound up with a bang, Mr. Stanley
+took his big comfortable pipe out of his mouth and cried out:
+
+"Fine, fine!"
+
+We had further music of the same sort and with one record the older
+daughter, Kate, broke into the song with a full, strong though
+uncultivated voice--which pleased us all very much indeed.
+
+Presently Mrs. Stanley, who was sitting under the lamp with a basket of
+socks to mend, began to nod.
+
+"Mother's giving the signal," said the older son.
+
+"No, no, I'm not a bit sleepy," exclaimed Mrs. Stanley.
+
+But with further joking and laughing the family began to move about. The
+older daughter gave me a hand lamp and showed me the way upstairs to a
+little room at the end of the house.
+
+"I think," she said with pleasant dignity, "you will find everything you
+need."
+
+I cannot tell with what solid pleasure I rolled into bed or how soundly
+and sweetly I slept.
+
+This was the first day of my real adventures.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. I WHISTLE
+
+When I was a boy I learned after many discouragements to play on a tin
+whistle. There was a wandering old fellow in our town who would sit for
+hours on the shady side of a certain ancient hotel-barn, and with his
+little whistle to his lips, and gently swaying his head to his tune and
+tapping one foot in the gravel, he would produce the most wonderful
+and beguiling melodies. His favourite selections were very lively; he
+played, I remember, "Old Dan Tucker," and "Money Musk," and the tune of
+a rollicking old song, now no doubt long forgotten, called "Wait for
+the Wagon." I can see him yet, with his jolly eyes half closed, his
+lips puckered around the whistle, and his fingers curiously and stiffly
+poised over the stops. I am sure I shall never forget the thrill which
+his music gave to the heart of a certain barefoot boy.
+
+At length, by means I have long since forgotten, I secured a tin whistle
+exactly like Old Tom Madison's and began diligently to practise such
+tunes as I knew. I am quite sure now that I must have made a nuisance
+of myself, for it soon appeared to be the set purpose of every member
+of the family to break up my efforts. Whenever my father saw me with the
+whistle to my lips, he would instantly set me at some useful work (oh,
+he was an adept in discovering useful work to do--for a boy!). And at
+the very sight of my stern aunt I would instantly secrete my whistle
+in my blouse and fly for the garret or cellar, like a cat caught in the
+cream. Such are the early tribulations of musical genius!
+
+At last I discovered a remote spot on a beam in the hay-barn where,
+lighted by a ray of sunlight which came through a crack in the eaves
+and pointed a dusty golden finger into that hay-scented interior, I
+practised rapturously and to my heart's content upon my tin whistle.
+I learned "Money Musk" until I could play it in Old Tom Madison's best
+style--even to the last nod and final foot-tap. I turned a certain
+church hymn called "Yield Not to Temptation" into something quite
+inspiriting, and I played "Marching Through Georgia" until all the
+"happy hills of hay" were to the fervid eye of a boy's imagination full
+of tramping soldiers. Oh, I shall never forget the joys of those hours
+in the hay-barn, nor the music of that secret tin whistle! I can hear
+yet the crooning of the pigeons in the eaves, and the slatey sound of
+their wings as they flew across the open spaces in the great barn; I can
+smell yet the odour of the hay.
+
+But with years, and the city, and the shame of youth, I put aside and
+almost forgot the art of whistling. When I was preparing for the present
+pilgrimage, however, it came to me with a sudden thrill of pleasure that
+nothing in the wide world now prevented me from getting a whistle and
+seeing whether I had forgotten my early cunning. At the very first
+good-sized town I came to I was delighted to find at a little candy and
+toy shop just the sort of whistle I wanted, at the extravagant price of
+ten cents. I bought it and put it in the bottom of my knapsack.
+
+"Am I not old enough now," I said to myself, "to be as youthful as I
+choose?"
+
+Isn't it the strangest thing in the world how long it takes us to learn
+to accept the joys of simple pleasures?--and some of us never learn at
+all. "Boo!" says the neighbourhood, and we are instantly frightened into
+doing a thousand unnecessary and unpleasant things, or prevented from
+doing a thousand beguiling things.
+
+For the first few days I was on the road I thought often with pleasure
+of the whistle lying there in my bag, but it was not until after I left
+the Stanleys' that I felt exactly in the mood to try it.
+
+The fact is, my adventures on the Stanley farm had left me in a very
+cheerful frame of mind. They convinced me that some of the great things
+I had expected of my pilgrimage were realizable possibilities. Why, I
+had walked right into the heart of as fine a family as I have seen these
+many days.
+
+I remained with them the entire day following the potato-planting. We
+were out at five o'clock in the morning, and after helping with
+the chores, and eating a prodigious breakfast, we went again to the
+potato-field, and part of the time I helped plant a few remaining rows,
+and part of the time I drove a team attached to a wing-plow to cover the
+planting of the previous day.
+
+In the afternoon a slashing spring rain set in, and Mr. Stanley, who
+was a forehanded worker, found a job for all of us in the barn. Ben,
+the younger son, and I sharpened mower-blades and a scythe or so, Ben
+turning the grindstone and I holding the blades and telling him stories
+into the bargain. Mr. Stanley and his stout older son overhauled the
+work-harness and tinkered the corn-planter. The doors at both ends
+of the barn stood wide open, and through one of them, framed like a
+picture, we could see the scudding floods descend upon the meadows, and
+through the other, across a fine stretch of open country, we could see
+all the roads glistening and the treetops moving under the rain.
+
+"Fine, fine!" exclaimed Mr. Stanley, looking out from time to time, "we
+got in our potatoes just in the nick of time."
+
+After supper that evening I told them of my plan to leave them on the
+following morning.
+
+"Don't do that," said Mrs. Stanley heartily; "stay on with us."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Stanley, "we're shorthanded, and I'd be glad to have a
+man like you all summer. There ain't any one around here will pay a good
+man more'n I will, nor treat 'im better."
+
+"I'm sure of it, Mr. Stanley," I said, "but I can't stay with you."
+
+At that the tide of curiosity which I had seen rising ever since I
+came began to break through. Oh, I know how difficult it is to let the
+wanderer get by without taking toll of him! There are not so many people
+here in the country that we can afford to neglect them. And as I had
+nothing in the world to conceal, and, indeed, loved nothing better than
+the give and take of getting acquainted, we were soon at it in good
+earnest.
+
+But it was not enough to tell them that my name was David Grayson and
+where my farm was located, and how many acres there were, and how much
+stock I had, and what I raised. The great particular "Why?"--as I knew
+it would be--concerned my strange presence on the road at this season of
+the year and the reason why I should turn in by chance, as I had done,
+to help at their planting. If a man is stationary, it seems quite
+impossible for him to imagine why any one should care to wander; and
+as for the wanderer it is inconceivable to him how any one can remain
+permanently at home.
+
+We were all sitting comfortably around the table in the living-room. The
+lamps were lighted, and Mr. Stanley, in slippers, was smoking his pipe
+and Mrs. Stanley was darning socks over a mending-gourd, and the two
+young Stanleys were whispering and giggling about some matter of supreme
+consequence to youth. The windows were open, and we could smell the
+sweet scent of the lilacs from the yard and hear the drumming of the
+rain as it fell on the roof of the porch.
+
+"It's easy to explain," I said. "The fact is, it got to the point on my
+farm that I wasn't quite sure whether I owned it or it owned me. And I
+made up my mind I'd get away for a while from my own horses and cattle
+and see what the world was like. I wanted to see how people lived up
+here, and what they are thinking about, and how they do their farming."
+
+As I talked of my plans and of the duty one had, as I saw it, to be a
+good broad man as well as a good farmer, I grew more and more interested
+and enthusiastic. Mr. Stanley took his pipe slowly from his mouth, held
+it poised until it finally went out, and sat looking at me with a rapt
+expression. I never had a better audience. Finally, Mr. Stanley said
+very earnestly:
+
+"And you have felt that way, too?"
+
+"Why, father!" exclaimed Mrs. Stanley, in astonishment.
+
+Mr. Stanley hastily put his pipe back into his mouth and confusedly
+searched in his pockets for a match; but I knew I had struck down deep
+into a common experience. Here was this brisk and prosperous farmer
+having his dreams too--dreams that even his wife did not know!
+
+So I continued my talk with even greater fervour. I don't think that the
+boy Ben understood all that I said, for I was dealing with experiences
+common mostly to older men, but he somehow seemed to get the spirit of
+it, for quite unconsciously he began to hitch his chair toward me, then
+he laid his hand on my chair-arm and finally and quite simply he rested
+his arm against mine and looked at me with all his eyes. I keep learning
+that there is nothing which reaches men's hearts like talking straight
+out the convictions and emotions of your innermost soul. Those who hear
+you may not agree with you, or they may not understand you fully, but
+something incalculable, something vital, passes. And as for a boy or
+girl it is one of the sorriest of mistakes to talk down to them; almost
+always your lad of fifteen thinks more simply, more fundamentally, than
+you do; and what he accepts as good coin is not facts or precepts, but
+feelings and convictions--LIFE. And why shouldn't we speak out?
+
+"I long ago decided," I said, "to try to be fully what I am and not to
+be anything or anybody else."
+
+"That's right, that's right," exclaimed Mr. Stanley, nodding his head
+vigorously.
+
+"It's about the oldest wisdom there is," I said, and with that I thought
+of the volume I carried in my pocket, and straightway I pulled it out
+and after a moment's search found the passage I wanted.
+
+"Listen," I said, "to what this old Roman philosopher said"--and I held
+the book up to the lamp and read aloud:
+
+"'You can be invincible if you enter into no contest in which it is
+not in your power to conquer. Take care, then, when you observe a man
+honoured before others or possessed of great power, or highly esteemed
+for any reason, not to suppose him happy and be not carried away by the
+appearance. For if the nature of the good is in our power, neither envy
+nor jealousy will have a place in us. But you yourself will not wish to
+be a general or a senator or consul, but a free man, and there is only
+one way to do this, to care not for the things which are not in our
+power.'"
+
+"That," said Mr. Stanley, "is exactly what I've always said, but I
+didn't know it was in any book. I always said I didn't want to be a
+senator or a legislator, or any other sort of office-holder. It's good
+enough for me right here on this farm."
+
+At that moment I glanced down into Ben's shining eyes.
+
+"But I want to be a senator or--something--when I grow up," he said
+eagerly.
+
+At this the older brother, who was sitting not far off, broke into a
+laugh, and the boy, who for a moment had been drawn out of his reserve,
+shrank back again and coloured to the hair.
+
+"Well, Ben," said I, putting my hand on his knee, "don't you let
+anything stop you. I'll back you up; I'll vote for you."
+
+After breakfast the next morning Mr. Stanley drew me aside and said:
+
+"Now I want to pay you for your help yesterday and the day before."
+
+"No," I said. "I've had more than value received. You've taken me in
+like a friend and brother. I've enjoyed it."
+
+So Mrs. Stanley half filled my knapsack with the finest luncheon I've
+seen in many a day, and thus, with as pleasant a farewell as if I'd
+been a near relative, I set off up the country road. I was a little
+distressed in parting to see nothing of the boy Ben, for I had formed a
+genuine liking for him, but upon reaching a clump of trees which hid
+the house from the road I saw him standing in the moist grass of a fence
+corner.
+
+"I want to say good-bye," he said in the gruff voice of embarrassment.
+
+"Ben," I said, "I missed you, and I'd have hated to go off without
+seeing you again. Walk a bit with me."
+
+So we walked side by side, talking quietly and when at last I shook his
+hand I said:
+
+"Ben, don't you ever be afraid of acting up to the very best thoughts
+you have in your heart."
+
+He said nothing for a moment, and then: "Gee! I'm sorry you're goin'
+away!"
+
+"Gee!" I responded, "I'm sorry, too!"
+
+With that we both laughed, but when I reached the top of the hill, and
+looked back, I saw him still standing there bare-footed in the road
+looking after me. I waved my hand and he waved his: and I saw him no
+more.
+
+No country, after all, produces any better crop than its inhabitants.
+And as I travelled onward I liked to think of these brave, temperate,
+industrious, God-friendly American people. I have no fear of the country
+while so many of them are still to be found upon the farms and in the
+towns of this land.
+
+So I tramped onward full of cheerfulness. The rain had ceased, but all
+the world was moist and very green and still. I walked for more than
+two hours with the greatest pleasure. About ten o'clock in the morning I
+stopped near a brook to drink and rest, for I was warm and tired. And it
+was then that I bethought me of the little tin pipe in my knapsack, and
+straightway I got it out, and, sitting down at the foot of a tree near
+the brook, I put it to my lips and felt for the stops with unaccustomed
+fingers. At first I made the saddest sort of work of it, and was not a
+little disappointed, indeed, with the sound of the whistle itself. It
+was nothing to my memory of it! It seemed thin and tinny.
+
+However, I persevered at it, and soon produced a recognizable imitation
+of Tom Madison's "Old Dan Tucker." My success quite pleased me, and
+I became so absorbed that I quite lost account of the time and place.
+There was no one to hear me save a bluejay which for an hour or more
+kept me company. He sat on a twig just across the brook, cocking his
+head at me, and saucily wagging his tail. Occasionally he would dart off
+among the trees crying shrilly; but his curiosity would always get the
+better of him and back he would come again to try to solve the mystery
+of this rival whistling, which I'm sure was as shrill and as harsh as
+his own.
+
+Presently, quite to my astonishment, I saw a man standing near the
+brookside not a dozen paces away from me. How long he had been there
+I don't know, for I had heard nothing of his coming. Beyond him in the
+town road I could see the head of his horse and the top of his buggy. I
+said not a word, but continued with my practising. Why shouldn't I? But
+it gave me quite a thrill for the moment; and at once I began to think
+of the possibilities of the situation. What a thing it was have so many
+unexpected and interesting situations developing! So I nodded my head
+and tapped my foot, and blew into my whistle all the more energetically.
+I knew my visitor could not possibly keep away. And he could not;
+presently he came nearer and said:
+
+"What are you doing, neighbour?"
+
+I continued a moment with my playing, but commanded him with my eye.
+
+Oh, I assure you I assumed all the airs of a virtuoso. When I had
+finished my tune I removed my whistle deliberately and wiped my lips.
+
+"Why, enjoying myself," I replied with greatest good humour. "What are
+you doing?"
+
+"Why," he said, "watching you enjoy yourself. I heard you playing as I
+passed in the road, and couldn't imagine what it could be."
+
+I told him I thought it might still be difficult, having heard me near
+at hand, to imagine what it could be--and thus, tossing the ball of
+good-humoured repartee back and forth, we walked down to the road
+together. He had a quiet old horse and a curious top buggy with the
+unmistakable box of an agent or peddler built on behind.
+
+"My name," he said, "is Canfield. I fight dust."
+
+"And mine," I said, "is Grayson. I whistle."
+
+I discovered that he was an agent for brushes, and he opened his box
+and showed me the greatest assortment of big and little brushes: bristle
+brushes, broom brushes, yarn brushes, wire brushes, brushes for man and
+brushes for beast, brushes of every conceivable size and shape that ever
+I saw in all my life. He had out one of his especial pets--he called
+it his "leader"--and feeling it familiarly in his hand he instinctively
+began the jargon of well-handled and voice-worn phrases which went with
+that particular brush. It was just as though some one had touched a
+button and had started him going. It was amazing to me that any one
+in the world should be so much interested in mere brushes--until he
+actually began to make me feel that brushes were as interesting as
+anything else!
+
+What a strange, little, dried-up old fellow he was, with his balls
+of muttonchop sidewhiskers, his thick eyebrows, and his lively blue
+eyes!--a man evidently not readily turned aside by rebuffs. He had
+already shown that his wit as a talker had been sharpened by long
+and varied contact with a world of reluctant purchasers. I was really
+curious to know more of him, so I said finally:
+
+"See here, Mr. Canfield, it's just noon. Why not sit down here with me
+and have a bit of luncheon?"
+
+"Why not?" he responded with alacrity. "As the fellow said, why not?"
+
+He unhitched his horse, gave him a drink from the brook, and then
+tethered him where he could nip the roadside grass. I opened my bag and
+explored the wonders of Mrs. Stanley's luncheon. I cannot describe the
+absolutely carefree feeling I had. Always at home, when I would have
+liked to stop at the roadside with a stranger, I felt the nudge of a
+conscience troubled with cows and corn, but here I could stop where I
+liked, or go on when I liked, and talk with whom I pleased, as long as I
+pleased.
+
+So we sat there, the brush-peddler and I, under the trees, and ate
+Mrs. Stanley's fine luncheon, drank the clear water from the brook,
+and talked great talk. Compared with Mr. Canfield I was a babe at
+wandering--and equally at talking. Was there any business he had not
+been in, or any place in the country he had not visited? He had sold
+everything from fly-paper to threshing-machines, he had picked up a
+large working knowledge of the weaknesses of human nature, and had
+arrived at the age of sixty-six with just enough available cash to pay
+the manufacturer for a new supply of brushes. In strict confidence, I
+drew certain conclusions from the colour of his nose! He had once had
+a family, but dropped them somewhere along the road. Most of our brisk
+neighbours would have put him down as a failure--an old man, and nothing
+laid by! But I wonder--I wonder. One thing I am coming to learn in this
+world, and that is to let people haggle along with their lives as I
+haggle along with mine.
+
+We both made tremendous inroads on the luncheon, and I presume we might
+have sat there talking all the afternoon if I had not suddenly bethought
+myself with a not unpleasant thrill that my resting-place for the night
+was still gloriously undecided.
+
+"Friend," I said, "I've got to be up and going. I haven't so much as a
+penny in my pocket, and I've got to find a place to sleep."
+
+The effect of this remark upon Mr. Canfield was magical. He threw up
+both his hands and cried out:
+
+"You're that way, are you?"--as though for the first time he really
+understood. We were at last on common ground.
+
+"Partner," said he, "you needn't tell nothin' about it. I've been right
+there myself."
+
+At once he began to bustle about with great enthusiasm. He was for
+taking complete charge of me, and I think, if I had permitted it, would
+instantly have made a brush-agent of me. At least he would have carried
+me along with him in his buggy; but when he suggested it I felt very
+much, I think, as some old monk must have who had taken a vow to do
+some particular thing in some particular way. With great difficulty I
+convinced him finally that my way was different from his--though he was
+regally impartial as to what road he took next--and, finally, with some
+reluctance, he started to climb into his buggy.
+
+A thought, however, struck him suddenly, and he stepped down again, ran
+around to the box at the back of his buggy, opened it with a mysterious
+and smiling look at me, and took out a small broom-brush with which he
+instantly began brushing off my coat and trousers--in the liveliest and
+most exuberant way. When he had finished this occupation, he quickly
+handed the brush to me.
+
+"A token of esteem," he said, "from a fellow traveller."
+
+I tried in vain to thank him, but he held up his hand, scrambled quickly
+into his buggy, and was for driving off instantly, but paused and
+beckoned me toward him. When I approached the buggy, he took hold of one
+the lapels of my coat, bent over, and said with the utmost seriousness:
+
+"No man ought to take the road without a brush. A good broom-brush is
+the world's greatest civilizer. Are you looking seedy or dusty?--why,
+this here brush will instantly make you a respectable citizen. Take my
+word for it, friend, never go into any strange house without stoppin'
+and brushin' off. It's money in your purse! You can get along without
+dinner sometimes, or even without a shirt, but without a brush--never!
+There's nothin' in the world so necessary to rich AN' poor, old AN'
+young as a good brush!"
+
+And with a final burst of enthusiasm the brush-peddler drove off up the
+hill. I stood watching him and when he turned around I waved the brush
+high over my head in token of a grateful farewell.
+
+It was a good, serviceable, friendly brush. I carried it throughout my
+wanderings; and as I sit here writing in my study, at this moment, I can
+see it hanging on a hook at the side of my fireplace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
+
+"Everyone," remarks Tristram Shandy, "will speak of the fair as his own
+market has gone in it."
+
+It came near being a sorry fair for me on the afternoon following my
+parting with the amiable brush-peddler. The plain fact is, my success
+at the Stanleys', and the easy manner in which I had fallen in with Mr.
+Canfield, gave me so much confidence in myself as a sort of Master of
+the Road that I proceeded with altogether too much assurance.
+
+I am firmly convinced that the prime quality to be cultivated by the
+pilgrim is humility of spirit; he must be willing to accept Adventure in
+whatever garb she chooses to present herself. He must be able to see the
+shining form of the unusual through the dull garments of the normal.
+
+The fact is, I walked that afternoon with my head in air and passed many
+a pleasant farmstead where men were working in the fields, and many an
+open doorway, and a mill or two, and a town--always looking for some
+Great Adventure.
+
+Somewhere upon this road, I thought to myself, I shall fall in with a
+Great Person, or become a part of a Great Incident. I recalled with keen
+pleasure the experience of that young Spanish student of Carlyle
+writes in one of his volumes, who, riding out from Madrid one day, came
+unexpectedly upon the greatest man in the world. This great man, of whom
+Carlyle observes (I have looked up the passage since I came home), "a
+kindlier, meeker, braver heart has seldom looked upon the sky in this
+world," had ridden out from the city for the last time in his life "to
+take one other look at the azure firmament and green mosaic pavements
+and the strange carpentry and arras work of this noble palace of a
+world."
+
+As the old story has it, the young student "came pricking on hastily,
+complaining that they went at such a pace as gave him little chance of
+keeping up with them. One of the party made answer that the blame
+lay with the horse of Don Miguel de Cervantes, whose trot was of the
+speediest. He had hardly pronounced the name when the student dismounted
+and, touching the hem of Cervantes' left sleeve, said, 'Yes, yes, it is
+indeed the maimed perfection, the all-famous, the delightful writer, the
+joy and darling of the Muses! You are that brave Miguel.'"
+
+It may seem absurd to some in this cool and calculating twentieth
+century that any one should indulge in such vain imaginings as I have
+described--and yet, why not? All things are as we see them. I once heard
+a man--a modern man, living to-day--tell with a hush in his voice, and
+a peculiar light in his eye, how, walking in the outskirts of an
+unromantic town in New Jersey, he came suddenly upon a vigorous,
+bearded, rather rough-looking man swinging his stick as he walked, and
+stopping often at the roadside and often looking up at the sky. I shall
+never forget the curious thrill in his voice as he said:
+
+"And THAT was Walt Whitman."
+
+And thus quite absurdly intoxicated by the possibilities of the road, I
+let the big full afternoon slip by--I let slip the rich possibilities
+of half a hundred farms and scores of travelling people--and as evening
+began to fall I came to a stretch of wilder country with wooded hills
+and a dashing stream by the roadside. It was a fine and beautiful
+country--to look at--but the farms, and with them the chances of dinner,
+and a friendly place to sleep, grew momentarily scarcer. Upon the hills
+here and there, indeed, were to be seen the pretentious summer homes
+of rich dwellers from the cities, but I looked upon them with no great
+hopefulness.
+
+"Of all places in the world," I said to myself, "surely none could be
+more unfriendly to a man like me."
+
+But I amused myself with conjectures as to what might happen (until the
+adventure seemed almost worth trying) if a dusty man with a bag on
+his back should appear at the door of one of those well-groomed
+establishments. It came to me, indeed, with a sudden deep sense of
+understanding, that I should probably find there, as everywhere else,
+just men and women. And with that I fell into a sort of Socratic
+dialogue with myself:
+
+ME: Having decided that the people in these houses are, after all,
+merely men and women, what is the best way of reaching them?
+
+MYSELF: Undoubtedly by giving them something they want and have not.
+
+ME: But these are rich people from the city; what can they want that
+they have not?
+
+MYSELF: Believe me, of all people in the world those who want the
+most are those who have the most. These people are also consumed with
+desires.
+
+ME: And what, pray, do you suppose they desire?
+
+MYSELF: They want what they have not got; they want the unattainable:
+they want chiefly the rarest and most precious of all things--a little
+mystery in their lives.
+
+"That's it!" I said aloud; "that's it! Mystery--the things of the
+spirit, the things above ordinary living--is not that the
+essential thing for which the world is sighing, and groaning, and
+longing--consciously, or unconsciously?"
+
+I have always believed that men in their innermost souls desire the
+highest, bravest, finest things they can hear, or see, or feel in all
+the world. Tell a man how he can increase his income and he will be
+grateful to you and soon forget you; but show him the highest, most
+mysterious things in his own soul and give him the word which will
+convince him that the finest things are really attainable, and he will
+love and follow you always.
+
+I now began to look with much excitement to a visit at one of the
+houses on the hill, but to my disappointment I found the next two that
+I approached still closed up, for the spring was not yet far enough
+advanced to attract the owners to the country. I walked rapidly onward
+through the gathering twilight, but with increasing uneasiness as to the
+prospects for the night, and thus came suddenly upon the scene of an odd
+adventure.
+
+From some distance I had seen a veritable palace set high among the
+trees and overlooking a wonderful green valley--and, drawing nearer,
+I saw evidences of well-kept roadways and a visible effort to make
+invisible the attempt to preserve the wild beauty of the place. I saw,
+or thought I saw, people on the wide veranda, and I was sure I heard the
+snort of a climbing motor-car, but I had scarcely decided to make my way
+up to the house when I came, at the turning of the country road, upon
+a bit of open land laid out neatly as a garden, near the edge of which,
+nestling among the trees, stood a small cottage. It seemed somehow
+to belong to the great estate above it, and I concluded, at the first
+glance, that it was the home of some caretaker or gardener.
+
+It was a charming place to see, and especially the plantation of trees
+and shrubs. My eye fell instantly upon a fine magnolia--rare in this
+country--which had not yet cast all its blossoms, and I paused for
+a moment to look at it more closely. I myself have tried to raise
+magnolias near my house, and I know how difficult it is.
+
+As I approached nearer to the cottage, I could see a man and woman
+sitting on the porch in the twilight and swaying back and forth in
+rocking-chairs. I fancied--it may have been only a fancy--that when I
+first saw them their hands were clasped as they rocked side by side.
+
+It was indeed a charming little cottage. Crimson ramblers, giving
+promise of the bloom that was yet to come, climbed over one end of the
+porch, and there were fine dark-leaved lilac-bushes near the doorway:
+oh, a pleasant, friendly, quiet place!
+
+I opened the front gate and walked straight in, as though I had at last
+reached my destination. I cannot give any idea of the lift of the heart
+with which I entered upon this new adventure. Without the premeditation
+and not knowing what I should say or do, I realized that everything
+depended upon a few sentences spoken within the next minute or two.
+Believe me, this experience to a man who does not know where his next
+meal is coming from, nor where he is to spend the night, is well worth
+having. It is a marvellous sharpener of the facts.
+
+I knew, of course, just how these people of the cottage would ordinarily
+regard an intruder whose bag and clothing must infallibly class him as a
+follower of the road. And so many followers of the road are--well--
+
+As I came nearer, the man and woman stopped rocking, but said nothing.
+An old dog that had been sleeping on the top step rose slowly and stood
+there.
+
+"As I passed your garden," I said, grasping desperately for a way of
+approach, "I saw your beautiful specimen of the magnolia tree--the one
+still in blossom. I myself have tried to grow magnolias--but with
+small success--and I'm making bold to inquire what variety you are so
+successful with."
+
+It was a shot in the air--but I knew from what I had seen that they must
+be enthusiastic gardeners. The man glanced around at the magnolia with
+evident pride, and was about to answer when the woman rose and with a
+pleasant, quiet cordiality said:
+
+"Won't you step up and have a chair?"
+
+I swung my bag from my shoulder and took the proffered seat. As I did so
+I saw, on the table just behind me a number magazines and books--books
+of unusual sizes and shapes, indicating that they were not mere summer
+novels.
+
+"They like books!" I said to myself, with a sudden rise of spirits.
+
+"I have tried magnolias, too," said the man, "but this is the only one
+that has been really successful. It is a Chinese white magnolia."
+
+"The one Downing describes?" I asked.
+
+This was also a random shot, but I conjectured that if they loved both
+books gardens they would know Downing--Bible of the gardener. And if
+they did, we belonged to the same church.
+
+"The very same," exclaimed the woman; "it was Downing's enthusiasm for
+the Chinese magnolia which led us first to try it."
+
+With that, like true disciples, we fell into great talk of Downing,
+at first all in praise of him, and later--for may not the faithful be
+permitted latitude in their comments so long as it is all within the
+cloister?--we indulged in a bit of higher criticism.
+
+"It won't do," said the man, "to follow too slavishly every detail of
+practice as recommended by Downing. We have learned a good many things
+since the forties."
+
+"The fact is," I said, "no literal-minded man should be trusted with
+Downing."
+
+"Any more than with the Holy Scriptures," exclaimed the woman.
+
+"Exactly!" I responded with the greatest enthusiasm; "exactly! We go to
+him for inspiration, for fundamental teachings, for the great literature
+and poetry of the art. Do you remember," I asked, "that passage in
+which Downing quotes from some old Chinaman upon the true secret of the
+pleasures of a garden--?"
+
+"Do we?" exclaimed the man, jumping up instantly; "do we? Just let me
+get the book--"
+
+With that he went into the house and came back immediately bringing a
+lamp in one hand--for it had grown pretty dark--and a familiar, portly,
+blue-bound book in the other. While he was gone the woman said:
+
+"You have touched Mr. Vedder in his weakest spot."
+
+"I know of no combination in this world," said I, "so certain to produce
+a happy heart as good books and a farm or garden."
+
+Mr. Vedder, having returned, slipped on his spectacles, sat forward on
+the edge of his rocking-chair, and opened the book with pious hands.
+
+"I'll find it," he said. "I can put my finger right on it."
+
+"You'll find it," said Mrs. Vedder, "in the chapter on 'Hedges.'"
+
+"You are wrong, my dear," he responded, "it is in 'Mistakes of Citizens
+in Country Life.'"
+
+
+He turned the leaves eagerly.
+
+"No," he said, "here it is in 'Rural Taste.' Let me read you the
+passage, Mr.--"
+
+"Grayson."
+
+"--Mr. Grayson. The Chinaman's name was Lieu-tscheu. 'What is it,' asks
+this old Chinaman, 'that we seek in the pleasure of a garden? It has
+always been agreed that these plantations should make men amends
+for living at a distance from what would be their more congenial
+and agreeable dwelling-place--in the midst of nature, free and
+unrestrained.'"
+
+"That's it," I exclaimed, "and the old Chinaman was right! A garden
+excuses civilization."
+
+"It's what brought us here," said Mrs. Vedder.
+
+With that we fell into the liveliest discussion of gardening and farming
+and country life in all their phases, resolving that while there were
+bugs and blights, and droughts and floods, yet upon the whole there was
+no life so completely satisfying as life in which one may watch daily
+the unfolding of natural life.
+
+A hundred things we talked about freely that had often risen dimly in
+my own mind almost to the point--but not quite--of spilling over into
+articulate form. The marvellous thing about good conversation is that
+it brings to birth so many half-realized thoughts of our own--besides
+sowing the seed of innumerable other thought-plants. How they enjoyed
+their garden, those two, and not only the garden itself, but all the
+lore and poetry of gardening!
+
+We had been talking thus an hour or more when, quite unexpectedly, I had
+what was certainly one of the most amusing adventures of my whole life.
+I can scarcely think of it now without a thrill of pleasure. I have had
+pay for my work in many but never such a reward as this.
+
+"By the way," said Mr. Vedder, "I have recently come across a book which
+is full of the spirit of the garden as we have long known it, although
+the author is not treating directly of gardens, but of farming and of
+human nature."
+
+"It is really all one subject," I interrupted.
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Vedder, "but many gardeners are nothing but
+gardeners. Well, the book to which I refer is called 'Adventures in
+Contentment,' and is by--Why, a man of your own name!"
+
+With that Mr. Vedder reached for a book--a familiar-looking book--on the
+table, but Mrs. Vedder looked at me. I give you my word, my heart turned
+entirely over, and in a most remarkable way righted itself again; and I
+saw Roman candles and Fourth of July rockets in front of my eyes. Never
+in all my experience was I so completely bowled over. I felt like
+a small boy who has been caught in the pantry with one hand in the
+jam-pot--and plenty of jam on his nose. And like that small boy I
+enjoyed the jam, but did not like being caught at it.
+
+Mr. Vedder had no sooner got the book in his hand than I saw Mrs. Vedder
+rising as though she had seen a spectre, and pointing dramatically at
+me, she exclaimed:
+
+"You are David Grayson!"
+
+I can say truthfully now that I know how the prisoner at the bar must
+feel when the judge, leaning over his desk, looks at him sternly and
+says:
+
+"I declare you guilty of the offence as charged, and sentence you--" and
+so on, and so on.
+
+Mr. Vedder stiffened up, and I can see him yet looking at me through his
+glasses. I must have looked as foolishly guilty as any man ever looked,
+for Mr. Vedder said promptly:
+
+"Let me take you by the hand, sir. We know you, and have known you for a
+long time."
+
+I shall not attempt to relate the conversation which followed, nor tell
+of the keen joy I had in it--after the first cold plunge. We found that
+we had a thousand common interests and enthusiasms. I had to tell them
+of my farm, and why I had left it temporarily, and of the experiences on
+the road. No sooner had I related what had befallen me at the Stanleys'
+than Mrs. Vedder disappeared into the house and came out again presently
+with a tray loaded with cold meat, bread, a pitcher of fine milk, and
+other good things.
+
+"I shall not offer any excuses," said I, "I'm hungry," and with that I
+laid in, Mr. Vedder helping with the milk, and all three of us talking
+as fast as ever we could.
+
+It was nearly midnight when at last Mr. Vedder led the way to the
+immaculate little bedroom where I spent the night.
+
+The next morning I awoke early, and quietly dressing, slipped down
+to the garden and walked about among the trees and the shrubs and the
+flower-beds. The sun was just coming up over the hill, the air was
+full of the fresh odours of morning, and the orioles and cat-birds were
+singing.
+
+In the back of the garden I found a charming rustic arbour with seats
+around a little table. And here I sat down to listen to the morning
+concert, and I saw, cut or carved upon the table, this verse, which so
+pleased me that I copied it in my book:
+
+     A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
+     Rose plot,
+     Fringed pool,
+     Ferned grot--
+     The veriest school of peace; and yet
+     the fool
+     Contends that God is not--
+     Not God! in gardens? when the even
+     is cool?
+     Nay, but I have a sign,
+     'Tis very sure God walks in mine.
+
+I looked about after copying this verse, and said aloud:
+
+"I like this garden: I like these Vedders."
+
+And with that I had a moment of wild enthusiasm.
+
+"I will come," I said, "and buy a little garden next them, and bring
+Harriet, and we will live here always. What's a farm compared with a
+friend?"
+
+But with that I thought of the Scotch preacher, and of Horace, and Mr.
+and Mrs. Starkweather, and I knew I could never leave the friends at
+home.
+
+"It's astonishing how many fine people there are in this world," I said
+aloud; "one can't escape them!"
+
+"Good morning, David Grayson," I heard some one saying, and glancing up
+I saw Mrs. Vedder at the doorway. "Are you hungry?"
+
+"I am always hungry," I said.
+
+Mr. Vedder came out and linking his arm in mine and pointing out various
+spireas and Japanese barberries, of which he was very proud, we walked
+into the house together.
+
+I did not think of it especially at time--Harriet says I never see
+anything really worth while, by which she means dishes, dresses,
+doilies, and such like but as I remembered afterward the table that Mrs.
+Vedder set was wonderfully dainty--dainty not merely with flowers (with
+which it was loaded), but with the quality of the china and silver. It
+was plainly the table of no ordinary gardener or caretaker--but this
+conclusion did not come to me until afterward, for as I remember it, we
+were in a deep discussion of fertilizers.
+
+Mrs. Vedder cooked and served breakfast herself, and did it with a skill
+almost equal to Harriet's--so skillfully that the talk went on and we
+never once heard the machinery of service.
+
+After breakfast we all went out into the garden, Mrs. Vedder in an
+old straw hat and a big apron, and Mr. Vedder in a pair of old brown
+overalls. Two men had appeared from somewhere, and were digging in the
+vegetable garden. After giving them certain directions Mr. Vedder and
+I both found five-tined forks and went into the rose garden and began
+turning over the rich soil, while Mrs. Vedder, with pruning-shears, kept
+near us, cutting out the dead wood.
+
+It was one of the charming forenoons of my life. This pleasant work,
+spiced with the most interesting conversation and interrupted by a
+hundred little excursions into other parts of the garden, to see this
+or that wonder of vegetation, brought us to dinner-time before we fairly
+knew it.
+
+About the middle of the afternoon I made the next discovery. I heard
+first the choking cough of a big motor-car in the country road, and
+a moment later it stopped at our gate. I thought I saw the Vedders
+exchanging significant glances. A number of merry young people tumbled
+out, and an especially pretty girl of about twenty came running through
+the garden.
+
+"Mother," she exclaimed, "you MUST come with us!"
+
+"I can't, I can't," said Mrs. Vedder, "the roses MUST be pruned--and
+see! The azaleas are coming into bloom."
+
+With that she presented me to her daughter.
+
+And, then, shortly, for it could no longer be concealed, I learned that
+Mr. and Mrs. Vedder were not the caretakers but the owners of the estate
+and of the great house I had seen on the hill. That evening, with an air
+almost of apology, they explained to me how it all came about.
+
+"We first came out here," said Mrs. Vedder, "nearly twenty years ago,
+and built the big house on the hill. But the more we came to know
+of country life the more we wanted to get down into it. We found it
+impossible up there--so many unnecessary things to see to and care
+for--and we couldn't--we didn't see--"
+
+"The fact is," Mr. Vedder put in, "we were losing touch with each
+other."
+
+"There is nothing like a big house," said Mrs. Vedder, "to separate a
+man and his wife."
+
+"So we came down here," said Mr. Vedder, "built this little cottage, and
+developed this garden mostly with our own hands. We would have sold the
+big house long ago if it hadn't been for our friends. They like it."
+
+"I have never heard a more truly romantic story," said I.
+
+And it WAS romantic: these fine people escaping from too many
+possessions, too much property, to the peace and quietude of a garden
+where they could be lovers again.
+
+"It seems, sometimes," said Mrs. Vedder, "that I never really believed
+in God until we came down here--"
+
+"I saw the verse on the table in the arbour," said I.
+
+"And it is true," said Mr. Vedder. "We got a long, long way from God for
+many years: here we seem to get back to Him."
+
+I had fully intended to take the road again that afternoon, but how
+could any one leave such people as those? We talked again late that
+night, but the next morning, at the leisurely Sunday breakfast, I set
+my hour of departure with all the firmness I could command. I left
+them, indeed, before ten o'clock that forenoon. I shall never forget
+the parting. They walked with me to the top of the hill, and there we
+stopped and looked back. We could see the cottage half hidden among the
+trees, and the little opening that the precious garden made. For a time
+we stood there quite silent.
+
+"Do you remember," I said presently, "that character in Homer who was
+a friend of men and lived in a house by the side of the road? I shall
+always think of you as friends of men--you took in a dusty traveller.
+And I shall never forget your house by the side of the road."
+
+"The House by the Side of the Road--you have christened it anew, David
+Grayson," exclaimed Mrs. Vedder.
+
+And so we parted like old friends, and I left them to return to their
+garden, where "'tis very sure God walks."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. I AM THE SPECTATOR OF A MIGHTY BATTLE, IN WHICH CHRISTIAN
+MEETS APPOLLYON
+
+It is one of the prime joys of the long road that no two days are ever
+remotely alike--no two hours even; and sometimes a day that begins
+calmly will end with the most stirring events.
+
+It was thus, indeed, with that perfect spring Sunday, when I left my
+friends, the Vedders, and turned my face again to the open country. It
+began as quietly as any Sabbath morning of my life, but what an end it
+had! I would have travelled a thousand miles for the adventures which a
+bounteous road that day spilled carelessly into my willing hands.
+
+I can give no adequate reason why it should be so, but there are Sunday
+mornings in the spring--at least in our country--which seem to put on,
+like a Sabbath garment, an atmosphere of divine quietude. Warm, soft,
+clear, but, above all, immeasurably serene.
+
+Such was that Sunday morning; and I was no sooner well afoot than I
+yielded to the ingratiating mood of the day. Usually I am an active
+walker, loving the sense of quick motion and the stir it imparts to both
+body and mind, but that morning I found myself loitering, looking widely
+about me, and enjoying the lesser and quieter aspects of nature. It was
+a fine wooded country in which I found myself, and I soon struck off the
+beaten road and took to the forest and the fields. In places the ground
+was almost covered with meadow-rue, like green shadows on the hillsides,
+not yet in seed, but richly umbrageous. In the long green grass of the
+meadows shone the yellow star-flowers, and the sweet-flags were blooming
+along the marshy edges of the ponds. The violets had disappeared, but
+they were succeeded by wild geraniums and rank-growing vetches.
+
+I remember that I kept thinking from time to time, all the forenoon, as
+my mind went back swiftly and warmly to the two fine friends from whom I
+had so recently parted:
+
+How the Vedders would enjoy this! Or, I must tell the Vedders that. And
+two or three times I found myself in animated conversations with them
+in which I generously supplied all three parts. It may be true for some
+natures, as Leonardo said, that "if you are alone you belong wholly to
+yourself; if you have a companion, you belong only half to yourself";
+but it is certainly not so with me. With me friendship never divides: it
+multiplies. A friend always makes me more than I am, better than I am,
+bigger than I am. We two make four, or fifteen, or forty.
+
+Well, I loitered through the fields and woods for a long time that
+Sunday forenoon, not knowing in the least that Chance held me close
+by the hand and was leading me onward to great events. I knew, of
+course, that I had yet to find a place for the night, and that this might
+be difficult on Sunday, and yet I spent that forenoon as a man spends
+his immortal youth--with a glorious disregard for the future.
+
+
+Some time after noon--for the sun was high and the day was growing much
+warmer--I turned from the road, climbed an inviting little hill, and
+chose a spot in an old meadow in the shade of an apple tree and there
+I lay down on the grass, and looked up into the dusky shadows of the
+branches above me. I could feel the soft airs on my face; I could hear
+the buzzing of bees in the meadow flowers, and by turning my head just a
+little I could see the slow fleecy clouds, high up, drifting across the
+perfect blue of the sky. And the scent of the fields in spring!--he who
+has known it, even once, may indeed die happy.
+
+Men worship God in various ways: it seemed to me that Sabbath morning,
+as I lay quietly there in the warm silence of midday, that I was truly
+worshipping God. That Sunday morning everything about me seemed somehow
+to be a miracle--a miracle gratefully accepted and explainable only by
+the presence of God. There was another strange, deep feeling which I had
+that morning, which I have had a few other times in my life at the rare
+heights of experience--I hesitate always when I try to put down the
+deep, deep things of the human heart--a feeling immeasurably real,
+that if I should turn my head quickly I should indeed SEE that Immanent
+Presence....
+
+One of the few birds I know that sings through the long midday is the
+vireo. The vireo sings when otherwise the woods are still. You do not
+see him; you cannot find him; but you know he is there. And his singing
+is wild, and shy, and mystical. Often it haunts you like the memory of
+some former happiness. That day I heard the vireo singing....
+
+I don't know how long I lay there under the tree in the meadow, but
+presently I heard, from no great distance, the sound of a church-bell.
+It was ringing for the afternoon service which among the farmers of this
+part of the country often takes the place, in summer, of both morning
+and evening services.
+
+"I believe I'll go," I said, thinking first of all, I confess, of the
+interesting people I might meet there.
+
+But when I sat up and looked about me the desire faded, and rummaging
+in my bag I came across my tin whistle. Immediately I began practising
+a tune called "Sweet Afton," which I had learned when a boy; and, as
+I played, my mood changed swiftly, and I began to smile at myself as
+a tragically serious person, and to think of pat phrases with which to
+characterize the execrableness of my attempts upon the tin whistle. I
+should have liked some one near to joke with.
+
+Long ago I made a motto about boys: Look for a boy anywhere. Never be
+surprised when you shake a cherry tree if a boy drops out of it;
+never be disturbed when you think yourself in complete solitude if you
+discover a boy peering out at you from a fence corner.
+
+I had not been playing long before I saw two boys looking at me from out
+of a thicket by the roadside; and a moment later two others appeared.
+
+Instantly I switched into "Marching Through Georgia," and began to
+nod my head and tap my toe in the liveliest fashion. Presently one boy
+climbed up on the fence, then another, then a third. I continued to
+play. The fourth boy, a little chap, ventured to climb up on the fence.
+
+They were bright-faced, tow-headed lads, all in Sunday clothes.
+
+"It's hard luck," said I, taking my whistle from my lips, "to have to
+wear shoes and stockings on a warm Sunday like this."
+
+"You bet it is!" said the bold leader.
+
+"In that case," said I, "I will play 'Yankee Doodle.'"
+
+I played. All the boys, including the little chap, came up around me,
+and two of them sat down quite familiarly on the grass. I never had a
+more devoted audience. I don't know what interesting event might have
+happened next, for the bold leader, who stood nearest, was becoming
+dangerously inflated with questions--I don't know what might have
+happened had we not been interrupted by the appearance of a Spectre in
+Black. It appeared before us there in the broad daylight in the middle
+of a sunny afternoon while we were playing "Yankee Doodle." First I
+saw the top of a black hat rising over the rim of the hill. This was
+followed quickly by a black tie, a long black coat, black trousers, and,
+finally, black shoes. I admit I was shaken, but being a person of iron
+nerve in facing such phenomena, I continued to play "Yankee Doodle."
+In spite of this counter-attraction, toward which all four boys turned
+uneasy glances, I held my audience. The Black Spectre, with a black book
+under its arm, drew nearer. Still I continued to play and nod my head
+and tap my toe. I felt like some modern Pied Piper piping away the
+children of these modern hills--piping them away from older people who
+could not understand them.
+
+I could see an accusing look on the Spectre's face. I don't know what
+put it into my head, and I had no sooner said it than I was sorry for my
+levity, but the figure with the sad garments there in the matchless and
+triumphant spring day affected me with a curious, sharp impatience. Had
+any one the right to look out so dolefully upon such a day and such a
+scene of simple happiness as this? So I took my whistle from my lips and
+asked:
+
+"Is God dead?"
+
+I shall never forget the indescribable look of horror and astonishment
+that swept over the young man's face.
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" he asked with an air of stern authority which
+surprised me. His calling for the moment lifted him above himself: it
+was the Church which spoke.
+
+I was on my feet in an instant, regretting the pain I had given him;
+and yet it seemed worth while now, having made my inadvertent remark, to
+show him frankly what lay in my mind. Such things sometimes help men.
+
+"I meant no offence, sir," I said, "and I apologize for my flummery, but
+when I saw you coming up the hill, looking so gloomy and disconsolate on
+this bright day, as though you disapproved of God's world, the question
+slipped out before I knew it."
+
+My words evidently struck deep down into some disturbed inner
+consciousness, for he asked--and his words seemed to slip out before he
+thought:
+
+"Is THAT the way I impressed you?"
+
+I found my heart going out strongly toward him. "Here," I thought to
+myself, "is a man in trouble."
+
+I took a good long look at him. He still a young man, though
+worn-looking--and sad as I now saw it, rather than gloomy--with the
+sensitive lips and the unworldly look one sees sometimes in the faces of
+saints. His black coat was immaculately neat, but the worn button-covers
+and the shiny lapels told their own eloquent story. Oh, it seemed to me
+I knew him as well as if every incident of his life were written
+plainly upon his high, pale forehead! I have lived long in a country
+neighbourhood, and I knew him--poor flagellant of the rural church--I
+knew how he groaned under the sins of a Community too comfortably
+willing to cast all its burdens on the Lord, or on the Lord's accredited
+local representative. I inferred also the usual large family and the low
+salary (scandalously unpaid) and the frequent moves from place to place.
+
+Unconsciously heaving a sigh the young man turned partly aside and said
+to me in a low, gentle voice:
+
+"You are detaining my boys from church."
+
+"I am very sorry," I said, "and I will detain them no longer," and with
+that I put aside my whistle, took up my bag and moved down the hill with
+them.
+
+"The fact is," I said, "when I heard your bell I thought of going to
+church myself."
+
+"Did you?" he asked eagerly. "Did you?"
+
+I could see that my proposal of going to church had instantly affected
+his spirits. Then he hesitated abruptly with a sidelong glance at my bag
+and rusty clothing. I could see exactly what was passing in his mind.
+
+"No," I said, smiling, as though answering a spoken question, "I am not
+exactly what you would call a tramp."
+
+He flushed.
+
+"I didn't mean--I WANT you to come. That's what a church is for. If I
+thought--"
+
+But he did not tell me what he thought; and, though he walked quietly
+at my side, he was evidently deeply disturbed. Something of his
+discouragement I sensed even then, and I don't think I was ever sorrier
+for a man in my life than I was for him at that moment. Talk about the
+suffering sinners! I wonder if they are to be compared with the trials
+of the saints?
+
+So we approached the little white church, and caused, I am certain,
+a tremendous sensation. Nowhere does the unpredictable, the unusual,
+excite such confusion as in that settled institution--the church.
+
+I left my bag in the vestibule, where I have no doubt it was the object
+of much inquiring and suspicious scrutiny, and took my place in a
+convenient pew. It was a small church with an odd air of domesticity,
+and the proportion of old ladies and children in the audience was
+pathetically large. As a ruddy, vigorous, out-of-door person, with the
+dust of life upon him, I felt distinctly out of place.
+
+I could pick out easily the Deacon, the Old Lady Who Brought Flowers,
+the President of the Sewing Circle, and, above all, the Chief Pharisee,
+sitting in his high place. The Chief Pharisee--his name I learned was
+Nash, Mr. J. H. Nash (I did not know then that I was soon to make his
+acquaintance)--the Chief Pharisee looked as hard as nails, a middle-aged
+man with stiff chin-whiskers, small round, sharp eyes, and a pugnacious
+jaw.
+
+"That man," said I to myself, "runs this church," and instantly I found
+myself looking upon him as a sort of personification of the troubles I
+had seen in the minister's eyes.
+
+I shall not attempt to describe the service in detail. There was a
+discouraging droop and quaver in the singing, and the mournful-looking
+deacon who passed the collection-plate seemed inured to disappointment.
+The prayer had in it a note of despairing appeal which fell like a cold
+hand upon one's living soul. It gave one the impression that this
+was indeed a miserable, dark, despairing world, which deserved to be
+wrathfully destroyed, and that this miserable world was full of equally
+miserable, broken, sinful, sickly people.
+
+The sermon was a little better, for somewhere hidden within him this
+pale young man had a spark of the divine fire, but it was so dampened by
+the atmosphere of the church that it never rose above a pale luminosity.
+
+I found the service indescribably depressing. I had an impulse to rise
+up and cry out--almost anything to shock these people into opening their
+eyes upon real life. Indeed, though I hesitate about setting it down
+here, I was filled for some time with the liveliest imaginings of the
+following serio-comic enterprise:
+
+I would step up the aisle, take my place in front of the Chief Pharisee,
+wag my finger under his nose, and tell him a thing or two about the
+condition of the church.
+
+"The only live thing here," I would tell him, "is the spark in that pale
+minister's soul; and you're doing your best to smother that."
+
+And I fully made up my mind that when he answered back in his
+chief-pharisaical way I would gently--but firmly remove him from his
+seat, shake him vigorously two or three times (men's souls have often
+been saved with less!), deposit him flat in the aisle, and yes--stand on
+him while I elucidated the situation to the audience at large. While
+I confined this amusing and interesting project to the humours of the
+imagination I am still convinced that something of the sort would have
+helped enormously in clearing up the religious and moral atmosphere of
+the place.
+
+I had a wonderful sensation of relief when at last I stepped out again
+into the clear afternoon sunshine and got a reviving glimpse of the
+smiling green hills and the quiet fields and the sincere trees--and felt
+the welcome of the friendly road.
+
+I would have made straight for the hills, but the thought of that pale
+minister held me back; and I waited quietly there under the trees till
+he came out. He was plainly looking for me, and asked me to wait and
+walk along with him, at which his four boys, whose acquaintance I had
+made under such thrilling circumstances earlier in the day, seemed
+highly delighted, and waited with me under the tree and told me a
+hundred important things about a certain calf, a pig, a kite, and other
+things at home.
+
+Arriving at the minister's gate, I was invited in with a
+whole-heartedness that was altogether charming. The minister's wife,
+a faded-looking woman who had once possessed a delicate sort of
+prettiness, was waiting for us on the steps with a fine chubby baby on
+her arm--number five.
+
+The home was much the sort of place I had imagined--a small house
+undesirably located (but cheap!), with a few straggling acres of
+garden and meadow upon which the minister and his boys were trying with
+inexperienced hands to piece out their inadequate living. At the very
+first glimpse of the garden I wanted to throw off my coat and go at it.
+
+And yet--and yet----what a wonderful thing love is! There was, after
+all, something incalculable, something pervasively beautiful about this
+poor household. The moment the minister stepped inside his own door he
+became a different and livelier person. Something boyish crept into his
+manner, and a new look came into the eyes of his faded wife that made
+her almost pretty again. And the fat, comfortable baby rolled and
+gurgled about on the floor as happily as though there had been two
+nurses and a governess to look after him. As for the four boys, I have
+never seen healthier or happier ones.
+
+I sat with them at their Sunday-evening luncheon. As the minister bowed
+his head to say grace I felt him clasp my hand on one side while the
+oldest boy clasped my hand on the other, and thus, linked together, and
+accepting the stranger utterly, the family looked up to God.
+
+There was a fine, modest gayety about the meal. In front of Mrs.
+Minister stood a very large yellow bowl filled with what she called
+rusk--a preparation unfamiliar to me, made by browning and crushing the
+crusts of bread and then rolling them down into a coarse meal. A bowl of
+this, with sweet, rich, yellow milk (for they kept their own cow), made
+one of the most appetizing dishes that ever I ate. It was downright
+good: it gave one the unalloyed aroma of the sweet new milk and the
+satisfying taste of the crisp bread.
+
+Nor have I ever enjoyed a more perfect hospitality. I have been in
+many a richer home where there was not a hundredth part of the true
+gentility--the gentility of unapologizing simplicity and kindness.
+
+And after it was over and cleared away--the minister himself donning a
+long apron and helping his wife--and the chubby baby put to bed, we all
+sat around the table in the gathering twilight.
+
+I think men perish sometimes from sheer untalked talk. For lack of
+a creative listener they gradually fill up with unexpressed emotion.
+Presently this emotion begins to ferment, and finally--bang!--they blow
+up, burst, disappear in thin air. In all that community I suppose there
+was no one but the little faded wife to whom the minister dared open his
+heart, and I think he found me a godsend. All I really did was to look
+from one to the other and put in here and there an inciting comment or
+ask an understanding question. After he had told me his situation and
+the difficulties which confronted him and his small church, he exclaimed
+suddenly:
+
+"A minister should by rights be a leader, not only inside of his church,
+but outside it in the community."
+
+"You are right," I exclaimed with great earnestness; "you are right."
+
+And with that I told him of our own Scotch preacher and how he led and
+moulded our community; and as I talked I could see him actually growing,
+unfolding, under my eyes.
+
+"Why," said I, "you not only ought to be the moral leader of this
+community, but you are!"
+
+"That's what I tell him," exclaimed his wife.
+
+"But he persists in thinking, doesn't he, that he is a poor sinner?"
+
+"He thinks it too much," she laughed.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said, as much to himself as to us, "a minister ought to
+be a fighter!"
+
+It was beautiful, the boyish flush which now came into his face and the
+light that came into his eyes. I should never have identified him with
+the Black Spectre of the afternoon.
+
+"Why," said I, "you ARE a fighter; you're fighting the greatest battle
+in the world today--the only real battle--the battle for the spiritual
+view of life."
+
+Oh, I knew exactly what was the trouble with his religion--at least the
+religion which, under the pressure of that church he felt obliged to
+preach! It was the old, groaning, denying, resisting religion. It was
+the sort of religion which sets a man apart and assures him that the
+entire universe in the guise of the Powers of Darkness is leagued
+against him. What he needed was a reviving draught of the new faith
+which affirms, accepts, rejoices, which feels the universe triumphantly
+behind it. And so whenever the minister told me what he ought to be--for
+he too sensed the new impulse--I merely told him he was just that. He
+needed only this little encouragement to unfold.
+
+"Yes," said he again, "I am the real moral leader here."
+
+At this I saw Mrs. Minister nodding her head vigorously.
+
+"It's you," she said, "and not Mr. Nash, who should lead this
+community."
+
+How a woman loves concrete applications. She is your only true
+pragmatist. If a philosophy will not work, says she, why bother with it?
+
+The minister rose quickly from his chair, threw back his head, and
+strode quickly up and down the room.
+
+"You are right," said he; "and I WILL lead it. I'll have my farmers'
+meetings as I planned."
+
+It may have been the effect of the lamplight, but it seemed to me that
+little Mrs. Minister, as she glanced up at him, looked actually pretty.
+
+The minister continued to stride up and down the room with his chin in
+the air.
+
+"Mr. Nash," said she in a low voice to me, "is always trying to hold
+him down and keep him back. My husband WANTS to do the great
+things"--wistfully.
+
+"By every right," the minister was repeating, quite oblivious of our
+presence, "I should lead these people."
+
+"He sees the weakness of the church," she continued, "as well as
+any one, and he wants to start some vigorous community work--have
+agricultural meetings and boys' clubs, and lots of things like that--but
+Mr. Nash says it is no part of a minister's work: that it cheapens
+religion. He says that when a parson--Mr. Nash always calls him parson,
+and I just LOATHE that name--has preached, and prayed, and visited the
+sick, that's enough for HIM."
+
+At this very moment a step sounded upon the walk, and an instant later a
+figure appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Why, Mr. Nash," exclaimed little Mrs. Minister, exhibiting that
+astonishing gift of swift recovery which is the possession of even the
+simplest women, "come right in."
+
+It was some seconds before the minister could come down from the heights
+and greet Mr. Nash. As for me, I was never more interested in my life.
+
+"Now," said I to myself, "we shall see Christian meet Apollyon."
+
+As soon as Mrs. Minister lighted the lamp I was introduced to the great
+man. He looked at me sharply with his small, round eyes, and said:
+
+"Oh, you are the--the man who was in church this afternoon."
+
+I admitted it, and he looked around at the minister with an accusing
+expression. He evidently did not approve of me, nor could I wholly blame
+him, for I knew well how he, as a rich farmer, must look upon a rusty
+man of the road like me. I should have liked dearly to cross swords with
+him myself, but greater events were imminent.
+
+In no time at all the discussion, which had evidently been broken off at
+some previous meeting, concerning the proposed farmers' assembly at the
+church, had taken on a really lively tone. Mr. Nash was evidently in
+the somewhat irritable mood with which important people may sometimes
+indulge themselves, for he bit off his words in a way that was
+calculated to make any but an unusually meek and saintly man exceedingly
+uncomfortable. But the minister, with the fine, high humility of those
+whose passion is for great or true things, was quite oblivious to the
+harsh words. Borne along by an irresistible enthusiasm, he told in
+glowing terms what his plan would mean to the community, how the
+people needed a new social and civic spirit--a "neighbourhood religious
+feeling" he called it. And as he talked his face flushed, and his eyes
+shone with the pure fire of a great purpose. But I could see that all
+this enthusiasm impressed the practical Mr. Nash as mere moonshine.
+He grew more and more uneasy. Finally he brought his hand down with a
+resounding thwack upon his knee, and said in a high, cutting voice:
+
+"I don't believe in any such newfangled nonsense. It ain't none of a
+parson's business what the community does. You're hired, ain't you, an'
+paid to run the church? That's the end of it. We ain't goin' to have any
+mixin' of religion an' farmin' in THIS neighbourhood."
+
+My eyes were on the pale man of God. I felt as though a human soul were
+being weighed in the balance. What would he do now? What was he worth
+REALLY as a man as well as a minister?
+
+He paused a moment with downcast eyes. I saw little Mrs. Minister glance
+at him--once--wistfully. He rose from his place, drew himself up to his
+full height--I shall not soon forget the look on his face--and uttered
+these amazing words:
+
+"Martha, bring the ginger-jar."
+
+Mrs. Minister, without a word, went to a little cupboard on the farther
+side of the room and took down a brown earthenware jar, which she
+brought over and placed on the table, Mr. Nash following her movements
+with astonished eyes. No one spoke.
+
+The minister took the jar in his hands as he might the communion-cup
+just before saying the prayer of the sacrament.
+
+"Mr. Nash," said he in a loud voice, "I've decided to hold that farmers'
+meeting."
+
+Before Mr. Nash could reply the minister seated himself and was pouring
+out the contents of the jar upon the table--a clatter of dimes, nickels,
+pennies, a few quarters and half dollars, and a very few bills.
+
+"Martha, just how much money is there?"
+
+"Twenty-four dollars and sixteen cents."
+
+The minister put his hand into his pocket and, after counting out
+certain coins, said:
+
+"Here's one dollar and eighty-four cents more. That makes twenty-six
+dollars. Now, Mr. Nash, you're the largest contributor to my salary in
+this neighbourhood. You gave twenty-six dollars last year--fifty cents a
+week. It is a generous contribution, but I cannot take it any longer.
+It is fortunate that my wife has saved up this money to buy a
+sewing-machine, so that we can pay back your contribution in full."
+
+He paused; no one of us spoke a word.
+
+"Mr. Nash," he continued, and his face was good to see, "I am the
+minister here. I am convinced that what the community needs is more of a
+religious and social spirit, and I am going about getting it in the way
+the Lord leads me."
+
+At this I saw Mrs. Minister look up at her husband with such a light in
+her eyes as any man might well barter his life for--I could not keep my
+own eyes from pure beauty of it.
+
+I knew too what this defiance meant. It meant that this little family
+was placing its all upon the altar--even the pitiful coins for which
+they had skimped and saved for months for a particular purpose. Talk of
+the heroism of the men who charged with Pickett at Gettysburg! Here was
+a courage higher and whiter than that; here was a courage that dared to
+fight alone.
+
+As for Mr. Nash, the face of that Chief Pharisee was a study. Nothing is
+so paralyzing to a rich man as to find suddenly that his money will
+no longer command him any advantage. Like all hard-shelled, practical
+people, Mr. Nash could only dominate in a world which recognized the
+same material supremacy that he recognized. Any one who insisted upon
+flying was lost to Mr. Nash.
+
+The minister pushed the little pile of coins toward him.
+
+"Take it, Mr. Nash," said he.
+
+At that Mr. Nash rose hastily.
+
+"I will not," he said gruffly.
+
+He paused, and looked at the minister with a strange expression in his
+small round eyes--was it anger, or was it fear, or could it have been
+admiration?
+
+"If you want to waste your time on fiddlin' farmers' meetings--a man
+that knows as little of farmin' as you do--why go ahead for all o' me.
+But don't count me in."
+
+He turned, reached for his hat, and then went out of the door into the
+darkness.
+
+For a moment we all sat perfectly silent, then the minister rose, and
+said solemnly:
+
+"Martha, let's sing something."
+
+Martha crossed the room to the cottage organ and seated herself on the
+stool.
+
+"What shall we sing?" said she.
+
+"Something with fight in it, Martha," he responded; "something with
+plenty of fight in it."
+
+So we sang "Onward, Christian Soldier, Marching as to War," and followed
+up with:
+
+Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve And press with rigour on; A heavenly
+race demands thy zeal And an immortal crown.
+
+
+When we had finished, and as Martha rose from her seat, the minister
+impulsively put his hands on her shoulders, and said:
+
+"Martha, this is the greatest night of my life."
+
+He took a turn up and down the room, and then with an exultant boyish
+laugh said:
+
+"We'll go to town to-morrow and pick out that sewing-machine!"
+
+
+I remained with them that night and part of the following day, taking
+a hand with them in the garden, but of the events of that day I shall
+speak in another chapter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. I PLAY THE PART OF A SPECTACLE PEDDLER
+
+Yesterday was exactly the sort of a day I love best--a spicy,
+unexpected, amusing day--crowned with a droll adventure.
+
+I cannot account for it, but it seems to me I take the road each morning
+with a livelier mind and keener curiosity. If you were to watch me
+narrowly these days you would see I am slowly shedding my years. I
+suspect that some one of the clear hill streams from which I have been
+drinking (lying prone on my face) was in reality the fountain of eternal
+youth. I shall not go back to see.
+
+It seems to me, when I feel like this, that in every least thing upon
+the roadside, or upon the hill, lurks the stuff of adventure. What a
+world it is! A mile south of here I shall find all that Stanley found in
+the jungles of Africa; a mile north I am Peary at the Pole!
+
+You there, brown-clad farmer on the tall seat of your wagon, driving
+townward with a red heifer for sale, I can show you that life--your
+life--is not all a gray smudge, as you think it is, but crammed, packed,
+loaded with miraculous things. I can show you wonders past belief in
+your own soul. I can easily convince you that you are in reality a poet,
+a hero, a true lover, a saint.
+
+It is because we are not humble enough in the presence of the divine
+daily fact that adventure knocks so rarely at our door. A thousand times
+I have had to learn this truth (what lesson so hard to learn as the
+lesson of humility!) and I suppose I shall have to learn it a thousand
+times more. This very day, straining my eyes to see the distant wonders
+of the mountains, I nearly missed a miracle by the roadside.
+
+Soon after leaving the minister and his family--I worked with them in
+their garden with great delight most of the forenoon--I came, within a
+mile--to the wide white turnpike--the Great Road.
+
+Now, I usually prefer the little roads, the little, unexpected, curving,
+leisurely country roads. The sharp hills, the pleasant deep valleys, the
+bridges not too well kept, the verdure deep grown along old fences, the
+houses opening hospitably at the very roadside, all these things I love.
+They come to me with the same sort of charm and flavour, only vastly
+magnified, which I find often in the essays of the older writers--those
+leisurely old fellows who took time to write, REALLY write. The
+important thing to me about a road, as about life--and literature, is
+not that it goes anywhere, but that it is livable while it goes. For
+if I were to arrive--and who knows that I ever shall arrive?--I think I
+should be no happier than I am here.
+
+Thus I have commonly avoided the Great White Road--the broad, smooth
+turnpike--rock-bottomed and rolled by a State--without so much as a
+loitering curve to whet one's curiosity, nor a thank-you-ma'am to laugh
+over, nor a sinful hill to test your endurance--not so much as a dreamy
+valley! It pursues its hard, unshaded, practical way directly from some
+particular place to some other particular place and from time to time a
+motor-car shoots in at one end of it and out at the other, leaving its
+dust to settle upon quiet travellers like me.
+
+Thus to-day when I came to the turnpike I was at first for making
+straight across it and taking to the hills beyond, but at that very
+moment a motor-car whirled past me as I stood there and a girl with a
+merry face waved her hand at me. I lifted my hat in return--and as
+I watched them out of sight I felt a curious new sense of warmth and
+friendliness there in the Great Road.
+
+"These are just people, too," I said aloud--"and maybe they really like
+it!"
+
+And with that I began laughing at myself, and at the whole, big,
+amazing, interesting world. Here was I pitying them for their benighted
+state, and there were they, no doubt, pitying me for mine!
+
+And with that pleasant and satisfactory thought in my mind and a song in
+my throat I swung into the Great Road.
+
+"It doesn't matter in the least," said I to myself, "whether a man takes
+hold of life by the great road or the little ones so long as he takes
+hold."
+
+And oh, it was a wonderful day! A day with movement in it; a day that
+flowed! In every field the farmers were at work, the cattle fed widely
+in the meadows, and the Great Road itself was alive with a hundred
+varied sorts of activity. Light winds stirred the tree-tops and rippled
+in the new grass; and from the thickets I heard the blackbirds crying.
+Everything animate and inanimate, that morning, seemed to have its
+own clear voice and to cry out at me for my interest, or curiosity, or
+sympathy. Under such circumstances it could not have been long--nor
+was it long--before I came plump upon the first of a series of odd
+adventures.
+
+
+A great many people, I know, abominate the roadside sign. It seems to
+them a desecration of nature, the intrusion of rude commercialism upon
+the perfection of natural beauty. But not I. I have no such feeling.
+Oh, the signs in themselves are often rude and unbeautiful, and I
+never wished my own barn or fences to sing the praises of swamp root or
+sarsaparilla--and yet there is something wonderfully human about these
+painted and pasted vociferations of the roadside signs; and I don't
+know why they are less "natural" in their way than a house or barn or
+a planted field of corn. They also tell us about life. How eagerly they
+cry out at us, "Buy me, buy me!" What enthusiasm they have in their
+own concerns, what boundless faith in themselves! How they speak of the
+enormous energy, activity, resourcefulness of human kind!
+
+Indeed, I like all kinds of signs. The autocratic warnings of the road,
+the musts and the must-nots of traffic, I observe in passing; and I
+often stand long at the crossings and look up at the finger-posts, and
+consider my limitless wealth as a traveller. By this road I may, at my
+own pleasure, reach the Great City; by that--who knows?--the far wonders
+of Cathay. And I respond always to the appeal which the devoted pilgrim
+paints on the rocks at the roadside: "Repent ye, for the kingdom of God
+is at hand," and though I am certain that the kingdom of God is already
+here, I stop always and repent--just a little--knowing that there is
+always room for it. At the entrance of the little towns, also, or in
+the squares of the villages, I stop often to read the signs of taxes
+assessed, or of political meetings; I see the evidences of homes broken
+up in the notices of auction sales, and of families bereaved in the dry
+and formal publications of the probate court. I pause, too, before
+the signs of amusements flaming red and yellow on the barns (boys, the
+circus is coming to town!), and I pause also, but no longer, to read
+the silent signs carved in stone in the little cemeteries as I pass.
+Symbols, you say? Why, they're the very stuff of life. If you cannot see
+life here in the wide road, you will never see it at all.
+
+Well, I saw a sign yesterday at the roadside that I never saw anywhere
+before. It was not a large sign--indeed rather inconspicuous--consisting
+of a single word rather crudely painted in black (as by an amateur) upon
+a white board. It was nailed to a tree where those in swift passing cars
+could not avoid seeing it:
+
+[ REST ]
+
+I cannot describe the odd sense of enlivenment, of pleasure I had when I
+saw this new sign.
+
+"Rest!" I exclaimed aloud. "Indeed I will," and I sat down on a stone
+not far away.
+
+"Rest!"
+
+What a sign for this very spot! Here in the midst of the haste and
+hurry of the Great Road a quiet voice was saying, "Rest." Some one with
+imagination, I thought, evidently put that up; some quietist offering
+this mild protest against the breathless progress of the age. How often
+I have felt the same way myself--as though I were being swept onward
+through life faster than I could well enjoy it. For nature passes the
+dishes far more rapidly than we can help ourselves.
+
+Or perhaps, thought I, eagerly speculating, this may be only some
+cunning advertiser with rest for sale (in these days even rest has its
+price), thus piquing the curiosity of the traveller for the disclosure
+which he will make a mile or so farther on. Or else some humourist
+wasting his wit upon the Fraternity of the Road, too willing (like me,
+perhaps) to accept his ironical advice. But it would be well worth while
+should I find him, to see him chuckle behind his hand.
+
+So I sat there very much interested, for a long time, even framing a
+rather amusing picture in my own mind of the sort of person who painted
+these signs, deciding finally that he must be a zealot rather than a
+trader or humourist. (Confidentially, I could not make a picture of
+him in which he was not endowed with plentiful long hair). As I walked
+onward again, I decided that in any guise I should like to see him, and
+I enjoyed thinking what I should say if I met him. A mile farther up the
+road I saw another sign exactly like the first.
+
+"Here he is again," I said exultantly, and that sign being somewhat
+nearer the ground I was able to examine it carefully front and back, but
+it bore no evidence of its origin.
+
+In the next few miles I saw two other signs with nothing on them but the
+word "Rest."
+
+Now this excellent admonition--like much of the excellent admonitions in
+this world--affected me perversely: it made me more restless than ever.
+I felt that I could not rest properly until I found out who wanted me to
+rest, and why. It opened indeed a limitless vista for new adventure.
+
+
+Presently, away ahead of me in the road, I saw a man standing near
+a one-horse wagon. He seemed to be engaged in some activity near the
+roadside, but I could not tell exactly what. As I hastened nearer I
+discovered that he was a short, strongly built, sun-bronzed man in
+working-clothes--and with the shortest of short hair. I saw him take a
+shovel from the wagon and begin digging. He was the road-worker.
+
+I asked the road-worker if he had seen the curious signs. He looked up
+at me with a broad smile (he had good-humoured, very bright blue eyes).
+
+"Yes," he said, "but they ain't for me."
+
+"Then you don't follow the advice they give?"
+
+"Not with a section like mine," said he, and he straightened up and
+looked first one way of the road and then the other. "I have from Grabow
+Brook, but not the bridge, to the top o' Sullivan Hill, and all the
+culverts between, though two of 'em are by rights bridges. And I claim
+that's a job for any full-grown man."
+
+He began shovelling again in the road as if to prove how busy he was.
+There had been a small landslide from an open cut on one side and a
+mass of gravel and small boulders lay scattered on the smooth macadam. I
+watched him for a moment. I love to watch the motions of vigorous men
+at work, the easy play of the muscles, the swing of the shoulders, the
+vigour of stoutly planted legs. He evidently considered the conversation
+closed, and I, as--well, as a dusty man of the road--easily dismissed.
+(You have no idea, until you try it, what a weight of prejudice the man
+of the road has to surmount before he is accepted on easy terms by the
+ordinary members of the human race.)
+
+A few other well-intentioned observations on my part having elicited
+nothing but monosyllabic replies, I put my bag down by the roadside
+and, going up to the wagon, got out a shovel, and without a word took
+my place at the other end of the landslide and began to shovel for all I
+was worth.
+
+I said not a word to the husky road-worker and pretended not to look
+at him, but I saw him well enough out of the corner of my eye. He was
+evidently astonished and interested, as I knew he would be: it was
+something entirely new on the road. He didn't quite know whether to be
+angry, or amused, or sociable. I caught him looking over at me several
+times, but I offered no response; then he cleared his throat and said:
+
+"Where you from?"
+
+I answered with a monosyllable which I knew he could not quite catch.
+Silence again for some time, during which I shovelled valiantly and with
+great inward amusement. Oh, there is nothing like cracking a hard human
+nut! I decided at that moment, to have him invite me to supper.
+
+Finally, when I showed no signs of stopping my work, he himself paused
+and leaned on his shovel. I kept right on.
+
+"Say, partner," said he, finally, "did YOU read those signs as you come
+up the road?"
+
+"Yes," I said, "but they weren't for me, either. My section's a long
+one, too."
+
+"Say, you ain't a road-worker, are you?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"Yes," said I, with a sudden inspiration, "that's exactly what I am--a
+road-worker."
+
+"Put her there, then, partner," he said, with a broad smile on his
+bronzed face.
+
+He and I struck hands, rested on our shovels (like old hands at it), and
+looked with understanding into each other's eyes. We both knew the trade
+and the tricks of the trade; all bars were down between us. The fact is,
+we had both seen and profited by the peculiar signs at the roadside.
+
+"Where's your section?" he asked easily.
+
+"Well," I responded after considering the question, "I have a very long
+and hard section. It begins at a place called Prosy Common--do you know
+it?--and reaches to the top of Clear Hill. There are several bad spots
+on the way, I can tell you."
+
+"Don't know it," said the husky road-worker; "'tain't round here, is it?
+In the town of Sheldon, maybe?"
+
+Just at this moment, perhaps fortunately, for there is nothing so
+difficult to satisfy as the appetite of people for specific information,
+a motor-car whizzed past, the driver holding up his hand in greeting,
+and the road-worker and I responding in accordance with the etiquette of
+the Great Road.
+
+"There he goes in the ruts again," said the husky road-worker. "Why is
+it, I'd like to know, that every one wants to run in the same identical
+track when they've got the whole wide road before 'em?"
+
+"That's what has long puzzled me, too," I said. "Why WILL people
+continue to run in ruts?"
+
+"It don't seem to do no good to put up signs," said the road-worker.
+
+"Very little indeed," said I. "The fact is, people have got to be bumped
+out of the ruts they get into."
+
+"You're right," said he enthusiastically, and his voice dropped into the
+tone of one speaking to a member of the inner guild. "I know how to get
+'em."
+
+"How?" I asked in an equally mysterious voice.
+
+"I put a stone or two in the ruts!"
+
+"Do you?" I exclaimed. "I've done that very thing myself--many a time!
+Just place a good hard tru--I mean stone, with a bit of common dust
+sprinkled over it, in the middle of the rut, and they'll look out for
+THAT rut for some time to come."
+
+"Ain't it gorgeous," said the husky road-worker, chuckling joyfully, "to
+see 'em bump?"
+
+"It is," said I--"gorgeous."
+
+After that, shovelling part of the time in a leisurely way, and part of
+the time responding to the urgent request of the signs by the roadside
+(it pays to advertise!), the husky road-worker and I discussed many
+great and important subjects, all, however, curiously related to roads.
+Working all day long with his old horse, removing obstructions, draining
+out the culverts, filling ruts and holes with new stone, and repairing
+the damage of rain and storm, the road-worker was filled with a world of
+practical information covering roads and road-making. And having learned
+that I was of the same calling, we exchanged views with the greatest
+enthusiasm. It was astonishing to see how nearly in agreement we were as
+to what constituted an ideal road.
+
+"Almost everything," said he, "depends on depth. If you get a good solid
+foundation, the' ain't anything that can break up your road."
+
+"Exactly what I have discovered," I responded. "Get down to bedrock and
+do an honest job of building."
+
+"And don't have too many sharp turns."
+
+"No," said I, "long, leisurely curves are best--all through life. You
+have observed that nearly all the accidents on the road are due to sharp
+turnings."
+
+"Right you are!" he exclaimed.
+
+"A man who tries to turn too sharply on his way nearly always skids."
+
+"Or else turns turtle in the ditch."
+
+But it was not until we reached the subject of oiling that we mounted to
+the real summit of enthusiastic agreement. Of all things on the road, or
+above the road, or in the waters under the road, there is nothing that
+the road-worker dislikes more than oil.
+
+"It's all right," said he, "to use oil for surfacin' and to keep down
+the dust. You don't need much and it ain't messy. But sometimes when you
+see oil pumped on a road, you know that either the contractor has been
+jobbin', or else the road's worn out and ought to be rebuilt."
+
+"That's exactly what I've found," said I. "Let a road become almost
+impassable with ruts and rocks and dust, and immediately some man says,
+'Oh, it's all right--put on a little oil--'"
+
+"That's what our supervisor is always sayin'," said the road-worker.
+
+"Yes," I responded, "it usually is the supervisor. He lives by it. He
+wants to smooth over the defects, he wants to lay the dust that every
+passerby kicks up, he tries to smear over the truth regarding conditions
+with messy and ill-smelling oil. Above everything, he doesn't want the
+road dug up and rebuilt--says it will interfere with traffic, injure
+business, and even set people to talking about changing the route
+entirely! Oh, haven't I seen it in religion, where they are doing their
+best to oil up roads that are entirely worn out--and as for politics, is
+not the cry of the party-roadster and the harmony-oilers abroad in the
+land?"
+
+In the excited interest with which this idea now bore me along I had
+entirely forgotten the existence of my companion, and as I now glanced
+at him I saw him standing with a curious look of astonishment and
+suspicion on his face. I saw that I had unintentionally gone a little
+too far. So I said abruptly:
+
+"Partner, let's get a drink. I'm thirsty."
+
+He followed me, I thought a bit reluctantly, to a little brook not
+far up the road where we had been once before. As we were drinking,
+silently, I looked at the stout young fellow standing there, and I
+thought to myself:
+
+What a good, straightforward young fellow he is anyway, and how
+thoroughly he knows his job. I thought how well he was equipped with
+unilluminated knowledge, and it came to me whimsically, that here was a
+fine bit of road-mending for me to do.
+
+Most people have sight, but few have insight; and as I looked into
+the clear blue eyes of my friend I had a sudden swift inspiration, and
+before I could repent of it I had said to him in the most serious voice
+that I could command:
+
+"Friend, I am in reality a spectacle-peddler--"
+
+His glance shifted uncomfortably to my gray bag.
+
+"And I want to sell you a pair of spectacles," I said. "I see that you
+are nearly blind."
+
+"Me blind!"
+
+It would be utterly impossible to describe the expression on his
+face. His hand went involuntarily to his eyes, and he glanced quickly,
+somewhat fearfully, about.
+
+"Yes, nearly blind," said I. "I saw it when I first met you. You don't
+know it yourself yet, but I can assure you it is a bad case."
+
+I paused, and shook my head slowly. If I had not been so much in
+earnest, I think I should have been tempted to laugh outright. I had
+begun my talk with him half jestingly, with the amusing idea of breaking
+through his shell, but I now found myself tremendously engrossed, and
+desired nothing in the world (at that moment) so much as to make him see
+what I saw. I felt as though I held a live human soul in my hand.
+
+"Say, partner," said the road-worker, "are you sure you aren't--" He
+tapped his forehead and began to edge away.
+
+I did not answer his question at all, but continued, with my eyes fixed
+on him:
+
+"It is a peculiar sort of blindness. Apparently, as you look about, you
+see everything there is to see, but as a matter of fact you see nothing
+in the world but this road--"
+
+"It's time that I was seein' it again then," said he, making as if to
+turn back to work, but remaining with a disturbed expression on his
+countenance.
+
+"The Spectacles I have to sell," said I, "are powerful magnifiers"--he
+glanced again at the gray bag. "When you put them on you will see a
+thousand wonderful things besides the road--"
+
+"Then you ain't road-worker after all!" he said, evidently trying to be
+bluff and outright with me.
+
+
+Now your substantial, sober, practical American will stand only about
+so much verbal foolery; and there is nothing in the world that makes him
+more uncomfortable--yes, downright mad!--than to feel that he is being
+played with. I could see that I had nearly reached the limit with him,
+and that if I held him now it must be by driving the truth straight
+home. So I stepped over toward him and said very earnestly:
+
+"My friend, don't think I am merely joking you. I was never more in
+earnest in all my life. When I told you I was a road-worker I meant it,
+but I had in mind the mending of other kinds of roads than this."
+
+I laid my hand on his arm, and explained to him as directly and simply
+as English words could do it, how, when he had spoken of oil for his
+roads, I thought of another sort of oil for another sort of roads, and
+when he spoke of curves in his roads I was thinking of curves in the
+roads I dealt with, and I explained to him what my roads were. I have
+never seen a man more intensely interested: he neither moved nor took
+his eyes from my face.
+
+"And when I spoke of selling you a pair of spectacles," said I, "it was
+only a way of telling you how much I wanted to make you see my kinds of
+roads as well as your own."
+
+I paused, wondering if, after all, he could be made to see. I know now
+how the surgeon must feel at the crucial moment of his accomplished
+operation. Will the patient live or die?
+
+The road-worker drew a long breath as he came out from under the
+anesthetic.
+
+"I guess, partner," said he, "you're trying to put a stone or two in my
+ruts!"
+
+I had him!
+
+"Exactly," I exclaimed eagerly.
+
+We both paused. He was the first to speak--with some embarrassment:
+
+"Say, you're just like a preacher I used to know when I was a kid. He
+was always sayin' things that meant something else and when you found
+out what he was drivin' at you always felt kind of queer in your
+insides."
+
+I laughed.
+
+"It's a mighty good sign," I said, "when a man begins to feel queer in
+the insides. It shows that something is happening to him."
+
+With that we walked back to the road, feeling very close and
+friendly--and shovelling again, not saying much. After quite a
+time, when we had nearly cleaned up the landslide, I heard the husky
+road-worker chuckling to himself; finally, straightening up, he said:
+
+"Say, there's more things in a road than ever I dreamt of."
+
+"I see," said I, "that the new spectacles are a good fit."
+
+The road-worker laughed long and loud.
+
+"You're a good one, all right," he said. "I see what YOU mean. I catch
+your point."
+
+"And now that you've got them on," said I, "and they are serving you
+so well, I'm not going to sell them to you at all. I'm going to present
+them to you--for I haven't seen anybody in a long time that I've enjoyed
+meeting more than I have you."
+
+We nurse a fiction that people love to cover up their feelings; but I
+have learned that if the feeling is real and deep they love far better
+to find a way to uncover it.
+
+"Same here," said the road-worker simply, but with a world of genuine
+feeling in his voice.
+
+Well, when it came time to stop work the road-worker insisted that I get
+in and go home with him.
+
+"I want you to see my wife and kids," said he.
+
+The upshot of it was that I not only remained for supper--and a good
+supper it was--but I spent the night in his little home, close at the
+side of the road near the foot of a fine hill. And from time to time all
+night long, it seemed to me, I could hear the rush of cars going by in
+the smooth road outside, and sometimes their lights flashed in at my
+window, and sometimes I heard them sound their brassy horns.
+
+I wish I could tell more of what I saw there, of the garden back of the
+house, and of all the road-worker and his wife told me of their simple
+history--but, the road calls!
+
+When I set forth early this morning the road-worker followed me out
+to the smooth macadam (his wife standing in the doorway with her hands
+rolled in her apron) and said to me, a bit shyly:
+
+"I'll be more sort o'--sort o' interested in roads since I've seen you."
+
+"I'll be along again some of these days," said I, laughing, "and I'll
+stop in and show you my new stock of spectacles. Maybe I can sell you
+another pair!"
+
+"Maybe you kin," and he smiled a broad, understanding smile.
+
+Nothing brings men together like having a joke in common.
+
+So I walked off down the road--in the best of spirits--ready for the
+events of another day.
+
+It will surely be a great adventure, one of these days, to come this way
+again--and to visit the Stanleys, and the Vedders, and the Minister, and
+drop in and sell another pair of specs to the Road-worker. It seems to
+me I have a wonderfully rosy future ahead of me!
+
+
+P. S.--I have not yet found out who painted the curious signs; but I am
+not as uneasy about it as I was. I have seen two more of them already
+this morning--and find they exert quite a psychological influence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. AN EXPERIMENT IN HUMAN NATURE
+
+In the early morning after I left the husky road-mender (wearing his new
+spectacles), I remained steadfastly on the Great Road or near it. It was
+a prime spring day, just a little hazy, as though promising rain, but
+soft and warm.
+
+"They will be working in the garden at home," I thought, "and there will
+be worlds of rhubarb and asparagus." Then I remembered how the morning
+sunshine would look on the little vine-clad back porch (reaching halfway
+up the weathered door) of my own house among the hills.
+
+It was the first time since my pilgrimage began that I had thought with
+any emotion of my farm--or of Harriet.
+
+And then the road claimed me again, and I began to look out for some
+further explanation of the curious sign, the single word "Rest," which
+had interested me so keenly on the preceding day. It may seem absurd to
+some who read these lines--some practical people!--but I cannot convey
+the pleasure I had in the very elusiveness and mystery of the sign,
+nor how I wished I might at the next turn come upon the poet himself. I
+decided that no one but a poet could have contented himself with a lyric
+in one word, unless it might have been a humourist, to whom sometimes a
+single small word is more blessed than all the verbal riches of Webster
+himself. For it is nothing short of genius that uses one word when
+twenty will say the same thing!
+
+Or, would he, after all, turn out to be only a more than ordinarily
+alluring advertiser? I confess my heart went into my throat that
+morning, when I first saw the sign, lest it read:
+
+[ RESTaurant 2 miles east ]
+
+nor should I have been surprised if it had.
+
+I caught a vicarious glimpse of the sign-man to-day, through the eyes
+of a young farmer. Yes, he s'posed he'd seen him, he said; wore a slouch
+hat, couldn't tell whether he was young or old. Drove into the bushes
+(just down there beyond the brook) and, standin' on the seat of his
+buggy, nailed something to a tree. A day or two later--the dull wonder
+of mankind!--the young farmer, passing that way to town, had seen the
+odd sign "Rest" on the tree: he s'posed the fellow put it there.
+
+"What does it mean?"
+
+"Well, naow, I hadn't thought," said the young farmer.
+
+"Did the fellow by any chance have long hair?"
+
+"Well, naow, I didn't notice," said he.
+
+"Are you sure he wore a slouch hat?"
+
+"Ye-es--or it may a-been straw," replied the observant young farmer.
+
+
+So I tramped that morning; and as I tramped I let my mind go out warmly
+to the people living all about on the farms or in the hills. It is
+pleasant at times to feel life, as it were, in general terms: no
+specific Mr. Smith or concrete Mr. Jones, but just human life. I love to
+think of people all around going out busily in the morning to their work
+and returning at night, weary, to rest. I like to think of them growing
+up, growing old, loving, achieving, sinning, failing--in short, living.
+
+In such a live-minded mood as this it often happens that the most
+ordinary things appear charged with new significance. I suppose I had
+seen a thousand rural-mail boxes along country roads before that day,
+but I had seen them as the young farmer saw the sign-man. They were mere
+inert objects of iron and wood.
+
+But as I tramped, thinking of the people in the hills, I came quite
+unexpectedly upon a sandy by-road that came out through a thicket
+of scrub oaks and hazel-brush, like some shy countryman, to join
+the turn-pike. As I stood looking into it--for it seemed peculiarly
+inviting--I saw at the entrance a familiar group of rural-mail boxes.
+And I saw them not as dead things, but for the moment--the illusion was
+over-powering--they were living, eager hands outstretched to the
+passing throng I could feel, hear, see the farmers up there in the
+hills reaching out to me, to all the world, for a thousand inexpressible
+things, for more life, more companionship, more comforts, more money.
+
+It occurred to me at that moment, whimsically and yet somehow seriously,
+that I might respond to the appeal of the shy country road and the
+outstretched hands. At first I did not think of anything I could
+do--save to go up and eat dinner with one of the hill farmers, which
+might not be an unmixed blessing!--and then it came to me.
+
+"I will write a letter!"
+
+Straightway and with the liveliest amusement I began to formulate in my
+mind what I should say:
+
+Dear Friend: You do not know me. I am a passerby in the road. My name is
+David Grayson. You do not know me, and it may seem odd to you to receive
+a letter from an entire stranger. But I am something of a farmer myself,
+and as I went by I could not help thinking of you and your family and
+your farm. The fact is, I should like to look you up, and talk with you
+about many things. I myself cultivate a number of curious fields, and
+raise many kinds of crops--
+
+At this interesting point my inspiration suddenly collapsed, for I had
+a vision, at once amusing and disconcerting, of my hill farmer (and his
+practical wife!) receiving such a letter (along with the country paper,
+a circular advertising a cure for catarrh, and the most recent catalogue
+of the largest mail-order house in creation). I could see them standing
+there in their doorway, the man with his coat off, doubtfully scratching
+his head as he read my letter, the woman wiping her hands on her apron
+and looking over his shoulder, and a youngster squeezing between the two
+and demanding, "What is it, Paw?"
+
+I found myself wondering how they would receive such an unusual letter,
+what they would take it to mean. And in spite of all I could do, I
+could imagine no expression on their faces save one of incredulity and
+suspicion. I could fairly see the shrewd worldly wise look come into the
+farmer's face; I could hear him say:
+
+"Ha, guess he thinks we ain't cut our eye-teeth!" And he would instantly
+begin speculating as to whether this was a new scheme for selling
+him second-rate nursery stock, or the smooth introduction of another
+sewing-machine agent.
+
+Strange world, strange world! Sometimes it seems to me that the hardest
+thing of all to believe in is simple friendship. Is it not a comment
+upon our civilization that it is so often easier to believe that a
+man is a friend-for-profit, or even a cheat, than that he is frankly a
+well-wisher of his neighbours?
+
+
+These reflections put such a damper upon my enthusiasm that I was on the
+point of taking again to the road, when it came to me powerfully: Why
+not try the experiment? Why not?
+
+"Friendship," I said aloud, "is the greatest thing in the world. There
+is no door it will not unlock, no problem it will not solve. It is,
+after all, the only real thing in this world."
+
+The sound of my own voice brought me suddenly to myself, and I found
+that I was standing there in the middle of the public road, one clenched
+fist absurdly raised in air, delivering an oration to a congregation of
+rural-mail boxes!
+
+And yet, in spite of the humorous aspects of the idea, it still appeared
+to me that such an experiment would not only fit in with the true object
+of my journeying, but that it might be full of amusing and interesting
+adventures. Straightway I got my notebook out of my bag and, sitting
+down near the roadside, wrote my letter. I wrote it as though my life
+depended upon it, with the intent of making some one household there in
+the hills feel at least a little wave of warmth and sympathy from the
+great world that was passing in the road below. I tried to prove the
+validity of a kindly thought with no selling device attached to it; I
+tried to make it such a word of frank companionship as I myself, working
+in my own fields, would like to receive.
+
+Among the letter-boxes in the group was one that stood a little detached
+and behind the others, as though shrinking from such prosperous company.
+It was made of unpainted wood, with leather hinges, and looked shabby
+in comparison with the jaunty red, green, and gray paint of some of the
+other boxes (with their cocky little metallic flags upraised). It bore
+the good American name of Clark--T. N. Clark--and it seemed to me that I
+could tell something of the Clarks by the box at the crossing.
+
+"I think they need a friendly word," I said to myself.
+
+So I wrote the name T. N. Clark on my envelope and put the letter in his
+box.
+
+It was with a sense of joyous adventure that I now turned aside into the
+sandy road and climbed the hill. My mind busied itself with thinking how
+I should carry out my experiment, how I should approach these Clarks,
+and how and what they were. A thousand ways I pictured to myself the
+receipt of the letter: it would at least be something new for them,
+something just a little disturbing, and I was curious to see whether
+it might open the rift of wonder wide enough to let me slip into their
+lives.
+
+I have often wondered why it is that men should be so fearful of new
+ventures in social relationships, when I have found them so fertile,
+so enjoyable. Most of us fear (actually fear) people who differ from
+ourselves, either up or down the scale. Your Edison pries fearlessly
+into the intimate secrets of matter; your Marconi employs the mysterious
+properties of the "jellied ether," but let a man seek to experiment with
+the laws of that singular electricity which connects you and me (though
+you be a millionaire and I a ditch-digger), and we think him a wild
+visionary, an academic person. I think sometimes that the science of
+humanity to-day is in about the state of darkness that the natural
+sciences were when Linneus and Cuvier and Lamarck began groping for the
+great laws of natural unity. Most of the human race is still groaning
+under the belief that each of us is a special and unrelated creation,
+just as men for ages saw no relationships between the fowls of the air,
+the beasts of the field, and the fish of the sea. But, thank God, we
+are beginning to learn that unity is as much a law of life as selfish
+struggle, and love a more vital force than avarice or lust of power or
+place. A Wandering Carpenter knew it, and taught it, twenty centuries
+ago.
+
+"The next house beyond the ridge," said the toothless old woman,
+pointing with a long finger, "is the Clarks'. You can't miss it," and I
+thought she looked at me oddly.
+
+I had been walking briskly for some three miles, and it was with keen
+expectation that I now mounted the ridge and saw the farm for which I
+was looking, lying there in the valley before me. It was altogether a
+wild and beautiful bit of country--stunted cedars on the knolls of the
+rolling hills, a brook trailing its way among alders and willows down a
+long valley, and shaggy old fields smiling in the sun. As I came nearer
+I could see that the only disharmony in the valley was the work (or
+idleness) of men. A broken mowing-machine stood in the field where
+it had been left the summer before, rusty and forlorn, and dead weeds
+marked the edges of a field wherein the spring ploughing was now only
+half done. The whole farmstead, indeed, looked tired. As for the house
+and barn, they had reached that final stage of decay in which the
+best thing that could be said of them was that they were picturesque.
+Everything was as different from the farm of the energetic and joyous
+Stanleys, whose work I had shared only a few days before, as anything
+that could be imagined.
+
+Now, my usual way of getting into step with people is simplicity itself.
+I take off my coat and go to work with them and the first thing I
+know we have become first-rate friends. One doesn't dream of the
+possibilities of companionship in labour until he has tried it.
+
+But how shall one get into step with a man who is not stepping?
+
+On the porch of the farmhouse, there in the mid-afternoon, a man sat
+idly; and children were at play in the yard. I went in at the gate, not
+knowing in the least what I should say or do, but determined to get hold
+of the problem somewhere. As I approached the step, I swung my bag from
+my shoulder.
+
+"Don't want to buy nothin'," said the man.
+
+"Well," said I, "that is fortunate, for I have nothing to sell. But
+you've got something I want."
+
+He looked at me dully.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"A drink of water."
+
+Scarcely moving his head, he called to a shy older girl who had just
+appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Mandy, bring a dipper of water."
+
+As I stood there the children gathered curiously around me, and the man
+continued to sit in his chair, saying absolutely nothing, a picture of
+dull discouragement.
+
+"How they need something to stir them up," I thought.
+
+When I had emptied the dipper, I sat down on the top step of the porch,
+and, without saying a word to the man, placed my bag beside me and began
+to open it. The shy girl paused, dipper in hand, the children stood
+on tiptoe, and even the man showed signs of curiosity. With studied
+deliberation I took out two books I had with me and put them on the
+porch; then I proceeded to rummage for a long time in the bottom of the
+bag as though I could not find what I wanted. Every eye was glued upon
+me, and I even heard the step of Mrs. Clark as she came to the but I did
+not look up or speak. Finally I pulled out my tin whistle and, leaning
+back against the porch column, placed it to my lips, and began playing
+in Tom Madison's best style (eyes half closed, one toe tapping to
+the music, head nodding, fingers lifted high from the stops), I began
+playing "Money Musk," and "Old Dan Tucker." Oh, I put vim into it, I can
+tell you! And bad as my playing was, I had from the start an absorption
+of attention from my audience that Paderewski himself might have envied.
+I wound up with a lively trill in the high notes and took my whistle
+from my lips with a hearty laugh, for the whole thing had been downright
+good fun, the playing itself, the make-believe which went with it, the
+surprise and interest in the children's faces, the slow-breaking smile
+of the little girl with the dipper.
+
+"I'll warrant you, madam," I said to the woman who now stood frankly
+in the doorway with her hands wrapped in her apron, "you haven't heard
+those tunes since you were a girl and danced to 'em."
+
+"You're right," she responded heartily.
+
+"I'll give you another jolly one," I said, and, replacing my whistle, I
+began with even greater zest to play "Yankee Doodle."
+
+When I had gone through it half a dozen times with such added variations
+and trills as I could command, and had two of the children hopping about
+in the yard, and the forlorn man tapping his toe to the tune, and a
+smile on the face of the forlorn woman, I wound up with a rush and
+then, as if I could hold myself in no longer (and I couldn't either!), I
+suddenly burst out:
+
+     Yankee doodle dandy!
+     Yankee doodle dandy!
+     Mind the music and the step,
+     And with the girls be handy.
+
+It may seem surprising, but I think I can understand why it was--when I
+looked up at the woman in the doorway there were tears in her eyes!
+
+"Do you know 'John Brown's Body'?" eagerly inquired the little girl
+with the dipper, and then, as if she had done something quite bold and
+improper, she blushed and edged toward the doorway.
+
+"How does it go?" I asked, and one of the bold lads in the yard
+instantly puckered his lips to show me, and immediately they were all
+trying it.
+
+"Here goes," said I, and for the next few minutes, and in my very best
+style, I hung Jeff Davis on the sour apple-tree, and I sent the soul
+of John Brown marching onward with an altogether unnecessary number of
+hallelujahs.
+
+I think sometimes that people--whole families of 'em--literally
+perish for want of a good, hearty, whole-souled, mouth-opening,
+throat-stretching, side-aching laugh. They begin to think themselves the
+abused of creation, they begin to advise with their livers and to hate
+their neighbours, and the whole world becomes a miserable dark blue
+place quite unfit for human habitation. Well, all this is often only the
+result of a neglect to exercise properly those muscles of the body (and
+of the soul) which have to do with honest laughter.
+
+I've never supposed I was an especially amusing person, but before I got
+through with it I had the Clark family well loosened up with laughter,
+although I wasn't quite sure some of the time whether Mrs. Clark
+was laughing or crying. I had them all laughing and talking, asking
+questions and answering them as though I were an old and valued
+neighbour.
+
+Isn't it odd how unconvinced we often are by the crises in the lives of
+other people? They seem to us trivial or unimportant; but the fact is,
+the crises in the life of a boy, for example, or of a poor man, are
+as commanding as the crises in the life of the greatest statesman or
+millionaire, for they involve equally the whole personality, the entire
+prospects.
+
+The Clark family, I soon learned, had lost its pig. A trivial matter,
+you say? I wonder if anything is ever trivial. A year of poor crops,
+sickness, low prices, discouragement and, at the end of it, on top of it
+all, the cherished pig had died!
+
+From all accounts (and the man on the porch quite lost his apathy in
+telling me about it) it must have been a pig of remarkable virtues
+and attainments, a paragon of pigs--in whom had been bound up the many
+possibilities of new shoes for the children, a hat for the lady, a new
+pair of overalls for the gentleman, and I know not what other kindred
+luxuries. I do not think, indeed, I ever had the portrait of a pig
+drawn for me with quite such ardent enthusiasm of detail, and the more
+questions I asked the more eager the story, until finally it became
+necessary for me to go to the barn, the cattle-pen, the pig-pen and
+the chicken-house, that I might visualize more clearly the scene of the
+tragedy. The whole family trooped after us like a classic chorus, but
+Mr. Clark himself kept the centre of the stage.
+
+How plainly I could read upon the face of the land the story of this
+hill farmer and his meagre existence--his ill-directed effort to wring
+a poor living for his family from these upland fields, his poverty, and,
+above all, his evident lack of knowledge of his own calling. Added to
+these things, and perhaps the most depressing of all his difficulties,
+was the utter loneliness of the task, the feeling that it mattered
+little to any one whether the Clark family worked or not, or indeed
+whether they lived or died. A perfectly good American family was here
+being wasted, with the precious land they lived on, because no one had
+taken the trouble to make them feel that they were a part of this Great
+American Job.
+
+
+As we went back to the house, a freckled-nosed neighbour's boy came in
+at the gate.
+
+"A letter for you, Mr. Clark," said he. "I brought it up with our mail."
+
+"A letter!" exclaimed Mrs. Clark.
+
+"A letter!" echoed at least three of the children in unison.
+
+"Probably a dun from Brewster," said Mr. Clark discouragingly.
+
+I felt a curious sensation about the heart, and an eagerness of interest
+I have rarely experienced. I had no idea what a mere letter--a mere
+unopened unread letter--would mean to a family like this.
+
+"It has no stamp on it!" exclaimed the older girl.
+
+Mrs. Clark turned it over wonderingly in her hands. Mr. Clark hastily
+put on a pair of steel-bowed spectacles.
+
+"Let me see it," he said, and when he also had inspected it minutely he
+solemnly tore open the envelope and drew forth my letter.
+
+'I assure you I never awaited the reading of any writing of mine with
+such breathless interest. How would they take it? Would they catch the
+meaning that I meant to convey? And would they suspect me of having
+written it?
+
+Mr. Clark sat on the porch and read the letter slowly through to the
+end, turned the sheet over and examined it carefully, and then began
+reading it again to himself, Mrs. Clark leaning over his shoulder.
+
+"What does it mean?" asked Mr. Clark.
+
+"It's too good to be true," said Mrs. Clark with a sigh.
+
+I don't know how long the discussion might have continued--probably for
+days or weeks--had not the older girl, now flushed of face and rather
+pretty, looked at me and said breathlessly (she was as sharp as a
+briar):
+
+"You wrote it."
+
+I stood the battery of all their eyes for a moment, smiling and rather
+excited.
+
+"Yes," I said earnestly, "I wrote it, and I mean every word of it."
+
+I had anticipated some shock of suspicion and inquiry, but to my
+surprise it was accepted as simply as a neighbourly good morning. I
+suppose the mystery of it was eclipsed by my astonishing presence there
+upon the scene with my tin whistle.
+
+At any rate, it was a changed, eager, interested family which now
+occupied the porch of that dilapidated farmhouse. And immediately we
+fell into a lively discussion of crops and farming, and indeed the whole
+farm question, in which I found both the man and his wife singularly
+acute--sharpened upon the stone of hard experience.
+
+Indeed, I found right here, as I have many times found among our
+American farmers, an intelligence (a literacy growing out of what I
+believe to be improper education) which was better able to discuss the
+problems of rural life than to grapple with and solve them. A dull,
+illiterate Polish farmer, I have found, will sometimes succeed much
+better at the job of life than his American neighbour.
+
+Talk with almost any man for half an hour, and you will find that his
+conversation, like an old-fashioned song, has a regularly recurrent
+chorus. I soon discovered Mr. Clark's chorus.
+
+"Now, if only I had a little cash," he sang, or, "If I had a few
+dollars, I could do so and so."
+
+Why, he was as helplessly, dependent upon money as any soft-handed
+millionairess. He considered himself poor and helpless because he lacked
+dollars, whereas people are really poor and helpless only when they lack
+courage and faith.
+
+We were so much absorbed in our talk that I was greatly surprised to
+hear Mrs. Clark's voice at the doorway.
+
+"Won't you come in to supper?"
+
+After we had eaten, there was a great demand for more of my tin whistle
+(oh, I know how Caruso must feel!), and I played over every blessed tune
+I knew, and some I didn't, four or five times, and after that we
+told stories and cracked jokes in a way that must have been utterly
+astonishing in that household. After the children had been, yes, driven
+to bed, Mr. Clark seemed about to drop back into his lamentations over
+his condition (which I have no doubt had come to give him a sort of
+pleasure), but I turned to Mrs. Clark, whom I had come to respect very
+highly, and began to talk about the little garden she had started, which
+was about the most enterprising thing about the place.
+
+"Isn't it one of the finest things in this world," said I, "to go out
+into a good garden in the summer days and bring in loaded baskets filled
+with beets and cabbages and potatoes, just for the gathering?"
+
+I knew from the expression on Mrs. Clark's face that I had touched a
+sounding note.
+
+"Opening the green corn a little at the top to see if it is ready and
+then stripping it off and tearing away the moist white husks--"
+
+"And picking tomatoes?" said Mrs. Clark. "And knuckling the watermelons
+to see if they are ripe? Oh, I tell you there are thousands of people in
+this country who'd like to be able to pick their dinner in the garden!"
+
+"It's fine!" said Mrs. Clark with amused enthusiasm, "but I like best
+to hear the hens cackling in the barnyard in the morning after they've
+laid, and to go and bring in the eggs."
+
+"Just like a daily present!" I said.
+
+"Ye-es," responded the soundly practical Mrs. Clark, thinking, no doubt,
+that there were other aspects of the garden and chicken problem.
+
+"I'll tell you another thing I like about a farmer's life," said I,
+"that's the smell in the house in the summer when there are preserves,
+or sweet pickles, or jam, or whatever it is, simmering on the stove. No
+matter where you are, up in the garret or down cellar, it's cinnamon,
+and allspice, and cloves, and every sort of sugary odour. Now, that gets
+me where I live!"
+
+"It IS good!" said Mrs. Clark with a laugh that could certainly be
+called nothing if not girlish.
+
+
+All this time I had been keeping one eye on Mr. Clark. It was amusing
+to see him struggling against a cheerful view of life. He now broke into
+the conversation.
+
+"Well, but--" he began.
+
+Instantly I headed him off.
+
+"And think," said I, "of living a life in which you are beholden to
+no man. It's a free life, the farmer's life. No one can discharge you
+because you are sick, or tired, or old, or because you are a Democrat or
+a Baptist!"
+
+"Well, but--"
+
+"And think of having to pay no rent, nor of having to live upstairs in a
+tenement!"
+
+"Well, but--"
+
+"Or getting run over by a street-car, or having the children play in the
+gutters."
+
+"I never did like to think of what my children would do if we went to
+town," said Mrs. Clark.
+
+"I guess not!" I exclaimed.
+
+The fact is, most people don't think half enough of themselves and of
+their jobs; but before we went to bed that night I had the forlorn T. N.
+Clark talking about the virtues of his farm in quite a surprising way.
+
+I even saw him eying me two or three times with a shrewd look in his
+eyes (your American is an irrepressible trader) as though I might
+possibly be some would-be purchaser in disguise.
+
+(I shall write some time a dissertation on the advantages, of wearing
+shabby clothing.)
+
+The farm really had many good points. One of them was a shaggy old
+orchard of good and thriving but utterly neglected apple-trees.
+
+"Man alive," I said, when we went out to see it in the morning, "you've
+got a gold mine here!" And I told him how in our neighbourhood we were
+renovating the old orchards, pruning them back, spraying, and bringing
+them into bearing again.
+
+He had never, since he owned the place, had a salable crop of fruit.
+When we came in to breakfast I quite stirred the practical Mrs. Clark
+with my enthusiasm, and she promised at once to send for a bulletin on
+apple-tree renovation, published by the state experiment station. I am
+sure I was no more earnest in my advice than the conditions warranted.
+
+After breakfast we went into the field, and I suggested that instead of
+ploughing any more land--for the season was already late--we get out all
+the accumulations of rotted manure from around the barn and strew it on
+the land already ploughed and harrow it in.
+
+"A good job on a little piece of land," I said, "is far more profitable
+than a poor job on a big piece of land."
+
+Without more ado we got his old team hitched up and began loading, and
+hauling out the manure, and spent all day long at it. Indeed, such was
+the height of enthusiasm which T. N. Clark now reached (for his was a
+temperament that must either soar in the clouds or grovel in the mire),
+that he did not wish to stop when Mrs. Clark called us in to supper. In
+that one day his crop of corn, in perspective, overflowed his crib, he
+could not find boxes and barrels for his apples, his shed would not hold
+all his tobacco, and his barn was already being enlarged to accommodate
+a couple more cows! He was also keeping bees and growing ginseng.
+
+But it was fine, that evening, to see Mrs. Clark's face, the renewed
+hope and courage in it. I thought as I looked at her (for she was the
+strong and steady one in that house):
+
+"If you can keep the enthusiasm up, if you can make that husband of
+yours grow corn, and cows, and apples as you raise chickens and make
+garden, there is victory yet in this valley."
+
+That night it rained, but in spite of the moist earth we spent almost
+all of the following day hard at work in the field, and all the time
+talking over ways and means for the future, but the next morning, early,
+I swung my bag on my back and left them.
+
+I shall not attempt to describe the friendliness of our parting. Mrs.
+Clark followed me wistfully to the gate.
+
+"I can't tell you--" she began, with the tears starting in her eyes.
+
+"Then don't try--" said I, smiling.
+
+And so I swung off down the country road, without looking back.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
+
+In some strange deep way there is no experience of my whole pilgrimage
+that I look back upon with so much wistful affection as I do upon the
+events of the day--the day and the wonderful night--which followed my
+long visit with the forlorn Clark family upon their hill farm. At first
+I hesitated about including an account of it here because it contains so
+little of what may be called thrilling or amusing incident.
+
+"They want only the lively stories of my adventures," I said to myself,
+and I was at the point of pushing my notes to the edge of the table
+where (had I let go) they would have fallen into the convenient oblivion
+of the waste-basket. But something held me back.
+
+"No," said I, "I'll tell it; if it means so much to me, it may mean
+something to the friends who are following these lines."
+
+For, after all, it is not what goes on outside of a man, the clash and
+clatter of superficial events, that arouses our deepest interest, but
+what goes on inside. Consider then that in this narrative I shall open
+a little door in my heart and let you look in, if you care to, upon the
+experiences of a day and a night in which I was supremely happy.
+
+If you had chanced to be passing, that crisp spring morning, you would
+have seen a traveller on foot with a gray bag on his shoulder, swinging
+along the country road; and you might have been astonished to see him
+lift his hat at you and wish you a good morning. You might have turned
+to look back at him, as you passed, and found him turning also to look
+back at you--and wishing he might know you. But you would not have known
+what he was chanting under his breath as he tramped (how little we know
+of a man by the shabby coat he wears), nor how keenly he was enjoying
+the light airs and the warm sunshine of that fine spring morning.
+
+After leaving the hill farm he had walked five miles up the valley,
+had crossed the ridge at a place called the Little Notch, where all the
+world lay stretched before him like the open palm of his hand, and had
+come thus to the boundaries of the Undiscovered Country. He had been for
+days troubled with the deep problems of other people, and it seemed to
+him this morning as though a great stone had been rolled from the door
+of his heart, and that he was entering upon a new world--a wonderful,
+high, free world. And, as he tramped, certain lines of a stanza long ago
+caught up in his memory from some forgotten page came up to his lips,
+and these were the words (you did not know as you passed) that he was
+chanting under his breath as he tramped, for they seem charged with the
+spirit of the hour:
+
+I've bartered my sheets for a starlit bed; I've traded my meat for a
+crust of bread; I've changed my book for a sapling cane, And I'm off to
+the end of the world again.
+
+In the Undiscovered Country that morning it was wonderful how fresh
+the spring woods were, and how the birds sang in the trees, and how the
+brook sparkled and murmured at the roadside. The recent rain had washed
+the atmosphere until it was as clear and sparkling and heady as new
+wine, and the footing was firm and hard. As one tramped he could
+scarcely keep from singing or shouting aloud for the very joy of the
+day.
+
+"I think," I said to myself, "I've never been in a better country," and
+it did not seem to me I cared to know where the gray road ran, nor how
+far away the blue hills were.
+
+"It is wonderful enough anywhere here," I said.
+
+And presently I turned from the road and climbed a gently sloping
+hillside among oak and chestnut trees. The earth was well carpeted
+for my feet, and here and there upon the hillside, where the sun came
+through the green roof of foliage, were warm splashes Of yellow light,
+and here and there, on shadier slopes, the new ferns were spread upon
+the earth like some lacy coverlet. I finally sat down at the foot of
+a tree where through a rift in the foliage in the valley below I could
+catch a glimpse in the distance of the meadows and the misty blue hills.
+I was glad to rest, just rest, for the two previous days of hard labour,
+the labour and the tramping, had wearied me, and I sat for a long time
+quietly looking about me, scarcely thinking at all, but seeing, hearing,
+smelling--feeling the spring morning, and the woods and the hills, and
+the patch of sky I could see.
+
+For a long, long time I sat thus, but finally my mind began to flow
+again, and I thought how fine it would be if I had some good friend
+there with me to enjoy the perfect surroundings--some friend who would
+understand. And I thought of the Vedders with whom I had so recently
+spent a wonderful day; and I wished that they might be with me; there
+were so many things to be said--to be left unsaid. Upon this it occurred
+to me, suddenly, whimsically, and I exclaimed aloud:
+
+"Why, I'll just call them up."
+
+Half turning to the trunk of the tree where I sat, I placed one hand to
+my ear and the other to my lips and said:
+
+"Hello, Central, give me Mr. Vedder."
+
+I waited a moment, smiling a little at my own absurdity and yet quite
+captivated by the enterprise.
+
+"Is this Mr. Vedder? Oh, Mrs. Vedder! Well, this is David Grayson."....
+
+"Yes, the very same. A bad penny, a rolling stone."....
+
+"Yes. I want you both to come here as quickly as you can. I have the
+most important news for you. The mountain laurels are blooming, and
+the wild strawberries are setting their fruit. Yes, yes, and in the
+fields--all around here, to-day there are wonderful white patches of
+daisies, and from where I sit I can see an old meadow as yellow as gold
+with buttercups. And the bobolinks are hovering over the low spots. Oh,
+but it is fine here--and we are not together!"....
+
+"No; I cannot give exact directions. But take the Long Road and turn at
+the turning by the tulip-tree, and you will find me at home. Come right
+in without knocking."
+
+
+I hung up the receiver. For a single instant it had seemed almost true,
+and indeed I believe--I wonder--
+
+Some day, I thought, just a bit sadly, for I shall probably not be here
+then--some day, we shall be able to call our friends through space and
+time. Some day we shall discover that marvellously simple coherer by
+which we may better utilize the mysterious ether of love.
+
+For a time I was sad with thoughts of the unaccomplished future, and
+then I reflected that if I could not call up the Vedders so informally
+I could at least write down a few paragraphs which would give them some
+faint impression of that time and place. But I had no sooner taken
+out my note-book and put down a sentence or two than I stuck fast. How
+foolish and feeble written words are anyway! With what glib facility
+they describe, but how inadequately they convey. A thousand times I have
+thought to myself, "If only I could WRITE!"
+
+Not being able to write I turned, as I have so often turned before, to
+some good old book, trusting that I might find in the writing of another
+man what I lacked in my own. I took out my battered copy of Montaigne
+and, opening it at random, as I love to do, came, as luck would have it,
+upon a chapter devoted to coaches, in which there is much curious (and
+worthless) information, darkened with Latin quotations. This reading had
+an unexpected effect upon me.
+
+I could not seem to keep my mind down upon the printed page; it kept
+bounding away at the sight of the distant hills, at the sound of a
+woodpecker on a dead stub which stood near me, and at the thousand and
+one faint rustlings, creepings, murmurings, tappings, which animate
+the mystery of the forest. How dull indeed appeared the printed page
+in comparison with the book of life, how shut-in its atmosphere, how
+tinkling and distant the sound of its voices. Suddenly I shut my book
+with a snap.
+
+"Musty coaches and Latin quotations!" I exclaimed. "Montaigne's no
+writer for the open air. He belongs at a study fire on a quiet evening!"
+
+I had anticipated, when I started out, many a pleasant hour by the
+roadside or in the woods with my books, but this was almost the first
+opportunity I had found for reading (as it was almost the last), so full
+was the present world of stirring events. As for poor old Montaigne, I
+have been out of harmony with him ever since, nor have I wanted him in
+the intimate case at my elbow.
+
+After a long time in the forest, and the sun having reached the high
+heavens, I gathered up my pack and set forth again along the slope of
+the hills--not hurrying, just drifting and enjoying every sight and
+sound. And thus walking I came in sight, through the trees, of a
+glistening pool of water and made my way straight toward it.
+
+
+A more charming spot I have rarely seen. In some former time an old
+mill had stood at the foot of the little valley, and a ruinous stone
+dam still held the water in a deep, quiet pond between two round hills.
+Above it a brook ran down through the woods, and below, with a pleasant
+musical sound, the water dripped over the mossy stone lips of the dam
+and fell into the rocky pool below. Nature had long ago healed the
+wounds of men; she had half-covered the ruined mill with verdure, had
+softened the stone walls of the dam with mosses and lichens, and had
+crept down the steep hillside and was now leaning so far out over the
+pool that she could see her reflection in the quiet water.
+
+Near the upper end of the pond I found a clear white sand-bank, where
+no doubt a thousand fishermen had stood, half hidden by the willows, to
+cast for trout in the pool below. I intended merely to drink and moisten
+my face, but as I knelt by the pool and saw my reflection in the clear
+water wanted something more than that! In a moment I had thrown aside my
+bag and clothes and found myself wading naked into the water.
+
+It was cold! I stood a moment there in the sunny air, the great world
+open around me, shuddering, for I dreaded the plunge--and then with a
+run, a shout and a splash I took the deep water. Oh, but it was fine!
+With long, deep strokes I carried myself fairly to the middle of the
+pond. The first chill was succeeded by a tingling glow, and I can convey
+no idea whatever of the glorious sense of exhilaration I had. I swam
+with the broad front stroke, I swam on my side, head half submerged,
+with a deep under stroke, and I rolled over on my back and swam with the
+water lapping my chin. Thus I came to the end of the pool near the old
+dam, touched my feet on the bottom, gave a primeval whoop, and dove back
+into the water again. I have rarely experienced keener physical joy.
+After swimming thus boisterously for a time, I quieted down to long,
+leisurely strokes, conscious of the water playing across my shoulders
+and singing at my ears, and finally, reaching the centre of the pond, I
+turned over on my back and, paddling lazily, watched the slow procession
+of light clouds across the sunlit openings of the trees above me. Away
+up in the sky I could see a hawk slowly swimming about (in his element
+as I was in mine), and nearer at hand, indeed fairly in the thicket
+about the pond, I could hear a wood-thrush singing.
+
+And so, shaking the water out of my hair and swimming with long and
+leisurely strokes, I returned to the sand-bank, and there, standing in a
+spot of warm sunshine, I dried myself with the towel from my bag. And I
+said to myself:
+
+"Surely it is good to be alive at a time like this!"
+
+Slowly I drew on my clothes, idling there in the sand, and afterward I
+found an inviting spot in an old meadow where I threw myself down on the
+grass under an apple-tree and looked up into the shadowy places in the
+foliage above me. I felt a delicious sense of physical well-being, and I
+was pleasantly tired.
+
+So I lay there--and the next thing I knew, I turned over, feeling cold
+and stiff, and opened my eyes upon the dusky shadows of late evening. I
+had been sleeping for hours!
+
+
+The next few minutes (or was it an hour or eternity?), I recall as
+containing some of the most exciting and, when all is said, amusing
+incidents in my whole life. And I got quite a new glimpse of that
+sometimes bumptious person known as David Grayson.
+
+The first sensation I had was one of complete panic. What was I to do?
+Where was I to go?
+
+Hastily seizing my bag--and before I was half awake--I started rapidly
+across the meadow, in my excitement tripping and falling several times
+in the first hundred yards. In daylight I have no doubt that I should
+easily have seen a gateway or at least an opening from the old meadow,
+but in the fast-gathering darkness it seemed to me that the open field
+was surrounded on every side by impenetrable forests. Absurd as it
+may seem, for no one knows what his mind will do at such a moment,
+I recalled vividly a passage from Stanley's story of his search for
+Livingstone, in which he relates how he escaped from a difficult place
+in the jungle by KEEPING STRAIGHT AHEAD.
+
+I print these words in capitals because they seemed written that night
+upon the sky. KEEPING STRAIGHT AHEAD, I entered the forest on one side
+of the meadow (with quite a heroic sense of adventure), but scraped my
+shin on a fallen log and ran into a tree with bark on it that felt like
+a gigantic currycomb--and stopped!
+
+Up to this point I think I was still partly asleep. Now, however, I
+waked up.
+
+"All you need," said I to myself in my most matter-of-fact tone, "is a
+little cool sense. Be quiet now and reason it out."
+
+So I stood there for some moments reasoning it out, with the result that
+I turned back and found the meadow again.
+
+"What a fool I've been!" I said. "Isn't it perfectly plain that I should
+have gone down to the pond, crossed over the inlet, and reached the road
+by the way I came?"
+
+Having thus settled my problem, and congratulating myself on my
+perspicacity, I started straight for the mill-pond, but to my utter
+amazement, in the few short hours while I had been asleep, that entire
+body of water had evaporated, the dam had disappeared, and the stream
+had dried up. I must certainly present the facts in this remarkable case
+to some learned society.
+
+I then decided to return to the old apple-tree where I had slept, which
+now seemed quite like home, but, strange to relate, the apple-tree had
+also completely vanished from the enchanted meadow. At that I began to
+suspect that in coming out of the forest I had somehow got into another
+and somewhat similar old field. I have never had a more confused or
+eerie sensation; not fear, but a sort of helplessness in which for
+an instant I actually began to doubt whether it was I myself, David
+Grayson, who stood there in the dark meadow, or whether I was the victim
+of a peculiarly bad dream. I suppose many other people have had these
+sensations under similar conditions, but they were new to me.
+
+I turned slowly around and looked for a light; I think I never wanted so
+much to see some sign of human habitation as I did at that moment.
+
+What a coddled world we live in, truly. That being out after dark in a
+meadow should so disturb the very centre of our being! In all my life,
+indeed, and I suppose the same is true of ninety-nine out of a hundred
+of the people in America to-day, I had never before found myself where
+nothing stood between nature and me, where I had no place to sleep, no
+shelter for the night--nor any prospect of finding one. I was infinitely
+less resourceful at that moment than a rabbit, or a partridge, or a gray
+squirrel.
+
+
+
+Presently I sat down on the ground where I had been standing, with a
+vague fear (absurd to look back upon) that it, too, in some manner might
+slip away from under me. And as I sat there I began to have familiar
+gnawings at the pit of my stomach, and I remembered that, save for
+a couple of Mrs. Clark's doughnuts eaten while I was sitting on the
+hillside, ages ago, I had had nothing since my early breakfast.
+
+With this thought of my predicament--and the glimpse I had of myself
+"hungry and homeless"--the humour of the whole situation suddenly came
+over me, and, beginning with a chuckle, I wound up, as my mind dwelt
+upon my recent adventures, with a long, loud, hearty laugh.
+
+As I laughed--and what a roar it made in that darkness!--I got up on my
+feet and looked up at the sky. One bright star shone out over the woods,
+and in high heavens I could see dimly the white path of the Milky Way.
+And all at once I seemed again to be in command of myself and of the
+world. I felt a sudden lift and thrill of the spirits, a warm sense that
+this too was part of the great adventure--the Thing Itself.
+
+"This is the light," I said looking up again at the sky and the single
+bright star, "which is set for me to-night. I will make my bed by it."
+
+I can hope to make no one understand (unless he understands already)
+with what joy of adventure I now crept through the meadow toward the
+wood. It was an unknown, unexplored world I was in, and I, the fortunate
+discoverer, had here to shift for himself, make his home under the
+stars! Marquette on the wild shores of the Mississippi, or Stanley in
+Africa, had no joy that I did not know at that moment.
+
+I crept along the meadow and came at last to the wood. Here I chose a
+somewhat sheltered spot at the foot of a large tree--and yet a spot not
+so obscured that I could not look out over the open spaces of the meadow
+and see the sky. Here, groping in the darkness, like some primitive
+creature, I raked together a pile of leaves with my fingers, and found
+dead twigs and branches of trees; but in that moist forest (where the
+rain had fallen only the day before) my efforts to kindle a fire were
+unavailing. Upon this, I considered using some pages from my notebook,
+but another alternative suggested itself:
+
+"Why not Montaigne?"
+
+With that I groped for the familiar volume, and with a curious sensation
+of satisfaction I tore out a handful of pages from the back.
+
+"Better Montaigne than Grayson," I said, with a chuckle. It was amazing
+how Montaigne sparkled and crackled when he was well lighted.
+
+"There goes a bundle of quotations from Vergil," I said, "and there's
+his observations on the eating of fish. There are more uses than one for
+the classics."
+
+So I ripped out a good part of another chapter, and thus, by coaxing,
+got my fire to going. It was not difficult after that to find enough
+fuel to make it blaze up warmly.
+
+I opened my bag and took out the remnants of the luncheon which Mrs.
+Clark had given me that morning; and I was surprised and delighted to
+find, among the other things, a small bottle of coffee. This suggested
+all sorts of pleasing possibilities and, the spirit of invention being
+now awakened, I got out my tin cup, split a sapling stick so I could fit
+it into the handle, and set the cup, full of coffee, on the coals at the
+edge of the fire. It was soon heated, and although I spilled some of it
+in getting it off, and although it was well spiced with ashes, I enjoyed
+it, with Mrs. Clark's doughnuts and sandwiches (some of which I toasted
+with a sapling fork) as thoroughly, I think, as ever I enjoyed any meal.
+
+How little we know--we who dread life--how much there is in life!
+
+My activities around the fire had warmed me to the bone, and after I
+was well through with my meal I gathered a plentiful supply of wood and
+placed it near at hand, I got out my waterproof cape and put it on, and,
+finally piling more sticks on the fire, I sat down comfortably at the
+foot of the tree.
+
+
+I wish I could convey the mystery and the beauty of that night. Did you
+ever sit by a campfire and watch the flames dance, and the sparks fly
+upward into the cool dark air? Did you ever see the fitful light among
+the tree-depths, at one moment opening vast shadowy vistas into the
+forest, at the next dying downward and leaving it all in sombre mystery?
+It came to me that night with the wonderful vividness of a fresh
+experience.
+
+And what a friendly and companionable thing a campfire is! How generous
+and outright it is! It plays for you when you wish so be lively, and it
+glows for you when you wish to be reflective.
+
+After a while, for I did not feel in the least sleepy, I stepped out
+of the woods to the edge of the pasture. All around me lay the dark and
+silent earth, and above the blue bowl of the sky, all glorious with
+the blaze of a million worlds. Sometimes I have been oppressed by this
+spectacle of utter space, of infinite distance, of forces too great for
+me to grasp or understand, but that night it came upon me with fresh
+wonder and power, and with a sense of great humility that I belonged
+here too, that I was a part of it all--and would not be neglected or
+forgotten. It seemed to me I never had a moment of greater faith than
+that.
+
+And so, with a sense of satisfaction and peace, I returned to my fire.
+As I sat there I could hear the curious noises of the woods, the little
+droppings, cracklings, rustlings which seemed to make all the world
+alive. I even fancied I could see small bright eyes looking out at my
+fire, and once or twice I was almost sure I heard voices--whispering--,
+perhaps the voices of the woods.
+
+Occasionally I added, with some amusement, a few dry pages of Montaigne
+to the fire, and watched the cheerful blaze that followed.
+
+"No," said I, "Montaigne is not for the open spaces and the stars.
+Without a roof over his head Montaigne would--well, die of sneezing."
+
+So I sat all night long there by the tree. Occasionally I dropped into a
+light sleep, and then, as my fire died down, I grew chilly and awakened,
+to build up the fire and doze again. I saw the first faint gray streaks
+of dawn above the trees, I saw the pink glow in the east before the
+sunrise, and I watched the sun himself rise upon a new day--
+
+When I walked out into the meadow by daylight and looked about me
+curiously, I saw, not forty rods away, the back of a barn.
+
+
+"Be you the fellow that was daown in my cowpasture all night?" asked the
+sturdy farmer.
+
+"I'm that fellow," I said.
+
+"Why didn't you come right up to the house?"
+
+"Well--" I said, and then paused.
+
+"Well..." said I.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE HEDGE
+
+Strange, strange, how small the big world is!
+
+"Why didn't you come right into the house?" the sturdy farmer had asked
+me when I came out of the meadow where I had spent the night under the
+stars.
+
+"Well," I said, turning the question as adroitly as I could, "I'll make
+it up by going into the house now."
+
+So I went with him into his fine, comfortable house.
+
+"This is my wife," said he.
+
+A woman stood there facing me. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "Mr. Grayson!"
+
+I recalled swiftly a child--a child she seemed then--with braids down
+her back, whom I had known when I first came to my farm. She had grown
+up, married, and had borne three children, while I had been looking the
+other way for a minute or two. She had not been in our neighborhood for
+several years.
+
+"And how is your sister and Doctor McAlway?"
+
+Well, we had quite a wonderful visit, she made breakfast for me, asking
+and talking eagerly as I ate.
+
+"We've just had news that old Mr. Toombs is dead."
+
+"Dead!" I exclaimed, dropping my fork; "old Nathan Toombs!"
+
+"Yes, he was my uncle. Did you know him?"
+
+"I knew Nathan Toombs," I said.
+
+I spent two days there with the Ransomes, for they would not hear of my
+leaving, and half of our spare time, I think, was spent in discussing
+Nathan Toombs. I was not able to get him out of my mind for days, for
+his death was one of those events which prove so much and leave so much
+unproven.
+
+I can recall vividly my astonishment at the first evidence I ever had of
+the strange old man or of his work. It was not very long after I came
+to my farm to live. I had taken to spending my spare evenings--the long
+evenings of summer--in exploring the country roads for miles around,
+getting acquainted with each farmstead, each bit of grove and meadow and
+marsh, making my best bow to each unfamiliar hill, and taking everywhere
+that toll of pleasure which comes of quiet discovery.
+
+One evening, having walked farther than usual, I came quite suddenly
+around a turn in the road and saw stretching away before me an
+extraordinary sight.
+
+I feel that I am conveying no adequate impression of what I beheld
+by giving it any such prim and decorous name as--a Hedge. It was a
+menagerie, a living, green menagerie! I had no sooner seen it than I
+began puzzling my brain as to whether one of the curious ornaments into
+which the upper part of the hedge had been clipped and trimmed was made
+to represent the head of a horse, or a camel, or an Egyptian sphinx.
+
+The hedge was of arbor vitae and as high as a man's waist. At more or
+less regular intervals the trees in it had been allowed to grow much
+taller and had been wonderfully pruned into the similitude of towers,
+pinnacles, bells, and many other strange designs. Here and there the
+hedge held up a spindling umbrella of greenery, sometimes a double
+umbrella--a little one above the big one--and over the gateway at the
+centre; as a sort of final triumph, rose a grandiose arch of interlaced
+branches upon which the artist had outdone himself in marvels of
+ornamentation.
+
+I shall never forget the sensation of delight I had over this discovery,
+or of how I walked, tiptoe, along the road in front, studying each of
+the marvellous adornments. How eagerly, too, I looked over at the house
+beyond--a rather bare, bleak house set on a slight knoll or elevation
+and guarded at one corner by a dark spruce tree. At some distance
+behind I saw a number of huge barns, a cattle yard and a silo--all the
+evidences of prosperity--with well-nurtured fields, now yellowing with
+the summer crops, spreading pleasantly away on every hand.
+
+It was nearly dark before I left that bit of roadside, and I shall never
+forget the eerie impression I had as I turned back to take a final look
+at the hedge, the strange, grotesque aspect it presented there in the
+half light with the bare, lonely house rising from the knoll behind.
+
+
+It was not until some weeks later that I met the owner of the wonderful
+hedge. By that time, however, having learned of my interest, I found
+the whole countryside alive with stories about it and about Old Nathan
+Toombs, its owner. It was as though I had struck the rock of refreshment
+in a weary land.
+
+I remember distinctly how puzzled was by the stories I heard. The
+neighbourhood portrait--and ours is really a friendly neighbourhood--was
+by no means flattering. Old Toombs was apparently of that type
+of hard-shelled, grasping, self-reliant, old-fashioned farmer not
+unfamiliar to many country neighbourhoods. He had come of tough old
+American stock and he was a worker, a saver, and thus he had grown
+rich, the richest farmer in the whole neighbourhood. He was a regular
+individualistic American.
+
+"A dour man," said the Scotch Preacher, "but just--you must admit that
+he is just."
+
+There was no man living about whom the Scotch Preacher could not find
+something good to say.
+
+"Yes, just," replied Horace, "but hard--hard, and as mean as pusley."
+
+This portrait was true enough in itself, for I knew just the sort of an
+aggressive, undoubtedly irritable old fellow it pictured, but somehow,
+try as I would, I could not see any such old fellow wasting his moneyed
+hours clipping bells, umbrellas, and camel's heads on his ornamental
+greenery. It left just that incongruity which is at once the lure,
+the humour, and the perplexity of human life. Instead of satisfying my
+curiosity I was more anxious than ever to see Old Toombs with my own
+eyes.
+
+But the weeks passed and somehow I did not meet him. He was a lonely,
+unneighbourly old fellow. He had apparently come to fit into the
+community without ever really becoming a part of it. His neighbours
+accepted him as they accepted a hard hill in the town road. From time
+to time he would foreclose a mortgage where he had loaned money to some
+less thrifty farmer, or he would extend his acres by purchase, hard cash
+down, or he would build a bigger barn. When any of these things happened
+the community would crowd over a little, as it were, to give him more
+room. It is a curious thing, and tragic, too, when you come to think of
+it, how the world lets alone those people who appear to want to be let
+alone. "I can live to myself," says the unneighbourly one. "Well, live
+to yourself, then," cheerfully responds the world, and it goes about its
+more or less amusing affairs and lets the unneighbourly one cut himself
+off.
+
+So our small community had let Old Toombs go his way with all his money,
+his acres, his hedge, and his reputation for being a just man.
+
+Not meeting him, therefore, in the familiar and friendly life of the
+neighbourhood, I took to walking out toward his farm, looking freshly
+at the wonderful hedge and musing upon that most fascinating of all
+subjects--how men come to be what they are. And at last I was rewarded.
+
+One day I had scarcely reached the end of the hedge when I saw Old
+Toombs himself, moving toward me down the country road. Though I had
+never seen him before, I was at no loss to identify him. The first and
+vital impression he gave me, if I can compress it into a single word,
+was, I think, force--force. He came stubbing down the country road with
+a brown hickory stick in his hand which at every step he set vigorously
+into the soft earth. Though not tall, he gave the impression of being
+enormously strong. He was thick, solid, firm--thick through the body,
+thick through the thighs; and his shoulders--what shoulders they
+were!--round like a maple log; and his great head with its thatching
+of coarse iron-gray hair, though thrust slightly forward, seemed set
+immovably upon them.
+
+He presented such a forbidding appearance that I was of two minds about
+addressing him. Dour he was indeed! Nor shall I ever forget how he
+looked when I spoke to him. He stopped short there in the road. On his
+big square nose he wore a pair of curious spring-bowed glasses with
+black rims. For a moment he looked at me through these glasses, raising
+his chin a little, and then, deliberately wrinkling his nose, they fell
+off and dangled at the length of the faded cord by which they were hung.
+There was something almost uncanny about this peculiar habit of his and
+of the way in which, afterward, he looked at me from under his bushy
+gray brows. This was in truth the very man of the neighbourhood
+portrait.
+
+"I am a new settler here," I said, "and I've been interested in looking
+at your wonderful hedge."
+
+The old man's eyes rested upon me a moment with a mingled look of
+suspicion and hostility.
+
+"So you've heard o' me," he said in a high-pitched voice, "and you've
+heard o' my hedge."
+
+Again he paused and looked me over. "Well," he said, with an
+indescribably harsh, cackling laugh, "I warrant you've heard nothing
+good o' me down there. I'm a skinflint, ain't I? I'm a hard citizen,
+ain't I? I grind the faces o' the poor, don't I?"
+
+At first his words were marked by a sort of bitter humour, but as
+he continued to speak his voice rose higher and higher until it was
+positively menacing.
+
+There were just two things I could do--haul down the flag and retreat
+ingloriously, or face the music. With a sudden sense of rising
+spirits--for such things do not often happen to a man in a quiet country
+road--I paused a moment, looking him square in the eye.
+
+"Yes," I said, with great deliberation, "you've given me just about the
+neighborhood picture of yourself as I have had it. They do say you are
+a skinflint, yes, and a hard man. They say that you are rich and
+friendless; they say that while you are a just man, you do not know
+mercy. These are terrible things to say of any man if they are true."
+
+I paused. The old man looked for a moment as though he were going to
+strike me with his stick, but he neither stirred nor spoke. It was
+evidently a wholly new experience for him.
+
+"Yes," I said, "you are not popular in this community, but what do
+you suppose I care about that? I'm interested in your hedge. What I'm
+curious to know--and I might as well tell you frankly--is how such a
+man as you are reputed to be could grow such an extraordinary hedge. You
+must have been at it a very long time."
+
+I was surprised at the effect of my words. The old man turned
+partly aside and looked for a moment along the proud and flaunting
+embattlements of the green marvel before us. Then he said in a moderate
+voice:
+
+"It's a putty good hedge, a putty good hedge."
+
+"I've got him," I thought exultantly, "I've got him!"
+
+"How long ago did you start it?" I pursued my advantage eagerly.
+
+"Thirty-two years come spring," said he.
+
+"Thirty-two years!" I repeated; "you've been at it a long time."
+
+With that I plied him with questions in the liveliest manner, and in
+five minutes I had the gruff old fellow stumping along at my side and
+pointing out the various notable-features of his wonderful creation.
+His suppressed excitement was quite wonderful to see. He would point his
+hickory stick with a poking motion, and, when he looked up, instead of
+throwing back his big, rough head, he bent at the hips, thus imparting
+an impression of astonishing solidity.
+
+"It took me all o' ten years to get that bell right," he said, and,
+"Take a look at that arch: now what is your opinion o' that?"
+
+Once, in the midst of our conversation, he checked himself abruptly and
+looked around at me with a sudden dark expression of suspicion. I saw
+exactly what lay in his mind, but I continued my questioning as though
+I perceived no change in him. It was only momentary, however, and he was
+soon as much interested as before. He talked as though he had not had
+such an opportunity before in years--and I doubt whether he had. It
+was plain to see that if any one ever loved anything in this world, Old
+Toombs loved that hedge of his. Think of it, indeed! He had lived with
+it, nurtured it, clipped it, groomed it--for thirty-two years.
+
+So we walked down the sloping field within the hedge, and it seemed
+as though one of the deep mysteries of human nature was opening there
+before me. What strange things men set their hearts upon!
+
+Thus, presently, we came nearly to the farther end of the hedge. Here
+the old man stopped and turned around, facing me.
+
+"Do you see that valley?" he asked. "Do you see that slopin' valley up
+through the meadow?"
+
+His voice rose suddenly to a sort of high-pitched violence.
+
+"That' passel o' hounds up there," he said, "want to build a road down
+my valley."
+
+He drew his breath fiercely.
+
+"They want to build a road through my land. They want to ruin my
+farm--they want to cut down my hedge. I'll fight 'em. I'll fight 'em.
+I'll show 'em yet!"
+
+It was appalling. His face grew purple, his eyes narrowed to pin points
+and grew red and angry--like the eyes of an infuriated boar. His hands
+shook. Suddenly he turned upon me, poising his stick in his hand, and
+said violently.
+
+"And who are you? Who are you? Are you one of these surveyor fellows?"
+
+"My name," I answered as quietly as I could, "is Grayson. I live on the
+old Mather farm. I am not in the least interested in any of your road
+troubles."
+
+He looked at me a moment more, and then seemed to shake himself or
+shudder, his eyes dropped away and he began walking toward his house.
+He had taken only a few steps, however, before he turned, and, without
+looking at me, asked if I would like to see the tools he used for
+trimming his hedge. When I hesitated, for I was decidedly uncomfortable,
+he came up to me and laid his hand awkwardly on my arm.
+
+"You'll see something, I warrant, you never see before."
+
+It was so evident that he regretted his outbreak that I followed him,
+and he showed me an odd double ladder set on low wheels which he said he
+used in trimming the higher parts of his hedge.
+
+"It's my own invention," he said with pride.
+
+"And that"--he pointed as we came out of the tool shed--"is my house--a
+good house. I planned it all myself. I never needed to take lessons of
+any carpenter I ever see. And there's my barns. What do you think o' my
+barns? Ever see any bigger ones? They ain't any bigger in this country
+than Old Toombs's barns. They don't like Old Toombs, but they ain't any
+of one of 'em can ekal his barns!"
+
+He followed me down to the roadside now quite loquacious. Even after I
+had thanked him and started to go he called after me.
+
+When I stopped he came forward hesitatingly--and I had the impressions,
+suddenly, and for the first time that he was an old man. It may have
+been the result of his sudden fierce explosion of anger, but his hand
+shook, his face was pale, and he seemed somehow broken.
+
+"You--you like my hedge?" he asked.
+
+"It is certainly wonderful hedge," I said. "I never have seen anything
+like it?"
+
+"The' AIN'T nothing like it," he responded, quickly. "The' ain't nothing
+like it anywhere."
+
+In the twilight as I passed onward I saw the lonely figure of the old
+man moving with his hickory stick up the pathway to his lonely house.
+The poor rich old man!
+
+"He thinks he can live wholly to himself," I said aloud.
+
+I thought, as I tramped homeward, of our friendly and kindly community,
+of how we often come together of an evening with skylarking and
+laughter, of how we weep with one another, of how we join in making
+better roads and better schools, and building up the Scotch Preacher's
+friendly little church. And in all these things Old Toombs has never had
+a part. He is not even missed.
+
+
+As a matter of fact, I reflected, and this is a strange, deep thing, no
+man is in reality more dependent upon the community which he despises
+and holds at arm's length than this same Old Nathan Toombs. Everything
+he has, everything he does, gives evidence of it. And I don't mean this
+in any mere material sense, though of course his wealth and his farm
+would mean no more than the stones in his hills to him if he did not
+have us here around him. Without our work, our buying, our selling, our
+governing, his dollars would be dust. But we are still more necessary
+to him in other ways: the unfriendly man is usually the one who
+demands most from his neighbours. Thus, if he have not people's love or
+confidence, then he will smite them until they fear him, or admire him,
+or hate him. Oh, no man, however may try, can hold himself aloof!
+
+I came home deeply stirred from my visit with Old Toombs and lost no
+time in making further inquiries. I learned, speedily, that there was
+indeed something in the old man's dread of a road being built through
+his farm. The case was already in the courts. His farm was a very old
+one and extensive, and of recent years a large settlement of small
+farmers had been developing the rougher lands in the upper part of the
+townships called the Swan Hill district. Their only way to reach the
+railroad was by a rocky, winding road among the 'hills,' while their
+outlet was down a gently sloping valley through Old Toombs's farm. They
+were now so numerous and politically important that they had stirred up
+the town authorities. A proposition had been made to Old Toombs for
+a right-of-way; they argued with him that it was a good thing for the
+whole country, that it would enhance the values of his own upper lands,
+and that they would pay him far more for a right-of-way than the land
+was actually worth, but he had spurned them--I can imagine with what
+vehemence.
+
+"Let 'em drive round," he said. "Didn't they know what they'd have to do
+when they settled up there? What a passel o' curs! They can keep off o'
+my land, or I'll have the law on 'em."
+
+And thus the matter came to the courts with the town attempting to
+condemn the land for a road through Old Toombs's farm.
+
+"What can we do?" asked the Scotch Preacher, who was deeply distressed
+by the bitterness of feeling displayed. "There is no getting to the man.
+He will listen to no one."
+
+At one time I thought of going over and talking with Old Toombs myself,
+for it seemed that I had been able to get nearer to him than any one
+had in a long time. But I dreaded it. I kept dallying--for what, indeed,
+could I have said to him? If he had been suspicious of me before,
+how much more hostile he might be when I expressed an interest in his
+difficulties. As to reaching the Swan Hill settlers, they were now
+aroused to an implacable state of bitterness; and they had the people of
+the whole community with them, for no one liked Old Toombs.
+
+Thus while I hesitated time passed and my next meeting with Old Toombs,
+instead of being premeditated, came about quite unexpectedly. I was
+walking in the town road late one afternoon when I heard a wagon
+rattling behind me, and then, quite suddenly, a shouted, "Whoa."
+
+Looking around, I saw Old Toombs, his great solid figure mounted high
+on the wagon seat, the reins held fast in the fingers of one hand. I was
+struck by the strange expression in his face--a sort of grim exaltation.
+As I stepped aside he burst out in a loud, shrill, cackling laugh:
+
+"He-he-he--he-he-he--"
+
+I was too astonished to speak at once. Ordinarily when I meet any one in
+the town road it is in my heart to cry out to him,
+
+"Good morning, friend," or, "How are you, brother?" but I had no such
+prompting that day.
+
+"Git in, Grayson," he said; "git in, git in."
+
+I climbed up beside him, and he slapped me on the knee with another
+burst of shrill laughter.
+
+"They thought they had the old man," he said, starting up his horses.
+"They thought there weren't no law left in Israel. I showed 'em."
+
+I cannot convey the bitter triumphancy of his voice.
+
+"You mean the road case?" I asked.
+
+"Road case!" he exploded, "they wan't no road case; they didn't have no
+road case. I beat 'em. I says to 'em, 'What right hev any o' you on
+my property? Go round with you,' I says. Oh, I beat 'em. If they'd had
+their way, they'd 'a' cut through my hedge--the hounds!"
+
+
+When he set me down at my door, I had said hardly a word. There seemed
+nothing that could be said. I remember I stood for some time watching
+the old man as he rode away, his wagon jolting in the country road,
+his stout figure perched firmly in the seat. I went in with a sense of
+heaviness at the heart.
+
+"Harriet," I said, "there are some things in this world beyond human
+remedy."
+
+Two evenings later I was surprised to see the Scotch Preacher drive up
+to my gate and hastily tie his horse.
+
+"David," said he, "there's bad business afoot. A lot of the young
+fellows in Swan Hill are planning a raid on Old Toombs's hedge. They are
+coming down to-night."
+
+I got my hat and jumped in with him. We drove up the hilly road and out
+around Old Toombs's farm and thus came, near to the settlement. I had no
+conception of the bitterness that the lawsuit had engendered.
+
+"Where once you start men hating one another," said the Scotch Preacher,
+"there's utterly no end of it."
+
+I have seen our Scotch Preacher in many difficult places, but never have
+I seen him rise to greater heights than he did that night. It is not in
+his preaching that Doctor McAlway excels, but what a power he is among
+men! He was like some stern old giant, standing there and holding up the
+portals of civilization. I saw men melt under his words like wax; I saw
+wild young fellows subdued into quietude; I saw unwise old men set to
+thinking.
+
+"Man, man," he'd say, lapsing in his earnestness into the broad Scotch
+accent of his youth, "you canna' mean plunder, and destruction, and
+riot! You canna! Not in this neighbourhood!"
+
+"What about Old Toombs?" shouted one of the boys.
+
+I never shall forget how Doctor McAlway drew himself up nor the majesty
+that looked from his eye.
+
+"Old Toombs!" he said in a voice that thrilled one to the bone, "Old
+Toombs! Have you no faith, that you stand in the place of Almighty God
+and measure punishments?"
+
+Before we left it was past midnight and we drove home, almost silent, in
+the darkness.
+
+"Doctor McAlway," I said, "if Old Toombs could know the history of this
+night it might change his point of view."
+
+"I doot it," said the Scotch Preacher. "I doot it."
+
+The night passed serenely; the morning saw Old Toombs's hedge standing
+as gorgeous as ever. The community had again stepped aside and let Old
+Toombs have his way: they had let him alone, with all his great barns,
+his wide acres and his wonderful hedge. He probably never even knew what
+had threatened him that night, nor how the forces of religion, of social
+order, of neighbourliness in the community which he despised had, after
+all, held him safe. There is a supreme faith among common people--it is,
+indeed, the very taproot of democracy--that although the unfriendly one
+may persist long in his power and arrogance, there is a moving Force
+which commands events.
+
+I suppose if I were writing a mere story I should tell how Old Toombs
+was miraculously softened at the age of sixty-eight years, and came into
+new relationships with his neighbours, or else I should relate how the
+mills of God, grinding slowly, had crushed the recalcitrant human atom
+into dust.
+
+Either of these results conceivably might have happened--all things are
+possible--and being ingeniously related would somehow have answered
+a need in the human soul that the logic of events be constantly and
+conclusively demonstrated in the lives of individual men and women.
+
+But as a matter of fact, neither of these things did happen in this
+quiet community of ours. There exists, assuredly, a logic of events, oh,
+a terrible, irresistible logic of events, but it is careless of the span
+of any one man's life. We would like to have each man enjoy the sweets
+of his own virtues and suffer the lash of his own misdeeds--but it
+rarely so happens in life. No, it is the community which lives or dies,
+is regenerated or marred by the deeds of men.
+
+So Old Toombs continued to live. So he continued to buy more land, raise
+more cattle, collect more interest, and the wonderful hedge continued
+to flaunt its marvels still more notably upon the country road. To what
+end? Who knows? Who knows?
+
+I saw him afterward from time to time, tried to maintain some sort of
+friendly relations with him; but it seemed as the years passed that he
+grew ever lonelier and more bitter, and not only more friendless, but
+seemingly more incapable of friendliness. In times past I have seen
+what men call tragedies--I saw once a perfect young man die in his
+strength--but it seems to me I never knew anything more tragic than the
+life and death of Old Toombs. If it cannot be said of a man when he dies
+that either his nation, his state, his neighborhood, his family, or at
+least his wife or child, is better for his having lived, what CAN be
+said for him?
+
+Old Toombs is dead. Like Jehoram, King of Judah, of whom it is terribly
+said in the Book of Chronicles, "he departed without being desired."
+
+Of this story of Nathan Toombs we talked much and long there in the
+Ransome home. I was with them, as I said, about two days--kept inside
+most of the time by a driving spring rain which filled the valley with
+a pale gray mist and turned all the country roads into running streams.
+One morning, the weather having cleared, I swung my bag to my shoulder,
+and with much warmth of parting I set my face again to the free road and
+the open country.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. THE MAN POSSESSED
+
+I suppose I was predestined (and likewise foreordained) to reach the
+city sooner or later. My fate in that respect was settled for me when
+I placed my trust in the vagrant road. I thought for a time that I was
+more than a match for the Road, but I soon learned that the Road
+was more than a match for me. Sly? There's no name for it. Alluring,
+lovable, mysterious--as the heart of a woman. Many a time I followed
+the Road where it led through innocent meadows or climbed leisurely hill
+slopes only to find that it had crept around slyly and led me before I
+knew it into the back door of some busy town.
+
+Mostly in this country the towns squat low in the valleys, they lie in
+wait by the rivers, and often I scarcely know of their presence until
+I am so close upon them that I can smell the breath of their heated
+nostrils and hear their low growlings and grumblings.
+
+My fear of these lesser towns has never been profound. I have even been
+bold enough, when I came across one of them, to hasten straight through
+as though assured that Cerberus was securely chained; but I found,
+after a time, what I might indeed have guessed, that the Road, also led
+irresistibly to the lair of the Old Monster himself, the He-one of the
+species, where he lies upon the plain, lolling under his soiled gray
+blanket of smoke.
+
+It is wonderful to be safe at home again, to watch the tender, reddish
+brown shoots of the Virginia creeper reaching in at my study window, to
+see the green of my own quiet fields, to hear the peaceful clucking of
+the hens in the sunny dooryard--and Harriet humming at her work in the
+kitchen.
+
+
+When I left the Ransomes that fine spring morning, I had not the
+slightest presentiment of what the world held in store for me. After
+being a prisoner of the weather for so long, I took to the Road with
+fresh joy. All the fields were of a misty greenness and there were pools
+still shining in the road, but the air was deliciously clear, clean,
+and soft. I came through the hill country for three or four miles, even
+running down some of the steeper places for the very joy the motion gave
+me, the feel of the air on my face.
+
+Thus I came finally to the Great Road, and stood for a moment looking
+first this way, then that.
+
+"Where now?" I asked aloud.
+
+With an amusing sense of the possibilities that lay open before me, I
+closed my eyes, turned slowly around several times and then stopped.
+When I opened my eyes I was facing nearly southward: and that way I set
+out, not knowing in the least what Fortune had presided at that turning.
+If I had gone the other way--
+
+I walked vigorously for two or three hours, meeting or passing many
+people upon the busy road. Automobiles there were in plenty, and loaded
+wagons, and jolly families off for town, and a herdsman driving sheep,
+and small boys on their way to school with their dinner pails, and a
+gypsy wagon with lean, led horses following behind, and even a Jewish
+peddler with a crinkly black beard, whom I was on the very point of
+stopping.
+
+"I should like sometime to know a Jew," I said to myself.
+
+As I travelled, feeling like one who possesses hidden riches, I came
+quite without warning upon the beginning of my great adventure. I had
+been looking for a certain thing all the morning, first on one side
+of the road, then the other, and finally I was rewarded. There it was,
+nailed high upon tree, the curious, familiar sign:
+
+[ REST ]
+
+I stopped instantly. It seemed like an old friend.
+
+"Well," said I. "I'm not at all tired, but I want to be agreeable."
+
+With that I sat down on a convenient stone, took off my hat, wiped my
+forehead, and looked about me with satisfaction, for it was a pleasant
+country.
+
+I had not been sitting there above two minutes when my eyes fell upon
+one of the oddest specimens of humanity (I thought then) that ever I
+saw. He had been standing near the roadside, just under the tree upon
+which I had seen the sign, "Rest." My heart dotted and carried one.
+
+"The sign man himself!" I exclaimed.
+
+I arose instantly and walked down the road toward him.
+
+"A man has only to stop anywhere here," I said exultantly, "and things
+happen."
+
+The stranger's appearance was indeed extraordinary. He seemed at first
+glimpse to be about twice as large around the hips as he was at
+the shoulders, but this I soon discovered to be due to no natural
+avoir-dupois but to the prodigious number of soiled newspapers and
+magazines with which the low-hanging pockets of his overcoat were
+stuffed. For he was still wearing an old shabby overcoat though the
+weather was warm and bright--and on his head was an odd and outlandish
+hat. It was of fur, flat at the top, flat as a pie tin, with the
+moth-eaten earlaps turned up at the sides and looking exactly like small
+furry ears. These, with the round steel spectacles which he wore--the
+only distinctive feature of his countenance--gave him an indescribably
+droll appearance.
+
+"A fox!" I thought.
+
+Then I looked at him more closely.
+
+"No," said I, "an owl, an owl!"
+
+The stranger stepped out into the road and evidently awaited my
+approach. My first vivid impression of his face--I remember it afterward
+shining with a strange inward illumination--was not favourable. It was a
+deep-lined, scarred, worn-looking face, insignificant if not indeed ugly
+in its features, and yet, even at the first glance, revealing something
+inexplainable--incalculable--
+
+"Good day, friend," I said heartily.
+
+Without replying to my greeting, he asked:
+
+"Is this the road to Kilburn?"--with a faint flavour of foreignness in
+his words.
+
+"I think it is," I replied, and I noticed as he lifted his hand to thank
+me that one finger was missing and that the hand itself was cruelly
+twisted and scarred.
+
+The stranger instantly set off up the Road without giving me much more
+attention than he would have given any other signpost. I stood a moment
+looking after him--the wings of his overcoat beating about his legs and
+the small furry ears on his cap wagging gently.
+
+"There," said I aloud, "is a man who is actually going somewhere."
+
+So many men in this world are going nowhere in particular that when one
+comes along--even though he be amusing and insignificant--who is really
+(and passionately) going somewhere, what a stir he communicates to a
+dull world! We catch sparks of electricity from the very friction of his
+passage.
+
+It was so with this odd stranger. Though at one moment I could not help
+smiling at him, at the next I was following him.
+
+"It may be," said I to myself, "that this is really the sign man!"
+
+I felt like Captain Kidd under full sail to capture a treasure ship; and
+as I approached I was much agitated as to the best method of grappling
+and boarding. I finally decided, being a lover of bold methods, to let
+go my largest gun first--for moral effect.
+
+"So," said I, as I ran alongside, "you are the man who puts up the
+signs."
+
+He stopped and looked at me.
+
+"What signs?"
+
+"Why the sign 'Rest' along this road."
+
+He paused for some seconds with a perplexed expression on his face.
+
+"Then you are not the sign man?" I said.
+
+"No," he replied, "I ain't any sign man."
+
+I was not a little disappointed, but having made my attack, I determined
+to see if there was any treasure aboard--which, I suppose, should be the
+procedure of any well-regulated pirate.
+
+"I'm going this way myself," I said, "and if you have no objections--"
+
+He stood looking at me curiously, indeed suspiciously, through his round
+spectacles.
+
+"Have you got the passport?" he asked finally.
+
+"The passport!" I exclaimed, mystified in my turn.
+
+"Yes," said he, "the passport. Let me see your hand."
+
+When I held out my hand he looked at it closely for a moment, and then
+took it with a quick warm pressure in one of his, and gave it a little
+shake, in a way not quite American.
+
+"You are one of us," said he, "you work."
+
+I thought at first that it was a bit of pleasantry, and I was about
+to return it in kind when I saw plainly in his face a look of solemn
+intent.
+
+"So," he said, "we shall travel like comrades."
+
+He thrust his scarred hand through my arm, and we walked up the road
+side by side, his bulging pockets beating first against his legs and
+then against mine, quite impartially.
+
+"I think," said the stranger, "that we shall be arrested at Kilburn."
+
+"We shall!" I exclaimed with something, I admit, of a shock.
+
+"Yes," he said, "but it is all in the day's work."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+He stopped in the road and faced me. Throwing back his overcoat he
+pointed to a small red button on his coat lapel.
+
+"They don't want me in Kilburn," said he, "the mill men are strikin'
+there, and the bosses have got armed men on every corner. Oh, the
+capitalists are watchin' for me, all right."
+
+I cannot convey the strange excitement I felt. It seemed as though these
+words suddenly opened a whole new world around me--a world I had heard
+about for years, but never entered. And the tone in which he had used
+the word "capitalist!" I had almost to glance around to make sure that
+there were no ravening capitalists hiding behind the trees.
+
+"So you are a Socialist," I said.
+
+"Yes," he answered. "I'm one of those dangerous persons."
+
+First and last I have read much of Socialism, and thought about it, too,
+from the quiet angle of my farm among the hills, but this was the first
+time I had ever had a live Socialist on my arm. I could not have been
+more surprised if the stranger had said, "Yes, I am Theodore Roosevelt."
+
+One of the discoveries we keep making all our life long (provided we
+remain humble) is the humorous discovery of the ordinariness of the
+extraordinary. Here was this disrupter of society, this man of the
+red flag--here he was with his mild spectacled eyes and his furry ears
+wagging as he walked. It was unbelievable!--and the sun shining on him
+quite as impartially as it shone on me.
+
+Coming at last to a pleasant bit of woodland, where a stream ran under
+the roadway, I said:
+
+"Stranger, let's sit down and have a bite of luncheon."
+
+He began to expostulate, said he was expected in Kilburn.
+
+"Oh, I've plenty for two," I said, "and I can say, at least, that I am a
+firm believer in cooperation."
+
+Without more urging he followed me into the woods, where we sat down
+comfortably under a tree.
+
+Now, when I take a fine thick sandwich out of my bag, I always feel like
+making it a polite bow, and before I bite into a big brown doughnut, I
+am tempted to say, "By your leave, madam," and as for MINCE PIE-----Beau
+Brummel himself could not outdo me in respectful consideration. But
+Bill Hahn neither saw, nor smelled, nor, I think, tasted Mrs. Ransome's
+cookery. As soon as we sat down he began talking. From time to time
+he would reach out for another sandwich or doughnut or pickle (without
+knowing in the least which he was getting), and when that was gone some
+reflex impulse caused him to reach out for some more. When the last
+crumb of our lunch had disappeared Bill Hahn still reached out. His hand
+groped absently about, and coming in contact with no more doughnuts or
+pickles he withdrew it--and did not know, I think, that the meal was
+finished. (Confidentially, I have speculated on what might have happened
+if the supply had been unlimited!)
+
+But that was Bill Hahn. Once started on his talk, he never thought of
+food or clothing or shelter; but his eyes glowed, his face lighted up
+with a strange effulgence, and he quite lost himself upon the tide of
+his own oratory. I saw him afterward by a flare-light at the centre of a
+great crowd of men and women--but that is getting ahead of my story.
+
+His talk bristled with such words as "capitalism," "proletariat,"
+"class-consciousness"--and he spoke with fluency of "economic
+determinism" and "syndicalism." It was quite wonderful! And from time to
+time, he would bring in a smashing quotation from Aristotle, Napoleon,
+Karl Marx, or Eugene V. Debs, giving them all equal value, and he cited
+statistics!--oh, marvellous statistics, that never were on sea or land.
+
+Once he was so swept away by his own eloquence that he sprang to his
+feet and, raising one hand high above his head (quite unconscious that
+he was holding up a dill pickle), he worked through one of his most
+thrilling periods.
+
+Yes, I laughed, and yet there was so brave a simplicity about this odd,
+absurd little man that what I laughed at was only his outward appearance
+(and that he himself had no care for), and all the time I felt a growing
+respect and admiration for him. He was not only sincere, but he was
+genuinely simple--a much higher virtue, as Fenelon says. For while
+sincere people do not aim at appearing anything but what they are,
+they are always in fear of passing for something they are not. They are
+forever thinking about themselves, weighing all their words and thoughts
+and dwelling upon what they have done, in the fear of having done
+too much or too little, whereas simplicity, as Fenelon says, is an
+uprightness of soul which has ceased wholly to dwell upon itself or its
+actions. Thus there are plenty of sincere folk in the world but few who
+are simple.
+
+Well, the longer he talked, the less interested I was in what he said
+and the more fascinated I became in what he was. I felt a wistful
+interest in him: and I wanted to know what way he took to purge himself
+of himself. I think if I had been in that group nineteen hundred years
+ago, which surrounded the beggar who was born blind, but whose anointed
+eyes now looked out upon glories of the world, I should have been among
+the questioners:
+
+"What did he to thee? How opened he thine eyes?"
+
+I tried ineffectually several times to break the swift current of his
+oratory and finally succeeded (when he paused a moment to finish off a
+bit of pie crust).
+
+"You must have seen some hard experiences in your life," I said.
+
+"That I have," responded Bill Hahn, "the capitalistic system--"
+
+"Did you ever work in the mills yourself?" I interrupted hastily.
+
+"Boy and man," said Bill Hahn, "I worked in that hell for thirty-two
+years--The class-conscious proletariat have only to exert themselves--"
+
+"And your wife, did she work too--and your sons and daughters?"
+
+A spasm of pain crossed his face.
+
+"My daughter?" he said. "They killed her in the mills."
+
+It was appalling--the dead level of the tone in which he uttered those
+words--the monotone of an emotion long ago burned out, and yet leaving
+frightful scars.
+
+"My friend!" I exclaimed, and I could not help laying my hand on his
+arm.
+
+I had the feeling I often have with troubled children--an indescribable
+pity that they have had to pass through the valley of the shadow, and I
+not there to take them by the hand.
+
+"And was this--your daughter--what brought you to your present belief?"
+
+"No," said he, "oh, no. I was a Socialist, as you might say, from youth
+up. That is, I called myself a Socialist, but, comrade, I've learned
+this here truth: that it ain't of so much importance that you possess a
+belief, as that the belief possess you. Do you understand?"
+
+"I think," said I, "that I understand."
+
+Well, he told me his story, mostly in a curious, dull, detached way--as
+though he were speaking of some third person in whom he felt only a
+brotherly interest, but from time to time some incident or observation
+would flame up out of the narrative, like the opening of the door of a
+molten pit--so that the glare hurt one!--and then the story would die
+back again into quiet narrative.
+
+Like most working people he had never lived in the twentieth century at
+all. He was still in the feudal age, and his whole life had been a blind
+and ceaseless struggle for the bare necessaries of life, broken from
+time to time by fierce irregular wars called strikes. He had never known
+anything of a real self-governing commonwealth, and such progress as
+he and his kind had made was never the result of their citizenship,
+of their powers as voters, but grew out of the explosive and ragged
+upheavals, of their own half-organized societies and unions.
+
+It was against the "black people" he said, that he was first on strike
+back in the early nineties. He told me all about it, how he had been
+working in the mills pretty comfortably--he was young and strong then;
+with a fine growing family and a small home of his own.
+
+"It was as pretty a place as you would want to see," he said; "we grew
+cabbages and onions and turnips--everything grew fine!--in the garden
+behind the house."
+
+And then the "black people" began to come in, little by little at first,
+and then by the carload. By the "black people" he meant the people
+from Southern Europe, he called them "hordes"--"hordes and hordes
+of 'em"--Italians mostly, and they began getting into the mills and
+underbidding for the jobs, so that wages slowly went down and at the
+same time the machines were speeded up. It seems that many of these
+"black people" were single men or vigorous young married people with
+only themselves to support, while the old American workers were men with
+families and little homes to pay for, and plenty of old grandfathers and
+mothers, to say nothing of babies, depending upon them.
+
+"There wasn't a living for a decent family left," he said.
+
+So they struck--and he told me in his dull monotone of the long
+bitterness of that strike, the empty cupboards, the approach of winter
+with no coal for the stoves and no warm clothing for the children. He
+told me that many of the old workers began to leave the town (some bound
+for the larger cities, some for the Far West).
+
+"But," said he with a sudden outburst of emotion, "I couldn't leave. I
+had the woman and the children!"
+
+And presently the strike collapsed, and the workers rushed helter
+skelter back to the mills to get their old jobs. "Begging like whipped
+dogs," he said bitterly.
+
+Many of them found their places taken by the eager "black people," and
+many had to go to work at lower wages in poorer places--punished for the
+fight they had made.
+
+But he got along somehow, he said--"the woman was a good manager"--until
+one day he had the misfortune to get his hand caught in the machinery.
+It was a place which should have been protected with guards, but was
+not. He was laid up for several weeks, and the company, claiming that
+the accident was due to his own stupidity and carelessness, refused
+even to pay his wages while he was idle. Well, the family had to live
+somehow, and the woman and the daughter--"she was a little thing," he
+said, "and frail"--the woman and the daughter went into the mill. But
+even with this new source of income they began to fall behind. Money
+which should have gone toward making the last payments on their home
+(already long delayed by the strike) had now to go to the doctor and the
+grocer.
+
+"We had to live," said Bill Hahn.
+
+Again and again he used this same phrase, "We had to live!" as a sort of
+bedrock explanation for all the woes of life.
+
+After a time, with one finger gone and a frightfully scarred hand--he
+held it up for me to see--he went back into the mill.
+
+"But it kept getting worse and worse," said he, "and finally I couldn't
+stand it any longer."
+
+He and a group of friends got together secretly and tried to organize a
+union, tried to get the workmen together to improve their own condition;
+but in some way ("they had spies everywhere," he said) the manager
+learned of the attempt and one morning when he reported at the mill he
+was handed a slip asking him to call for his wages, that his help was no
+longer required.
+
+"I'd been with that one company for twenty years and four months," he
+said bitterly, "I'd helped in my small way to build it up, make it a big
+concern payin' 28 per cent. dividends every year; I'd given part of my
+right hand in doin' it--and they threw me out like an old shoe."
+
+He said he would have pulled up and gone away, but he still had the
+little home and the garden, and his wife and daughter were still at
+work, so he hung on grimly, trying to get some other job. "But what good
+is a man for any other sort of work," he said, "when he has been trained
+to the mills for thirty-two years!"
+
+It was not very long after that when the "great strike" began--indeed,
+it grew out of the organization which he had tried to launched--and
+Bill Hahn threw himself into it with all his strength. He was one of
+the leaders. I shall not attempt to repeat here his description of the
+bitter struggle, the coming of the soldiery, the street riots, the long
+lists of arrests ("some," said he, "got into jail on purpose, so
+that they could at least have enough to eat!"), the late meetings of
+strikers, the wild turmoil and excitement.
+
+Of all this he told me, and then he stopped suddenly, and after a long
+pause he said in a low voice:
+
+"Comrade, did ye ever see your wife and your sickly daughter and your
+kids sufferin' for bread to eat?"
+
+He paused again with a hard, dry sob in his voice.
+
+"Did ye ever see that?"
+
+"No," said I, very humbly, "I have never seen anything like that."
+
+He turned on me suddenly, and I shall never forget the look on his face,
+nor the blaze in his eyes:
+
+"Then what can you know about working-men?"
+
+What could I answer?
+
+A moment passed and then he said, as if a little remorseful at having
+turned thus on me:
+
+"Comrade, I tell you, the iron entered my soul--them days."
+
+It seems that the leaders of the strike were mostly old employees like
+Bill Hahn, and the company had conceived the idea that if these men
+could be eliminated the organization would collapse, and the strikers be
+forced back to work. One day Bill Hahn found that proceedings had been
+started to turn him out of his home, upon which he had not been able to
+keep up his payments, and at the same time the merchant, of whom he had
+been a respected customer for years, refused to give him any further
+credit.
+
+"But we lived somehow," he said, "we lived and we fought."
+
+It was then that he began to see clearly what it all meant. He said he
+made a great discovery: that the "black people" against whom they had
+struck in 1894 were not to blame!
+
+"I tell you," said he, "we found when we got started that them black
+people--we used to call 'em dagoes--were just workin' people like
+us--and in hell with us. They were good soldiers, them Eyetalians and
+Poles and Syrians, they fought with us to the end."
+
+I shall not soon forget the intensely dramatic but perfectly simple way
+in which he told me how he came, as he said, "to see the true light."
+Holding up his maimed right hand (that trembled a little), he pointed
+one finger upward.
+
+"I seen the big hand in the sky," he said, "I seen it as clear as
+daylight."
+
+He said he saw at last what Socialism meant. One day he went home from a
+strikers' meeting--one of the last, for the men were worn out with
+their long struggle. It was a bitter cold day, and he was completely
+discouraged. When he reached his own street he saw a pile of household
+goods on the sidewalk in front of his home. He saw his wife there
+wringing her hands and crying. He said he could not take a step further,
+but sat down on a neighbour's porch and looked and looked. "It was
+curious," he said, "but the only thing I could see or think about was
+our old family clock which they had stuck on top of the pile, half
+tipped over. It looked odd and I wanted to set it up straight. It was
+the clock we bought when we were married, and we'd had it about twenty
+years on the mantel in the livin'-room. It was a good clock," he said.
+
+He paused and then smiled a little.
+
+"I never have figured it out why I should have been able to think of
+nothing but that clock," he said, "but so it was."
+
+When he got home, he found his frail daughter just coming out of the
+empty house, "coughing as though she was dyin'." Something, he said,
+seemed to stop inside him. Those were his words: "Something seemed to
+stop inside 'o me."
+
+He turned away without saying a word, walked back to strike
+headquarters, borrowed a revolver from a friend, and started out along
+the main road which led into the better part of the town.
+
+"Did you ever hear o' Robert Winter?" he asked.
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"Well, Robert Winter was the biggest gun of 'em all. He owned the mills
+there and the largest store and the newspaper--he pretty nearly owned
+the town."
+
+He told me much more about Robert Winter which betrayed still a curious
+sort of feudal admiration for him, and for his great place and power;
+but I need not dwell on it here. He told me how he climbed through a
+hemlock hedge (for the stone gateway was guarded) and walked through the
+snow toward the great house.
+
+"An' all the time I seemed to be seein' my daughter Margy right there
+before my eyes coughing as though she was dyin'."
+
+It was just nightfall and all the windows were alight. He crept up to a
+clump of bushes under a window and waited there a moment while he drew
+out and cocked his revolver. Then he slowly reached upward until his
+head cleared the sill and he could look into the room. "A big, warm
+room," he described it.
+
+"Comrade," said he, "I had murder in my heart that night."
+
+So he stood there looking in with the revolver ready cocked in his hand.
+
+"And what do you think I seen there?" he asked.
+
+"I cannot guess," I said.
+
+"Well," said Bill Hahn, "I seen the great Robert Winter that we had been
+fighting for five long months--and he was down on his hands and knees on
+the carpet--he had his little daughter on his back--and he was creepin'
+about with her--an' she was laughin'."
+
+Bill Hahn paused.
+
+"I had a bead on him," he said, "but I couldn't do it--I just couldn't
+do it."
+
+He came away all weak and trembling and cold, and, "Comrade," he said,
+"I was cryin' like a baby, and didn't know why."
+
+The next day the strike collapsed and there was the familiar stampede
+for work--but Bill Hahn did not go back. He knew it would be useless. A
+week later his frail daughter died and was buried in the paupers field.
+
+"She was as truly killed," he said, "as though some one had fired a
+bullet at her through a window."
+
+"And what did you do after that?" I asked, when he had paused for a long
+time with his chin on his breast.
+
+"Well," said he, "I did a lot of thinking them days, and I says to
+myself: 'This thing is wrong, and I will go out and stop it--I will go
+out and stop it.'"
+
+As he uttered these words, I looked at him curiously--his absurd flat
+fur hat with the moth-eaten ears, the old bulging overcoat, the
+round spectacles, the scarred, insignificant face--he seemed somehow
+transformed, a person elevated above himself, the tool of some vast
+incalculable force.
+
+I shall never forget the phrase he used to describe his own feelings
+when he had reached this astonishing decision to go out and stop the
+wrongs of the World. He said he "began to feel all clean inside."
+
+"I see it didn't matter what become o' me, and I began to feel all clean
+inside."
+
+It seemed, he explained, as though something big and strong had got hold
+of him, and he began to be happy.
+
+"Since then," he said in a low voice, "I've been happier than I ever
+was before in all my life. I ain't got any family, nor any home--rightly
+speakin'--nor any money, but, comrade, you see here in front of you, a
+happy man."
+
+When he had finished his story we sat quiet for some time.
+
+"Well," said he, finally, "I must be goin'. The committee will wonder
+what's become o' me."
+
+I followed him out to the road. There I put my hand on his shoulder, and
+said:
+
+"Bill Hahn, you are a better man than I am."
+
+He smiled, a beautiful smile, and we walked off together down the road.
+
+I wish I had gone on with him at that time into the city, but somehow I
+could not do it. I stopped near the top of the hill where one can see in
+the distance that smoky huddle of buildings which is known as Kilburn,
+and though he urged me, I turned aside and sat down in the edge of a
+meadow. There were many things I wanted to think about, to get clear in
+my mind.
+
+As I sat looking out toward that great city, I saw three men walking
+in the white road. As I watched them, I could see them coming quickly,
+eagerly. Presently they threw up their hands and evidently began to
+shout, though I could not hear what they said. At that moment I saw my
+friend Bill Hahn running in the road, his coat skirts flapping heavily
+about his legs. When they met they almost fell into another's arms.
+
+I suppose it was so that the early Christians, those who hid in the
+Roman catacombs, were wont to greet one another.
+
+
+So I sat thinking.
+
+"A man," I said to myself, "who can regard himself as a function, not an
+end of creation, has arrived."
+
+After a time I got up and walked down the hill--some strange force
+carrying me onward--and came thus to the city of Kilburn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. I AM CAUGHT UP INTO LIFE
+
+I can scarcely convey in written words the whirling emotions I felt
+when I entered the city of Kilburn. Every sight, every sound, recalled
+vividly and painfully the unhappy years I had once spent in another and
+greater city. Every mingled odour of the streets--and there is nothing
+that will so surely re-create (for me) the inner emotion of a time or
+place as a remembered odour--brought back to me the incidents of that
+immemorial existence.
+
+For a time, I confess it frankly here, I felt afraid. More than once I
+stopped short in the street where I was walking, and considered turning
+about and making again for the open country. Some there may be who will
+feel that I am exaggerating my sensations and impressions, but they do
+not know of my memories of a former life, nor of how, many years ago,
+I left the city quite defeated, glad indeed that I was escaping, and
+thinking (as I have related elsewhere) that I should never again set
+foot upon a paved street. These things went deep with me. Only the other
+day, when a friend asked me how old I was, I responded instantly--our
+unpremeditated words are usually truest--with the date of my arrival at
+this farm.
+
+"Then you are only ten years old!" he exclaimed with a laugh, thinking I
+was joking.
+
+"Well," I said, "I am counting only the years worth living."
+
+No; I existed, but I never really lived until I was reborn, that
+wonderful summer here among these hills.
+
+I said I felt afraid in the streets of Kilburn, but it was no physical
+fear. Who could be safer in a city than the man who has not a penny in
+his pockets? It was rather a strange, deep, spiritual shrinking. There
+seemed something so irresistible about this life of the city, so utterly
+overpowering. I had a sense of being smaller than I had previously
+felt myself, that in some way my personality, all that was strong or
+interesting or original about me, was being smudged over, rubbed out.
+In the country I had in some measure come to command life, but here,
+it seemed to me, life was commanding me and crushing me down. It is a
+difficult thing to describe: I never felt just that way before.
+
+I stopped at last on the main street of Kilburn in the very heart of
+the town. I stopped because it seemed necessary to me, like a man in a
+flood, to touch bottom, to get hold upon something immovable and stable.
+It was just at that hour of evening when the stores and shops are
+pouring forth their rivulets of humanity to join the vast flood of the
+streets. I stepped quickly aside into a niche near the corner of an
+immense building of brick and steel and glass, and there I stood with my
+back to the wall, and I watched the restless, whirling, torrential tide
+of the streets. I felt again, as I had not felt it before in years,
+the mysterious urge of the city--the sense of unending, overpowering
+movement.
+
+There was another strange, indeed uncanny, sensation that began to creep
+over me as I stood there. Though hundreds upon hundreds of men and women
+were passing me every minute, not one of them seemed to see me. Most
+of them did not even look in my direction, and those who did turn their
+eyes toward me see me to glance through me to the building behind. I
+wonder if this is at all a common experience, or whether I was unduly
+sensitive that day, unduly wrought up? I began to feel like one clad in
+garments of invisibility. I could see, but was not seen. I could feel,
+but was not felt. In the country there are few who would not stop to
+speak to me, or at least appraise me with their eyes; but here I was a
+wraith, a ghost--not a palpable human being at all. For a moment I felt
+unutterably lonely.
+
+It is this way with me. When I have reached the very depths of any
+serious situation or tragic emotion, something within me seems at last
+to stop--how shall I describe it?--and I rebound suddenly and see
+the world, as it were, double--see that my condition instead of being
+serious or tragic is in reality amusing--and I usually came out of it
+with an utterly absurd or whimsical idea. It was so upon this occasion.
+I think it was the image of my robust self as a wraith that did it.
+
+"After all," I said aloud taking a firm hold on the good hard flesh of
+one of my legs, "this is positively David Grayson."
+
+I looked out again into that tide of faces--interesting, tired, passive,
+smiling, sad, but above all, preoccupied faces.
+
+"No one," I thought, "seems to know that David Grayson has come to
+town."
+
+I had the sudden, almost irresistible notion of climbing up a step near
+me, holding up one hand, and crying out:
+
+"Here I am, my friends. I am David Grayson. I am real and solid and
+opaque; I have plenty of red blood running in my veins. I assure you
+that I am a person well worth knowing."
+
+I should really have enjoyed some such outlandish enterprise, and I am
+not at all sure yet that it would not have brought me adventures and
+made me friends worth while. We fail far more often by under-daring than
+by over-daring.
+
+But this imaginary object had the result, at least, of giving me a new
+grip on things. I began to look out upon the amazing spectacle before
+me in a different mood. It was exactly like some enormous anthill into
+which an idle traveller had thrust his cane. Everywhere the ants were
+running out of their tunnels and burrows, many carrying burdens and
+giving one strangely the impression that while they were intensely alive
+and active, not more than half of them had any clear idea of where they
+were going. And serious, deadly serious, in their haste! I felt a strong
+inclination to stop a few of them and say:
+
+"Friends, cheer up. It isn't half as bad as you think it is. Cheer up!"
+
+After a time the severity of the human flood began to abate, and here
+and there at the bottom of that gulch of a street, which had begun to
+fill with soft, bluish-gray shadows, the evening lights a appeared. The
+air had grown cooler; in the distance around a corner I heard a street
+organ break suddenly and joyously into the lively strains of "The
+Wearin' o' the Green."
+
+I stepped out into the street with quite a new feeling of adventure. And
+as if to testify that I was now a visible person a sharp-eyed newsboy
+discovered me--the first human being in Kilburn who had actually seen
+me--and came up with a paper in his hand.
+
+"Herald, boss?"
+
+I was interested in the shrewd, world-wise, humorous look in the
+urchin's eyes.
+
+"No," I began, with the full intent of bantering him into some sort of
+acquaintance; but he evidently measured my purchasing capacity quite
+accurately, for he turned like a flash to another customer. "Herald,
+boss?"
+
+"You'll have to step lively, David Grayson," I said to myself, "if you
+get aboard in this city."
+
+A slouchy negro with a cigarette in his fingers glanced at me in passing
+and then, hesitating, turned quickly toward me.
+
+"Got a match, boss?"
+
+I gave him a match.
+
+"Thank you, boss," and he passed on down the street.
+
+"I seem to be 'boss' around here," I said.
+
+This contact, slight as it was, gave me a feeling of warmth, removed a
+little the sensation of aloofness I had felt, and I strolled slowly down
+the street, looking in at the gay windows, now ablaze with lights, and
+watching the really wonderful procession of vehicles of all shapes and
+sizes that rattled by on the pavement. Even at that hour of the day I
+think there were more of them in one minute than I see in a whole month
+at my farm.
+
+It's a great thing to wear shabby clothes and an old hat. Some of the
+best things I have ever known, like these experiences of the streets,
+have resulted from coming up to life from underneath; of being taken for
+less than I am rather than for more than I am.
+
+I did not always believe in this doctrine. For many years--the years
+before I was rightly born into this alluring world--I tried quite the
+opposite course. I was constantly attempting to come down to life from
+above. Instead of being content to carry through life a sufficiently
+wonderful being named David Grayson I tried desperately to set up and
+support a sort of dummy creature which, so clad, so housed, so fed,
+should appear to be what I thought David Grayson ought to appear in the
+eyes of the world. Oh, I spent quite a lifetime trying to satisfy other
+people!
+
+Once I remember staying at home, in bed, reading "Huckleberry Finn,"
+while I sent my trousers out to be mended.
+
+Well, that dummy Grayson perished in a cornfield. His empty coat served
+well for a scarecrow. A wisp of straw stuck out through a hole in his
+finest hat.
+
+And I--the man within--I escaped, and have been out freely upon the
+great adventure of life.
+
+If a shabby coat (and I speak here also symbolically, not forgetful of
+spiritual significances) lets you into the adventurous world of
+those who are poor it does not on the other hand rob you of any true
+friendship among those who are rich or mighty. I say true friendship,
+for unless a man who is rich and mighty is able to see through my shabby
+coat (as I see through his fine one), I shall gain nothing by knowing
+him.
+
+I've permitted myself all this digression--left myself walking alone
+there in the streets of Kilburn while I philosophized upon the ways
+and means of life--not without design, for I could have had no such
+experiences as I did have in Kilburn if I had worn a better coat or
+carried upon me the evidences of security in life.
+
+I think I have already remarked upon the extraordinary enlivenment of
+wits which comes to the man who has been without a meal or so and does
+not know when or where he is again to break his fast. Try it, friend and
+see! It was already getting along in the evening, and I knew or supposed
+I knew no one in Kilburn save only Bill Hahn, Socialist who was little
+better off than I was.
+
+In this emergency my mind began to work swiftly. A score of fascinating
+plans for getting my supper and a bed to sleep in flashed through my
+mind.
+
+"Why," said I, "when I come to think of it, I'm comparatively rich. I'll
+warrant there are plenty of places in Kilburn, and good ones, too, where
+I could barter a chapter of Montaigne and a little good conversation
+for a first-rate supper, and I've no doubt that I could whistle up a bed
+almost anywhere!"
+
+I thought of a little motto I often repeat to myself:
+
+TO KNOW LIFE, BEGIN ANYWHERE!
+
+There were several people on the streets of Kilburn that night who don't
+know yet how very near they were to being boarded by a somewhat shabby
+looking farmer who would have offered them, let us say, a notable
+musical production called "Old Dan Tucker," exquisitely performed on a
+tin whistle, in exchange for a good honest supper.
+
+There was one man in particular--a fine, pompous citizen who came down
+the street swinging his cane and looking as though the universe was a
+sort of Christmas turkey, lying all brown and sizzling before him ready
+to be carved--a fine pompous citizen who never realized how nearly Fate
+with a battered volume of Montaigne in one hand and a tin whistle in the
+other--came to pouncing upon him that evening! And I am firmly convinced
+that if I had attacked him with the Great Particular Word he would have
+carved me off a juicy slice of the white breast meat.
+
+"I'm getting hungry," I said; "I must find Bill Hahn!"
+
+I had turned down a side street, and seeing there in front of a building
+a number of lounging men with two or three cabs or carriages standing
+nearby in the street I walked up to them. It was a livery barn.
+
+Now I like all sorts of out-of-door people: I seem to be related to them
+through horses and cattle and cold winds and sunshine. I like them and
+understand them, and they seem to like me and understand me. So I walked
+up to the group of jolly drivers and stablemen intending to ask my
+directions. The talking died out and they all turned to look at me. I
+suppose I was not altogether a familiar type there in the city streets.
+My bag, especially, seemed to set me apart as a curious person.
+
+"Friends," I said, "I am a farmer--"
+
+They all broke out laughing; they seemed to know it already! I was just
+a little taken aback, but I laughed, too, knowing that there was a way
+of getting at them if only I could find it.
+
+"It may surprise you," I said, "but this is the first time in some dozen
+years that I've been in a big city like this."
+
+"You hadn't 'ave told us, partner!" said one of them, evidently the wit
+of the group, in a rich Irish brogue.
+
+"Well," I responded, laughing with the best of them, "you've been living
+right here all the time, and don't realize how amusing and curious the
+city looks to me. Why, I feel as though I had been away sleeping for
+twenty years, like Rip Van Winkle. When I left the city there was
+scarcely an automobile to be seen anywhere--and now look at them
+snorting through the streets. I counted twenty-two passing that corner
+up there in five minutes by the clock."
+
+This was a fortunate remark, for I found instantly that the invasion
+of the automobile was a matter of tremendous import to such Knights of
+Bucephalus as these.
+
+At first the wit interrupted me with amusing remarks, as wits will, but
+I soon had him as quiet as the others. For I have found the things that
+chiefly interest people are the things they already know about--provided
+you show them that these common things are still mysterious, still
+miraculous, as indeed they are.
+
+After a time some one pushed me a stable stool and I sat down among
+them, and we had quite a conversation, which finally developed into an
+amusing comparison (I wish I had room to repeat it here) between the
+city and the country. I told them something about my farm, how much I
+enjoyed it, and what a wonderful free life one had in the country. In
+this I was really taking an unfair advantage of them, for I was trading
+on the fact that every man, down deep in his heart, has more or less of
+an instinct to get back to the soil--at least all outdoor men have. And
+when I described the simplest things about my barn, and the cattle and
+pigs, and the bees--and the good things we have to eat--I had every one
+of them leaning forward and hanging on my words.
+
+Harriet sometimes laughs at me for the way I celebrate farm life.
+She says all my apples are the size of Hubbard squashes, my eggs all
+double-yolked, and my cornfields tropical jungles. Practical Harriet! My
+apples may not ALL be the size of Hubbard squashes, but they are good,
+sizable apples, and as for flavour--all the spices of Arcady--! And I
+believe, I KNOW, from my own experience that these fields and hills are
+capable of healing men's souls. And when I see people wandering around
+a lonesome city like Kilburn, with never a soft bit of soil to put their
+heels into, nor a green thing to cultivate, nor any corn or apples or
+honey to harvest, I feel--well, that they are wasting their time.
+
+(It's a fact, Harriet!)
+
+
+Indeed I had the most curious experience with my friend the wit--his
+name I soon learned was Healy--a jolly, round, red-nosed, outdoor chap
+with fists that looked like small-sized hams, and a rich, warm Irish
+voice. At first he was inclined to use me as the ready butt of his
+lively mind, but presently he became so much interested in what I was
+saying that he sat squarely in front of me with both his jolly eyes and
+his smiling mouth wide open.
+
+"If ever you pass my way," I said to him, "just drop in and I'll give
+you a dinner of baked beans"--and I smacked--"and home made bread" and I
+smacked again--"and pumpkin pie"--and I smacked a third time--"that will
+make your mouth water."
+
+All this smacking and the description of baked beans and pumpkin pie
+had an odd counter effect upon ME; for I suddenly recalled my own tragic
+state. So I jumped up quickly and asked directions for getting down to
+the mill neighbourhood, where I hoped to find Bill Hahn. My friend Healy
+instantly volunteered the information.
+
+"And now," I said, "I want to ask a small favour of you. I'm looking for
+a friend, and I'd like to leave my bag here for the night."
+
+"Sure, sure," said the Irishman heartily. "Put it there in the
+office--on top o' the desk. It'll be all right."
+
+So I put it in the office and was about to say good-bye, when my friend
+said to me:
+
+"Come in, partner, and have a drink before you go"--and he pointed to a
+nearby saloon.
+
+"Thank you," I answered heartily, for I knew it was as fine a bit of
+hospitality as he could offer me, "thank you, but I must find my friend
+before it gets too late."
+
+"Aw, come on now," he cried, taking my arm. "Sure you'll be better off
+for a bit o' warmth inside."
+
+I had hard work to get away from them, and I am as sure as can be that
+they would have found supper and a bed for me if they had known I needed
+either.
+
+"Come agin," Healy shouted after me, "we're glad to see a farmer any
+toime."
+
+My way led me quickly out of the well-groomed and glittering main
+streets of the town. I passed first through several blocks of quiet
+residences, and then came to a street near the river which was garishly
+lighted, and crowded with small, poor shops and stores, with a saloon on
+nearly every corner. I passed a huge, dark, silent box of a mill, and I
+saw what I never saw before in a city, armed men guarding the streets.
+
+Although it was growing late--it was after nine o'clock--crowds
+of people were still parading the streets, and there was something
+intangibly restless, something tense, in the very atmosphere of the
+neighbourhood. It was very plain that I had reached the strike district.
+I was about to make some further inquiries for the headquarters of the
+mill men or for Bill Hahn personally, when I saw, not far ahead of me, a
+black crowd of people reaching out into the street. Drawing nearer I
+saw that an open space or block between two rows of houses was literally
+black with human beings, and in the centre on a raised platform, under a
+gasolene flare, I beheld my friend of the road, Bill Hahn. The overcoat
+and the hat with the furry ears had disappeared, and the little man
+stood there bare-headed, before that great audience.
+
+My experience in the world is limited, but I have never heard anything
+like that speech for sheer power. It was as unruly and powerful and
+resistless as life itself. It was not like any other speech I ever
+heard, for it was no mere giving out by the orator of ideas and thoughts
+and feelings of his own. It seemed rather--how shall I describe it?--as
+though the speaker was looking into the very hearts of that vast
+gathering of poor men and poor women and merely telling them what
+they themselves felt, but could not tell. And I shall never forget the
+breathless hush of the people or the quality of their responses to the
+orator's words. It was as though they said, "Yes, yes" with a feeling of
+vast relief--"Yes, yes--at last our own hopes and fears and desires are
+being uttered--yes, yes."
+
+As for the orator himself, he held up one maimed hand and leaned over
+the edge of the platform, and his undistinguished face glowed with the
+white light of a great passion within. The man had utterly forgotten
+himself.
+
+I confess, among those eager working people, clad in their poor
+garments, I confess I was profoundly moved. Faith is not so bounteous a
+commodity in this world that we can afford to treat even its unfamiliar
+manifestations with contempt. And when a movement is hot with life, when
+it stirs common men to their depths, look out! look out!
+
+Up to that time I had never known much of the practical workings of
+Socialism; and the main contention of its philosophy has never accorded
+wholly with my experience in life.
+
+But the Socialism of to-day is no mere abstraction--as it was, perhaps,
+in the days of Brook Farm. It is a mode of action. Men whose view of
+life is perfectly balanced rarely soil themselves with the dust of
+battle. The heat necessary to produce social conflict (and social
+progress--who knows?) is generated by a supreme faith that certain
+principles are universal in their application when in reality they are
+only local or temporary.
+
+Thus while one may not accept the philosophy of Socialism as a final
+explanation of human life, he may yet look upon Socialism in action as
+a powerful method of stimulating human progress. The world has been
+lagging behind in its sense of brotherhood, and we now have the
+Socialists knit together in a fighting friendship as fierce and narrow
+in its motives as Calvinism, pricking us to reform, asking the cogent
+question:
+
+"Are we not all brothers?"
+
+Oh, we are going a long way with these Socialists, we are going to
+discover a new world of social relationships--and then, and then, like a
+mighty wave; will flow in upon us a renewed and more wonderful sense of
+the worth of the individual human soul. A new individualism, bringing
+with it, perhaps, some faint realization of our dreams of a race of
+Supermen, lies just beyond! Its prophets, girded with rude garments
+and feeding upon the wild honey of poverty, are already crying in the
+wilderness.
+
+I think I could have remained there at the Socialist meeting all night
+long: there was something about it that brought a hard, dry twist to my
+throat. But after a time my friend Bill Hahn, evidently quite worn out,
+yielded his place to another and far less clairvoyant speaker, and the
+crowd, among whom I now discovered quite a number of policemen, began to
+thin out.
+
+
+I made my way forward and saw Bill Hahn and several other men just
+leaving the platform. I stepped up to him, but it was not until I called
+him by name (I knew how absent minded he was!) that he recognized me.
+
+"Well, well," he said; "you came after all!"
+
+He seized me by both arms and introduced me to several of his companions
+as "Brother Grayson." They all shook hands with me warmly.
+
+Although he was perspiring, Bill put on his overcoat and the old fur hat
+with the ears, and as he now took my arm I could feel one of his bulging
+pockets beating against my leg. I had not the slightest idea where they
+were going, but Bill held me by the arm and presently we came, a block
+or so distant, to a dark, narrow stairway leading up from the street.
+I recall the stumbling sound of steps on the wooden boards, a laugh or
+two, the high voice of a woman asserting and denying. Feeling our way
+along the wall, we came to the top and went into a long, low, rather
+dimly lighted room set about with tables and chairs--a sort of
+restaurant. A number of men and a few women had already gathered there.
+Among them my eyes instantly singled out a huge, rough-looking man who
+stood at the centre of an animated group. He had thick, shaggy hair,
+and one side of his face over the cheekbone was of a dull blue-black and
+raked and scarred, where it had been burned in a Powder blast. He had
+been a miner. His gray eyes, which had a surprisingly youthful and even
+humorous expression, looked out from under coarse, thick, gray brows. A
+very remarkable face and figure he presented. I soon learned that he
+was R---- D----, the leader of whom I had often heard, and heard no good
+thing. He was quite a different type from Bill Hahn: he was the man
+of authority, the organizer, the diplomat--as Bill was the prophet,
+preaching a holy war.
+
+How wonderful human nature is! Only a short time before I had been
+thrilled by the intensity of the passion of the throng, but here the
+mood suddenly changed to one of friendly gayety. Fully a third of those
+present were women, some of them plainly from the mills and some of
+them curiously different--women from other walks in life who had thrown
+themselves heart and soul into the strike. Without ceremony but with
+much laughing and joking, they found their places around the tables. A
+cook, who appeared in a dim doorway was greeted with a shout, to which
+he responded with a wide smile, waving the long spoon which he held in
+his hand.
+
+I shall not attempt to give any complete description of the gathering
+or of what they said or did. I think I could devote a dozen pages to the
+single man who was placed next to me. I was interested in him from the
+outset. The first thing that struck me about him was an air of neatness,
+even fastidiousness, about his person--though he wore no stiff collar,
+only a soft woollen shirt without a necktie. He had the long sensitive,
+beautiful hands of an artist, but his face was thin and marked with
+the pallor peculiar to the indoor worker. I soon learned that he was a
+weaver in the mills, an Englishman by birth, and we had not talked two
+minutes before I found that, while he had never had any education in
+the schools, he had been a gluttonous reader of books--all kind of
+books--and, what is more, had thought about them and was ready with
+vigorous (and narrow) opinions about this author or that. And he knew
+more about economics and sociology, I firmly believe, than half the
+college professors. A truly remarkable man.
+
+It was an Italian restaurant, and I remember how, in my hunger, I
+assailed the generous dishes of boiled meat and spaghetti. A red wine
+was served in large bottles which circulated rapidly around the table,
+and almost immediately the room began to fill with tobacco smoke. Every
+one seemed to be talking and laughing at once, in the liveliest spirit
+of good fellowship. They joked from table to table, and sometimes the
+whole room would quiet down while some one told a joke, which invariably
+wound up with a roar of laughter.
+
+"Why," I said, "these people have a whole life, a whole society, of
+their own!"
+
+In the midst of this jollity the clear voice of a girl rang out with the
+first lines of a song. Instantly the room was hushed:
+
+     Arise, ye prisoners of starvation,
+     Arise, ye wretched of the earth,
+     For justice thunders condemnation
+     A better world's in birth.
+
+These were the words she sang, and when the clear, sweet voice died
+down the whole company, as though by a common impulse, arose from their
+chairs, and joined in a great swelling chorus:
+
+     It is the final conflict,
+     Let each stand in his place,
+     The Brotherhood of Man
+     Shall be the human race.
+
+It was beyond belief, to me, the spirit with which these words were
+sung. In no sense with jollity--all that seemed to have been dropped
+when they came to their feet--but with an unmistakable fervour of faith.
+Some of the things I had thought and dreamed about secretly among the
+hills of my farm all these years, dreamed about as being something far
+off and as unrealizable as the millennium, were here being sung abroad
+with jaunty faith by these weavers of Kilburn, these weavers and workers
+whom I had schooled myself to regard with a sort of distant pity.
+
+Hardly had the company sat down again, with a renewal of the flow of
+jolly conversation When I heard a rapping on one of the tables. I saw
+the great form of R----- D----- slowly rising.
+
+"Brothers and sisters," he said, "a word of caution. The authorities
+will lose no chance of putting us in the wrong. Above all we must
+comport ourselves here and in the strike with great care. We are
+fighting a great battle, bigger than we are--"
+
+At this instant the door from the dark hallway suddenly opened and a
+man in a policeman's uniform stepped in. There fell an instant's dead
+silence--an explosive silence. Every person there seemed to be petrified
+in the position in which his attention was attracted. Every eye was
+fixed on the figure at the door. For an instant no one said a word; then
+I heard a woman's shrill voice, like a rifle-shot:
+
+"Assassin!"
+
+I cannot imagine what might have happened next, for the feeling in the
+room, as in the city itself, was at the tensest, had not the leader
+suddenly brought the goblet which he held in his hand down with a bang
+upon the table.
+
+"As I was saying," he continued in a steady, clear voice, "we are
+fighting to-day the greatest of battles, and we cannot permit trivial
+incidents, or personal bitterness, or small persecutions, to turn us
+from the great work we have in hand. However our opponents may comport
+themselves, we must be calm, steady, sure, patient, for we know that our
+cause is just and will prevail."
+
+"You're right," shouted a voice back in the room.
+
+Instantly the tension relaxed, conversation started again and every
+one turned away from the policeman at the door. In a few minutes, he
+disappeared without having said a word.
+
+There was no regular speaking, and about midnight the party began to
+break up. I leaned over and said to my friend Bill Hahn:
+
+"Can you find me a place to sleep tonight?"
+
+"Certainly I can," he said heartily.
+
+There was to be a brief conference of the leaders after the supper, and
+those present soon departed. I went down the long, dark stairway and
+out into the almost deserted street. Looking up between the buildings I
+could see the clear blue sky and the stars. And I walked slowly up and
+down awaiting my friend and trying, vainly to calm my whirling emotions.
+
+He came at last and I went with him. That night I slept scarcely at all,
+but lay looking up into the darkness. And it seemed as though, as I
+lay there, listening, that I could hear the city moving in its restless
+sleep and sighing as with heavy pain. All night long I lay there
+thinking.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. I COME TO GRAPPLE WITH THE CITY
+
+I have laughed heartily many times since I came home to think of the
+Figure of Tragedy I felt myself that morning in the city of Kilburn. I
+had not slept well, had not slept at all, I think, and the experiences
+and emotions of the previous night still lay heavy upon me. Not before
+in many years had I felt such a depression of the spirits.
+
+It was all so different from the things I love! Not so much as a spear
+of grass or a leafy tree to comfort the eye, or a bird to sing; no quiet
+hills, no sight of the sun coming up in the morning over dewy fields, no
+sound of cattle in the lane, no cheerful cackling of fowls, nor buzzing
+of bees! That morning, I remember, when I first went out into those
+squalid streets and saw everywhere the evidences of poverty, dirt, and
+ignorance--and the sweet, clean country not two miles away--the thought
+of my own home among the hills (with Harriet there in the doorway) came
+upon me with incredible longing.
+
+"I must go home; I must go home!" I caught myself saying aloud.
+
+I remember how glad I was when I found that my friend Bill Hahn and
+other leaders of the strike were to be engaged in conferences during
+the forenoon, for I wanted to be alone, to try to get a few things
+straightened out in my mind.
+
+But I soon found that a city is a poor place for reflection or
+contemplation. It bombards one with an infinite variety of new
+impressions and new adventures; and I could not escape the impression
+made by crowded houses, and ill-smelling streets, and dirty sidewalks,
+and swarming human beings. For a time the burden of these things rested
+upon my breast like a leaden weight; they all seemed so utterly wrong to
+me, so unnecessary; so unjust! I sometimes think of religion as only a
+high sense of good order; and it seemed to me that morning as though
+the very existence of this disorderly mill district was a challenge to
+religion, and an offence to the Orderer of an Orderly Universe. I don't
+now how such conditions may affect other people, but for a time I felt a
+sharp sense of impatience--yes, anger--with it all. I had an impulse to
+take off my coat then and there and go at the job of setting things to
+rights. Oh, I never was more serious in my life: I was quite prepared
+to change the entire scheme of things to my way of thinking whether
+the people who lived there liked it or not. It seemed to me for a few
+glorious moments that I had only to tell them of the wonders in our
+country, the pleasant, quiet roads, the comfortable farmhouses, the
+fertile fields, and the wooded hills--and, poof! all this crowded
+poverty would dissolve and disappear, and they would all come to the
+country and be as happy as I was.
+
+I remember how, once in my life, I wasted untold energy trying to make
+over my dearest friends. There was Harriet, for example, dear, serious,
+practical Harriet. I used to be fretted by the way she was forever
+trying to clip my wing feathers--I suppose to keep me close to the quiet
+and friendly and unadventurous roost! We come by such a long, long road,
+sometimes, to the acceptance of our nearest friends for exactly what
+they are. Because we are so fond of them we try to make them over to
+suit some curious ideal of perfection of our own--until one day we
+suddenly laugh aloud at our own absurdity (knowing that they are
+probably trying as hard to reconstruct us as we are to reconstruct them)
+and thereafter we try no more to change them, we just love 'em and enjoy
+'em!
+
+Some such psychological process went on in my consciousness that
+morning. As I walked briskly through the streets I began to look out
+more broadly around me. It was really a perfect spring morning, the air
+crisp, fresh, and sunny, and the streets full of life and activity. I
+looked into the faces of the people I met, and it began to strike me
+that most of them seemed oblivious of the fact that they should, by
+good rights, be looking downcast and dispirited. They had cheered their
+approval the night before when the speakers had told them how miserable
+they were (even acknowledging that they were slaves), and yet here they
+were this morning looking positively good-humoured, cheerful, some of
+them even gay. I warrant if I had stepped up to one of them that morning
+and intimated that he was a slave he would have--well, I should have
+had serious trouble with him! There was a degree of sociability in those
+back streets, a visiting from window to window, gossipy gatherings in
+front area-ways, a sort of pavement domesticity, that I had never
+seen before. Being a lover myself of such friendly intercourse I could
+actually feel the hum and warmth of that neighbourhood.
+
+A group of brightly clad girl strikers gathered on a corner were
+chatting and laughing, and children in plenty ran and shouted at their
+play in the street. I saw a group of them dancing merrily around an
+Italian hand-organ man who was filling the air with jolly music. I
+recall what a sinking sensation I had at the pit of my reformer's
+stomach when it suddenly occurred to me that these people some of them,
+anyway, might actually LIKE this crowded, sociable neighbourhood! "They
+might even HATE the country," I exclaimed.
+
+It is surely one of the fundamental humours of life to see absurdly
+serious little human beings (like D. G. for example) trying to stand
+in the place of the Almighty. We are so confoundedly infallible in our
+judgments, so sure of what is good for our neighbour, so eager to force
+upon him our particular doctors or our particular remedies; we are so
+willing to put our childish fingers into the machinery of creation--and
+we howl so lustily when we get them pinched!
+
+"Why!" I exclaimed, for it came to me like a new discovery, "it's
+exactly the same here as it is in the country! I haven't got to make
+over the universe: I've only got to do my own small job, and to look up
+often at the trees and the hills and the sky and be friendly with all
+men."
+
+I cannot express the sense of comfort, and of trust, which this
+reflection brought me. I recall stopping just then at the corner of a
+small green city square, for I had now reached the better part of the
+city, and of seeing with keen pleasure the green of the grass and the
+bright colour of a bed of flowers, and two or three clean nursemaids
+with clean baby cabs, and a flock of pigeons pluming themselves near a
+stone fountain, and an old tired horse sleeping in the sun with his nose
+buried in a feed bag.
+
+"Why," I said, "all this, too, is beautiful!" So I continued my walk
+with quite a new feeling in my heart, prepared again for any adventure
+life might have to offer me.
+
+I supposed I knew no living soul in Kilburn but Bill the Socialist. What
+was my astonishment and pleasure, then in one of the business streets
+to discover a familiar face and figure. A man was just stepping from an
+automobile to the sidewalk. For an instant; in that unusual environment,
+I could not place him, then I stepped up quickly and said:
+
+"Well, well, Friend Vedder."
+
+He looked around with astonishment at the man in the shabby clothes--but
+it was only for an instant.
+
+"David Grayson!" he exclaimed, "and how did YOU get into the city?"
+
+"Walked," I said.
+
+"But I thought you were an incurable and irreproachable countryman! Why
+are you here?"
+
+"Love o' life," I said; "love o' life."
+
+"Where are you stopping?" I waved my hand.
+
+"Where the road leaves me," I said. "Last night I left my bag with some
+good friends I made in front of a livery stable and I spent the night in
+the mill district with a Socialist named Bill Hahn."
+
+"Bill Hahn!" The effect upon Mr. Vedder was magical.
+
+"Why, yes," I said, "and a remarkable man he is, too."
+
+I discovered immediately that my friend was quite as much interested in
+the strike as Bill Hahn, but on the other side. He was, indeed, one of
+the directors of the greatest mill in Kilburn--the very one which I had
+seen the night before surrounded by armed sentinels. It was thrilling to
+me, this knowledge, for it seemed to plump me down at once in the middle
+of things--and soon, indeed, brought me nearer to the brink of great
+events than ever I was before in all my days.
+
+I could see that Mr. Vedder considered Bill Hahn as a sort of devouring
+monster, a wholly incendiary and dangerous person. So terrible, indeed,
+was the warning he gave me (considering me, I suppose an unsophisticated
+person) that I couldn't help laughing outright.
+
+"I assure you--" he began, apparently much offended.
+
+But I interrupted him.
+
+"I'm sorry I laughed," I said, "but as you were talking about Bill Hahn,
+I couldn't help thinking of him as I first saw him." And I gave Mr.
+Vedder as lively a description as I could of the little man with his
+bulging coat tails, his furry ears, his odd round spectacles. He was
+greatly interested in what I said and began to ask many questions. I
+told him with all the earnestness I could command of Bill's history and
+of his conversion to his present beliefs. I found that Mr. Vedder had
+known Robert Winter very well indeed, and was amazed at the incident
+which I narrated of Bill Hahn's attempt upon his life.
+
+I have always believed that if men could be made to understand one
+another they would necessarily be friendly, so I did my best to explain
+Bill Hahn to Mr. Vedder.
+
+"I'm tremendously interested in what you say," he said, "and we must
+have more talk about it."
+
+He told me that he had now to put in an appearance at his office, and
+wanted me to go with him; but upon my objection he pressed me to take
+luncheon with him a little later, an invitation which I accepted with
+real pleasure.
+
+"We haven't had a word about gardens," he said, "and there are no end
+of things that Mrs. Vedder and I found that we wanted to talk with you
+about after you had left us."
+
+"Well!" I said, much delighted, "let's have a regular old-fashioned
+country talk."
+
+So we parted for the time being, and I set off in the highest spirits to
+see something more of Kilburn.
+
+A city, after all, is a very wonderful place. One thing, I recall,
+impressed me powerfully that morning--the way in which every one was
+working, apparently without any common agreement or any common purpose,
+and yet with a high sort of understanding. The first hearing of a
+difficult piece of music (to an uncultivated ear like mine) often yields
+nothing but a confused sense of unrelated motives, but later and deeper
+hearings reveal the harmony which ran so clear in the master's soul.
+
+Something of this sort happened to me in looking out upon the life of
+that great city of Kilburn. All about on the streets, in the buildings,
+under ground and above ground, men were walking, running, creeping,
+crawling, climbing, lifting, digging, driving, buying, selling,
+sweating, swearing, praying, loving, hating, struggling, failing,
+sinning, repenting--all working and living according to a vast harmony,
+which sometimes we can catch clearly and sometimes miss entirely. I
+think, that morning, for a time, I heard the true music of the spheres,
+the stars singing together.
+
+Mr. Vedder took me to a quiet restaurant where we had a snug alcove all
+to ourselves. I shall remember it always as one of the truly pleasant
+experiences of my pilgrimage.
+
+I could see that my friend was sorely troubled, that the strike rested
+heavy upon him, and so I led the conversation to the hills and the
+roads and the fields we both love so much. I plied him with a thousand
+questions about his garden. I told him in the liveliest way of my
+adventures after leaving his home, how I had telephoned him from the
+hills, how I had taken a swim in the mill-pond, and especially how I had
+lost myself in the old cowpasture, with an account of all my absurd and
+laughable adventures and emotions.
+
+Well, before we had finished our luncheon I had every line ironed from
+the brow of that poor plagued rich man, I had brought jolly crinkles to
+the corners of his eyes, and once or twice I had him chuckling down deep
+inside (Where chuckles are truly effective). Talk about cheering up the
+poor: I think the rich are usually far more in need of it!
+
+But I couldn't keep the conversation in these delightful channels.
+Evidently the strike and all that it meant lay heavy upon Mr. Vedder's
+consciousness, for he pushed back his coffee and began talking about it,
+almost in a tone of apology. He told me how kind he had tried to make
+the mill management in its dealings with its men.
+
+"I would not speak of it save in explanation of our true attitude of
+helpfulness; but we have really given our men many advantages"--and he
+told me of the reading-room the company had established, of the visiting
+nurse they had employed, and of several other excellent enterprises,
+which gave only another proof of what I knew already of Mr. Vedder's
+sincere kindness of heart.
+
+"But," he said, "we find they don't appreciate what we try to do for
+them."
+
+I laughed outright.
+
+"Why," I exclaimed, "you are having the same trouble I have had!"
+
+"How's that?" he inquired, I thought a little sharply. Men don't like to
+have their seriousness trifled with.
+
+"No longer ago than this morning," I said, "I had exactly that idea of
+giving them advantages; but I found that the difficulty lies not with
+the ability to give, but with the inability or unwillingness to take.
+You see I have a great deal of surplus wealth myself--"
+
+Mr. Vedder's eyes flickered up at me.
+
+"Yes," I said. "I've got immense accumulations of the wealth of the
+ages--ingots of Emerson and Whitman, for example, gems of Voltaire, and
+I can't tell what other superfluous coinage!" (And I waved my hand in
+the most grandiloquent manner.) "I've also quite a store of knowledge
+of corn and calves and cucumbers, and I've a boundless domain of
+exceedingly valuable landscapes. I am prepared to give bountifully of
+all these varied riches (for I shall still have plenty remaining), but
+the fact is that this generation of vipers doesn't appreciate what I am
+trying to do for them. I'm really getting frightened, lest they permit
+me to perish from undistributed riches!"
+
+Mr. Vedder was still smiling.
+
+"Oh," I said, warming up to my idea, "I'm a regular multimillionaire.
+I've got so much wealth that I'm afraid I shall not be as fortunate as
+jolly Andy Carnegie, for I don't see how I can possibly die poor!"
+
+"Why not found a university or so?" asked Mr. Vedder.
+
+"Well, I had thought of that. It's a good idea. Let's join our forces
+and establish a university where truly serious people can take courses
+in laughter."
+
+"Fine idea!" exclaimed Mr. Vedder; "but wouldn't it require an enormous
+endowment to accommodate all the applicants? You must remember that this
+is a very benighted and illiterate world, laughingly speaking."
+
+"It is, indeed," I said, "but you must remember that many people, for a
+long time, will be too serious to apply. I wonder sometimes if any one
+ever learns to laugh really laugh much before he is forty."
+
+"But," said Mr. Vedder anxiously, "do you think such an institution
+would be accepted by the proletariat of the serious-minded?"
+
+"Ah, that's the trouble," said I, "that's the trouble. The proletariat
+doesn't appreciate what we are trying to do for them! They don't
+want your reading-rooms nor my Emerson and cucumbers. The seat of the
+difficulty seems to be that what seems wealth to us isn't necessarily
+wealth for the other fellow."
+
+I cannot tell with what delight we fenced our way through this foolery
+(which was not all foolery, either). I never met a man more quickly
+responsive than Mr. Vedder. But he now paused for some moments,
+evidently ruminating.
+
+"Well, David," he said seriously, "what are we going to do about this
+obstreperous other fellow?"
+
+"Why not try the experiment," I suggested, "of giving him what he
+considers wealth, instead of what you consider wealth?"
+
+"But what does he consider wealth?"
+
+"Equality," said I.
+
+Mr. Vedder threw up his hands.
+
+"So you're a Socialist, too!"
+
+"That," I said, "is another story."
+
+"Well, supposing we did or could give him this equality you speak
+of--what would become of us? What would we get out of it?"
+
+"Why, equality, too!" I said.
+
+Mr. Vedder threw up his hands up with a gesture of mock resignation.
+
+"Come," said he, "let's get down out of Utopia!"
+
+We had some further good-humoured fencing and then returned to the
+inevitable problem of the strike. While we were discussing the meeting
+of the night before which, I learned, had been luridly reported in the
+morning papers, Mr. Vedder suddenly turned to me and asked earnestly:
+
+"Are you really a Socialist?"
+
+"Well," said I, "I'm sure of one thing. I'm not ALL Socialist, Bill Hahn
+believes with his whole soul (and his faith has made him a remarkable
+man) that if only another class of people--his class--could come into
+the control of material property, that all the ills that man is heir
+to would be speedily cured. But I wonder if when men own property
+collectively--as they are going to one of these days--they will quarrel
+and hate one another any less than they do now. It is not the ownership
+of material property that interests me so much as the independence of
+it. When I started out from my farm on this pilgrimage it seemed to
+me the most blessed thing in the world to get away from property and
+possession."
+
+"What are you then, anyway?" asked Mr. Vedder, smiling.
+
+"Well, I've thought of a name I would like to have applied to me
+sometimes," I said. "You see I'm tremendously fond of this world exactly
+as it is now. Mr. Vedder, it's a wonderful and beautiful place! I've
+never seen a better one. I confess I could not possibly live in the
+rarefied atmosphere of a final solution. I want to live right here and
+now for all I'm worth. The other day a man asked me what I thought was
+the best time of life. 'Why,' I answered without a thought, 'Now.' It
+has always seemed to me that if a man can't make a go of it, yes, and be
+happy at this moment, he can't be at the next moment. But most of
+all, it seems to me, I want to get close to people, to look into their
+hearts, and be friendly with them. Mr. Vedder, do you know what I'd like
+to be called?"
+
+"I cannot imagine," said he.
+
+"Well, I'd like to be called an Introducer. My friend, Mr. Blacksmith,
+let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Plutocrat. I could almost swear
+that you were brothers, so near alike are you! You'll find each other
+wonderfully interesting once you get over the awkwardness of the
+introduction. And Mr. White Man, let me present you particularly to my
+good friend, Mr. Negro. You will see if you sit down to it that this
+colour of the face is only skin deep."
+
+"It's a good name!" said Mr. Vedder, laughing.
+
+"It's a wonderful name," said I, "and it's about the biggest and finest
+work in the world--to know human beings just as they are, and to
+make them acquainted with one another just as they are. Why, it's the
+foundation of all the democracy there is, or ever will be. Sometimes I
+think that friendliness is the only achievement of life worth while--and
+unfriendliness the only tragedy."
+
+I have since felt ashamed of myself when I thought how I lectured my
+unprotected host that day at luncheon; but it seemed to boil out of me
+irresistibly. The experiences of the past two days had stirred me to the
+very depths, and it seemed to me I must explain to somebody how it all
+impressed me--and to whom better than to my good friend Vedder?
+
+As we were leaving the table an idea flashed across my mind which
+seemed, at first, so wonderful that it quite turned me dizzy.
+
+"See here, Mr. Vedder," I exclaimed, "let me follow my occupation
+practically. I know Bill Hahn and I know you. Let me introduce you.
+If you could only get together, if you could only understand what
+good fellows you both are, it might go far toward solving these
+difficulties."
+
+I had some trouble persuading him, but finally he consented, said he
+wanted to leave no stone unturned, and that he would meet Bill Hahn and
+some of the other leaders, if proper arrangements could be made.
+
+I left him, therefore, in excitement, feeling that I was at the point of
+playing a part in a very great event. "Once get these men together," I
+thought, "and they MUST come to an understanding."
+
+So I rushed out to the mill district, saying to myself over and over (I
+have smiled about it since!): "We'll settle this strike: we'll settle
+this strike: we'll settle this strike." After some searching I found
+my friend Bill in the little room over a saloon that served as strike
+headquarters. A dozen or more of the leaders were there, faintly
+distinguishable through clouds of tobacco smoke. Among them sat the
+great R---- D----, his burly figure looming up at one end of the table,
+and his strong, rough, iron-jawed face turning first toward this speaker
+and then toward that. The discussion, which had evidently been lively,
+died down soon after I appeared at the door, and Bill Hahn came out to
+me and we sat down together in the adjoining room. Here I broke eagerly
+into an account of the happenings of the day, described my chance
+meeting with Mr. Vedder--who was well known to Bill by reputation--and
+finally asked him squarely whether he would meet him. I think my
+enthusiasm quite carried him away.
+
+"Sure, I will," said Bill Hahn heartily.
+
+"When and where?" I asked, "and will any of the other men join you?"
+
+Bill was all enthusiasm at once, for that was the essence of his
+temperament, but he said that he must first refer it to the committee.
+I waited, in a tense state of impatience, for what seemed to me a very
+long time; but finally the door opened and Bill Hahn came out bringing
+R---- D---- himself with him. We all sat down together, and R---- D----
+began to ask questions (he was evidently suspicious as to who and what
+I was); but I think, after I talked with them for some time that I made
+them see the possibilities and the importance of such a meeting. I was
+greatly impressed with R---- D----, the calmness and steadiness of the
+man, his evident shrewdness. "A real general," I said to myself. "I
+should like to know him better."
+
+After a long talk they returned to the other room, closing the door
+behind them, and I waited again, still more impatiently.
+
+It seems rather absurd now, but at that moment I felt firmly convinced
+that I was on the way to the permanent settlement of a struggle which
+had occupied the best brains of Kilburn for many weeks.
+
+While I was waiting in that dingy ante-room, the other door slowly
+opened and a boy stuck his head in.
+
+"Is David Grayson here?" he asked.
+
+"Here he is," said I, greatly astonished that any one in Kilburn should
+be inquiring for me, or should know where I was.
+
+The boy came in, looked at me with jolly round eyes for a moment, and
+dug a letter out of his pocket. I opened it at once, and glancing at the
+signature discovered that it was from Mr. Vedder.
+
+"He said I'd probably find you at strike headquarters," remarked the
+boy.
+
+This was the letter: marked "Confidential."
+
+My Dear Grayson: I think you must be something of a hypnotist. After you
+left me I began to think of the project you mentioned, and I have talked
+it over with one or two of my associates. I would gladly hold this
+conference, but it does not now seem wise for us to do so. The interests
+we represent are too important to be jeopardized. In theory you are
+undoubtedly right, but in this case I think you will agree with me (when
+you think it over), we must not show any weakness. Come and stop with
+us to-night: Mrs. Vedder will be overjoyed to see you and we'll have
+another fine talk.
+
+I confess I was a good deal cast down as I read this letter.
+
+"What interests are so important?" I asked myself, "that they should
+keep friends apart?"
+
+But I was given only a moment for reflection for the door opened and my
+friend Bill, together with R---- D---- and several other members of the
+committee, came out. I put the letter in my pocket, and for a moment my
+brain never worked under higher pressure. What should I say to them now?
+How could I explain myself?
+
+Bill Hahn was evidently labouring under considerable excitement, but
+R---- D---- was as calm as a judge. He sat down in the chair opposite
+and said to me:
+
+"We've been figuring out this proposition of Mr. Vedder's. Your idea is
+all right, and it would be a fine thing if we could really get together
+as you suggest upon terms of common understanding and friendship."
+
+"Just what Mr. Vedder said," I exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," he continued, "it's all right in theory; but in this case it
+simply won't work. Don't you see it's got to be war? Your friend and I
+could probably understand each other--but this is a class war. It's all
+or nothing with us, and your friend Vedder knows it as well as we do."
+
+After some further argument and explanation, I said:
+
+"I see: and this is Socialism."
+
+"Yes," said the great R---- D----, "this is Socialism."
+
+"And it's force you would use," I said.
+
+"It's force THEY use," he replied.
+
+After I left the strike headquarters that evening--for it was almost
+dark before I parted with the committee--I walked straight out through
+the crowded streets, so absorbed in my thoughts that I did not know
+in the least where I was going. The street lights came out, the crowds
+began to thin away, I heard a strident song from a phonograph at the
+entrance to a picture show, and as I passed again in front of the great,
+dark, many-windowed mill which had made my friend Vedder a rich man I
+saw a sentinel turn slowly at the corner. The light glinted on the steel
+of his bayonet. He had a fresh, fine, boyish face.
+
+"We have some distance yet to go in this world," I said to myself, "no
+man need repine for lack of good work ahead."
+
+It was only a little way beyond this mill that an incident occurred
+which occupied probably not ten minutes of time, and yet I have thought
+about it since I came home as much as I have thought about any other
+incident of my pilgrimage. I have thought how I might have acted
+differently under the circumstances, how I could have said this or how I
+ought to have done that--all, of course, now to no purpose whatever. But
+I shall not attempt to tell what I ought to have done or said, but what
+I actually did do and say on the spur of the moment.
+
+It was in a narrow, dark street which opened off the brightly lighted
+main thoroughfare of that mill neighbourhood. A girl standing in the
+shadows between two buildings said to me as I passed:
+
+"Good evening."
+
+I stopped instantly, it was such a pleasant, friendly voice.
+
+"Good evening," I said, lifting my hat and wondering that there should
+be any one here in this back street who knew me.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked.
+
+I stepped over quickly toward her, hat in hand. She was a mere slip of
+a girl, rather comely, I thought, with small childish features and a
+half-timid, half-bold look in her eyes. I could not remember having seen
+her before.
+
+She smiled at me--and then I knew!
+
+Well, if some one had struck me a brutal blow in the face I could not
+have been more astonished.
+
+We know of things!--and yet how little we know until they are presented
+to us in concrete form. Just such a little school girl as I have seen a
+thousand times in the country, the pathetic childish curve of the chin,
+a small rebellious curl hanging low on her temple.
+
+I could not say a word. The girl evidently saw in my face that something
+was the matter, for she turned and began to move quickly away. Such
+a wave of compassion (and anger, too) swept over me as I cannot well
+describe. I stepped after her and asked in a low voice:
+
+"Do you work in the mills?"
+
+"Yes, when there's work."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Maggie--"
+
+"Well, Maggie," I said, "let's be friends."
+
+She looked around at me curiously, questioningly.
+
+"And friends," I said, "should know something about each other. You see
+I am a farmer from the country. I used to live in a city myself, a good
+many years ago, but I got tired and sick and hopeless. There was so much
+that was wrong about it. I tried to keep the pace and could not. I wish
+I could tell you what the country has done for me."
+
+We were walking along slowly, side by side, the girl perfectly passive
+but glancing around at me from time to time with a wondering look.
+I don't know in the least now what prompted me to do it, but I began
+telling in a quiet, low voice--for, after all, she was only a child--I
+began telling her about our chickens at the farm and how Harriet had
+named them all, and one was Frances E. Willard, and one, a speckled one,
+was Martha Washington, and I told her of the curious antics of Martha
+Washington and of the number of eggs she laid, and of the sweet new milk
+we had to drink, and the honey right out of our own hives, and of the
+things growing in the garden.
+
+Once she smiled a little, and once she looked around at me with a
+curious, timid, half-wistful expression in her eyes.
+
+"Maggie," I said, "I wish you could go to the country."
+
+"I wish to God I could," she replied.
+
+We walked for a moment in silence. My head was whirling with thoughts:
+again I had that feeling of helplessness, of inadequacy, which I had
+felt so sharply on the previous evening. What could I do?
+
+When we reached the corner, I said:
+
+"Maggie, I will see you safely home."
+
+She laughed--a hard, bitter laugh.
+
+"Oh, I don't need any one to show me around these streets!"
+
+"I will see you home," I said.
+
+So we walked quickly along the street together.
+
+"Here it is," she said finally, pointing to a dark, mean-looking,
+one-story house, set in a dingy, barren areaway.
+
+"Well, good night, Maggie," I said, "and good luck to you."
+
+"Good night," she said faintly.
+
+When I had walked to the corner, I stopped and looked back. She was
+standing stock-still just where I had left her--a figure I shall never
+forget.
+
+
+I have hesitated about telling of a further strange thing that happened
+to me that night--but have decided at last to put it in. I did not
+accept Mr. Vedder's invitation: I could not; but I returned to the room
+in the tenement where I had spent the previous night with Bill Hahn the
+Socialist. It was a small, dark, noisy room, but I was so weary that
+I fell almost immediately into a heavy sleep. An hour or more later I
+don't know how long indeed--I was suddenly awakened and found myself
+sitting bolt upright in bed. It was close and dark and warm there in
+the room, and from without came the muffled sounds of the city. For an
+instant I waited, rigid with expectancy. And then I heard as clearly and
+plainly as ever I heard anything:
+
+"David! David!" in my sister Harriet's voice.
+
+It was exactly the voice in which she has called me a thousand times.
+Without an instant's hesitation, I stepped out of bed and called out:
+
+"I'm coming, Harriet! I'm coming!"
+
+"What's the matter?" inquired Bill Hahn sleepily.
+
+"Nothing," I replied, and crept back into bed.
+
+It may have been the result of the strain and excitement of the previous
+two days. I don't explain it--I can only tell what happened.
+
+Before I went to sleep again I determined to start straight for home in
+the morning: and having decided, I turned over, drew a long, comfortable
+breath and did not stir again, I think, until long after the morning sun
+shone in at the window.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. THE RETURN
+
+"Everything divine runs with light feet."
+
+Surely the chief delight of going away from home is the joy of getting
+back again. I shall never forget that spring morning when I walked from
+the city of Kilburn into the open country, my bag on my back, a song in
+my throat, and the gray road stretching straight before me. I remember
+how eagerly I looked out across the fields and meadows and rested my
+eyes upon the distant hills. How roomy it all was! I looked up into the
+clear blue of the sky. There was space here to breathe, and distances in
+which the spirit might spread its wings. As the old prophet says, it was
+a place where a man might be placed alone in the midst of the earth.
+
+I was strangely glad that morning of every little stream that ran under
+the bridges, I was glad of the trees I passed, glad of every bird and
+squirrel in the branches, glad of the cattle grazing in the fields, glad
+of the jolly boys I saw on their way to school with their dinner pails,
+glad of the bluff, red-faced teamster I met, and of the snug farmer who
+waved his hand at me and wished me a friendly good morning. It seemed to
+me that I liked every one I saw, and that every one liked me.
+
+So I walked onward that morning, nor ever have had such a sense of
+relief and escape, nor ever such a feeling of gayety.
+
+"Here is where I belong," I said. "This is my own country. Those hills
+are mine, and all the fields, and the trees and the sky--and the road
+here belongs to me as much as it does to any one."
+
+Coming presently to a small house near the side of the road, I saw a
+woman working with a trowel in her sunny garden. It was good to see her
+turn over the warm brown soil; it was good to see the plump green rows
+of lettuce and the thin green rows of onions, and the nasturtiums and
+sweet peas; it was good--after so many days in that desert of a city--to
+get a whiff of blossoming things. I stood for a moment looking quietly
+over the fence before the woman saw me. When at last she turned and
+looked up, I said:
+
+"Good morning."
+
+She paused, trowel in hand.
+
+"Good morning," she replied; "you look happy."
+
+I wasn't conscious that I was smiling outwardly.
+
+"Well, I am," I said; "I'm going home."
+
+"Then you OUGHT to be happy," said she.
+
+"And I'm glad to escape THAT," and I pointed toward the city.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why, that old monster lying there in the valley."
+
+I could see that she was surprised and even a little alarmed. So I began
+intently to admire her young cabbages and comment on the perfection of
+her geraniums. But I caught her eying me from time to time as I leaned
+there on the fence, and I knew that she would come back sooner or later
+to my remark about the monster. Having shocked your friend (not too
+unpleasantly), abide your time, and he will want to be shocked again. So
+I was not at all surprised to hear her ask:
+
+"Have you travelled far?"
+
+"I should say so!" I replied. "I've been on a very long journey. I've
+seen many strange sights and met many wonderful people."
+
+"You may have been in California, then. I have a daughter in
+California."
+
+"No," said I, "I was never in California."
+
+"You've been a long time from home, you say?"
+
+"A very long time from home."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Three weeks."
+
+"Three weeks! And how far did you say you had travelled?"
+
+"At the farthest point, I should say sixty miles from home."
+
+"But how can you say that in travelling only sixty miles and being gone
+three weeks that you have seen so many strange places and people?"
+
+"Why," I exclaimed, "haven't you seen anything strange around here?'"
+
+"Why, no--" glancing quickly around her.
+
+"Well, I'm strange, am I not?"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"And you're strange."
+
+She looked at me with the utmost amazement. I could scarcely keep from
+laughing.
+
+"I assure you," I said, "that if you travel a thousand miles you will
+find no one stranger than I am--or you are--nor anything more wonderful
+than all this--" and I waved my hand.
+
+This time she looked really alarmed, glancing quickly toward the house,
+so that I began to laugh.
+
+"Madam," I said, "good morning!"
+
+So I left her standing there by the fence looking after me, and I went
+on down the road.
+
+"Well," I said, "she'll have something new to talk about. It may add a
+month to her life. Was there ever such an amusing world!"
+
+About noon that day I had an adventure that I have to laugh over every
+time I think of it. It was unusual, too, as being almost the only
+incident of my journey which was of itself in the least thrilling or out
+of the ordinary. Why, this might have made an item in the country paper!
+
+For the first time on my trip I saw a man that I really felt like
+calling a tramp--a tramp in the generally accepted sense of the term.
+When I left home I imagined I should meet many tramps, and perhaps learn
+from them odd and curious things about life; but when I actually came
+into contact with the shabby men of the road, I began to be puzzled.
+What was a tramp, anyway?
+
+I found them all strangely different, each with his own distinctive
+history, and each accounting for himself as logically as I could for
+myself. And save for the fact that in none of them I met were the
+outward graces and virtues too prominently displayed, I have come back
+quite uncertain as to what a scientist might call type-characteristics.
+I had thought of following Emerson in his delightfully optimistic
+definition of a weed. A weed, he says, is a plant whose virtues have
+not been discovered. A tramp, then, is a man whose virtues have not been
+discovered. Or, I might follow my old friend the Professor (who dearly
+loves all growing things) in his even kindlier definition of a weed.
+He says that it is merely a plant misplaced. The virility of this
+definition has often impressed me when I have tried to grub the
+excellent and useful horseradish plants out of my asparagus bed! Let
+it be then--a tramp is a misplaced man, whose virtues have not been
+discovered.
+
+Whether this is an adequate definition or not, it fitted admirably the
+man I overtook that morning on the road. He was certainly misplaced, and
+during my brief but exciting experience with him I discovered no virtues
+whatever.
+
+In one way he was quite different from the traditional tramp. He walked
+with far too lively a step, too jauntily, and he had with him a small,
+shaggy, nondescript dog, a dog as shabby as he, trotting close at his
+heels. He carried a light stick, which he occasionally twirled over in
+his hand. As I drew nearer I could hear him whistling and even, from
+time to time, breaking into a lively bit of song. What a devil-may-care
+chap he seemed, anyway! I was greatly interested.
+
+When at length I drew alongside he did not seem in the least surprised.
+He turned, glanced at me with his bold black eyes, and broke out again
+into the song he was singing. And these were the words of his song--at
+least, all I can remember of them:
+
+     Oh, I'm so fine and gay,
+     I'm so fine and gay,
+     I have to take a dog along,
+     To kape the ga-irls away.
+
+What droll zest he put into it! He had a red nose, a globular red nose
+set on his face like an overgrown strawberry, and from under the worst
+derby hat in the world burst his thick curly hair.
+
+"Oh, I'm so fine and gay," he sang, stepping to the rhythm of his song,
+and looking the very image of good-humoured impudence. I can't tell how
+amused and pleased I was--though if I had known what was to happen later
+I might not have been quite so friendly--yes, I would too!
+
+We fell into conversation, and it wasn't long before I suggested that
+we stop for luncheon together somewhere along the road. He cast a quick
+appraising eye at my bag, and assented with alacrity. We climbed a fence
+and found a quiet spot near a little brook.
+
+I was much astonished to observe the resources of my jovial companion.
+Although he carried neither bag nor pack and appeared to have
+nothing whatever in his pockets, he proceeded, like a professional
+prestidigitator, to produce from his shabby clothing an extraordinary
+number of curious things--a black tin can with a wire handle, a small
+box of matches, a soiled package which I soon learned contained tea,
+a miraculously big dry sausage wrapped in an old newspaper, and a
+clasp-knife. I watched him with breathless interest.
+
+He cut a couple of crotched sticks to hang the pail on and in two or
+three minutes had a little fire, no larger than a man's hand, burning
+brightly under it. ("Big fires," said he wisely, "are not for us.") This
+he fed with dry twigs, and in a very few minutes he had a pot of tea
+from which he offered me the first drink. This, with my luncheon and
+part of his sausage, made up a very good meal.
+
+While we were eating, the little dog sat sedately by the fire. From time
+to time his master would say, "Speak, Jimmy."
+
+Jimmy would sit up on his haunches, his two front paws hanging limp,
+turn his head to one side in the drollest way imaginable and give a
+yelp. His master would toss him a bit of sausage or bread and he would
+catch it with a snap.
+
+"Fine dog!" commented my companion.
+
+"So he seems," said I.
+
+After the meal was over my companion proceeded to produce other
+surprises from his pockets--a bag of tobacco, a brier pipe (which he
+kindly offered to me and which I kindly refused), and a soiled packet of
+cigarette papers. Having rolled a cigarette with practised facility, he
+leaned up against a tree, took off his hat, lighted the cigarette
+and, having taken a long draw at it, blew the smoke before him with an
+incredible air of satisfaction.
+
+"Solid comfort this here--hey!" he exclaimed.
+
+We had some further talk, but for so jovial a specimen he was
+surprisingly uncommunicative. Indeed, I think he soon decided that I
+somehow did not belong to the fraternity, that I was a "farmer"--in the
+most opprobrious sense--and he soon began to drowse, rousing himself
+once or twice to roll another cigarette, but finally dropping
+(apparently, at least) fast asleep.
+
+I was glad enough of the rest and quiet after the strenuous experience
+of the last two days--and I, too, soon began to drowse. It didn't seem
+to me then that I lost consciousness at all, but I suppose I must have
+done so, for when I suddenly opened my eyes and sat up my companion
+had vanished. How he succeeded in gathering up his pail and packages so
+noiselessly and getting away so quickly is a mystery to me.
+
+"Well," I said, "that's odd."
+
+Rousing myself deliberately I put on my hat and was about to take up
+my bag when I suddenly discovered that it was open. My rain-cape was
+missing! It wasn't a very good rain-cape, but it was missing.
+
+At first I was inclined to be angry, but when I thought of my jovial
+companion and the cunning way in which he had tricked me, I couldn't
+help laughing. At the same time I jumped up quickly and ran down the
+road.
+
+"I may get him yet," I said.
+
+Just as I stepped out of the woods I caught a glimpse of a man some
+hundreds of yards away, turning quickly from the main road into a lane
+or by-path. I wasn't altogether sure that he was my man, but I ran
+across the road and climbed the fence. I had formed the plan instantly
+of cutting across the field and so striking the by-road farther up the
+hill. I had a curious sense of amused exultation, the very spirit of the
+chase, and my mind dwelt with the liveliest excitement on what I should
+say or do if I really caught that jolly spark of impudence.
+
+So I came by way of a thicket along an old stone fence to the by-road,
+and there, sure enough, only a little way ahead of me, was my man with
+the shaggy little dog close at his heels. He was making pretty good
+time, but I skirted swiftly along the edge of the road until I had
+nearly overtaken him. Then I slowed down to a walk and stepped out into
+the middle of the road. I confess my heart was pounding at a lively
+rate. The next time he looked behind him--guiltily enough, too!--I said
+in the calmest voice I could command:
+
+"Well, brother, you almost left me behind."
+
+He stopped and I stepped up to him.
+
+I wish I could describe the look in his face--mingled astonishment,
+fear, and defiance.
+
+"My friend," I said, "I'm disappointed in you."
+
+He made no reply.
+
+"Yes, I'm disappointed. You did such a very poor job."
+
+"Poor job!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," I said, and I slipped my bag off my shoulder and began to rummage
+inside. My companion watched me silently and suspiciously.
+
+"You should not have left the rubbers."
+
+With that I handed him my old rubbers. A peculiar expression came into
+the man's face.
+
+"Say, pardner, what you drivin' at?"
+
+"Well," I said, "I don't like to see such evidences of haste and
+inefficiency."
+
+He stood staring at me helplessly, holding my old rubbers at arm's
+length.
+
+"Come on now," I said, "that's over. We'll walk along together."
+
+I was about to take his arm, but quick as a flash he dodged, cast both
+rubbers and rain-cape away from him, and ran down the road for all he
+was worth, the little dog, looking exactly like a rolling ball of fur,
+pelting after him. He never once glanced back, but ran for his life. I
+stood there and laughed until the tears came, and ever since then, at
+the thought of the expression on the jolly rover's face when I gave him
+my rubbers, I've had to smile. I put the rain-cape and rubbers back into
+my bag and turned again to the road.
+
+
+Before the afternoon was nearly spent I found myself very tired, for
+my two days' experience in the city had been more exhausting for me, I
+think, than a whole month of hard labour on my farm. I found haven with
+a friendly farmer, whom I joined while he was driving his cows in from
+the pasture. I helped him with his milking both that night and the next
+morning, and found his situation and family most interesting--but I
+shall not here enlarge upon that experience.
+
+It was late afternoon when I finally surmounted the hill from which
+I knew well enough I could catch the first glimpse of my farm. For
+a moment after I reached the top I could not raise my eyes, and when
+finally I was able to raise them I could not see.
+
+"There is a spot in Arcady--a spot in Arcady--a spot in Arcady--" So
+runs the old song.
+
+There IS a spot in Arcady, and at the centre of it there is a
+weather-worn old house, and not far away a perfect oak tree, and green
+fields all about, and a pleasant stream fringed with alders in the
+little valley. And out of the chimney into the sweet, still evening air
+rises the slow white smoke of the supper-fire.
+
+I turned from the main road, and climbed the fence and walked across
+my upper field to the old wood lane. The air was heavy and sweet with
+clover blossoms, and along the fences I could see that the raspberry
+bushes were ripening their fruit.
+
+So I came down the lane and heard the comfortable grunting of pigs in
+the pasture lot and saw the calves licking one another as they stood at
+the gate.
+
+"How they've grown!" I said.
+
+I stopped at the corner of the barn for a moment. From within I heard
+the rattling of milk in a pail (a fine sound), and heard a man's voice
+saying:
+
+"Whoa, there! Stiddy now!"
+
+"Dick's milking," I said.
+
+So I stepped in at the doorway.
+
+"Lord, Mr. Grayson!" exclaimed Dick, rising instantly and clasping my
+hand like a long-lost brother.
+
+"I'm glad to see you!"
+
+"I'm glad to see YOU!"
+
+The warm smell of the new milk, the pleasant sound of animals stepping
+about in the stable, the old mare reaching her long head over the
+stanchion to welcome me, and nipping at my fingers when I rubbed her
+nose--
+
+And there was the old house with the late sun upon it, the vines hanging
+green over the porch, Harriet's trim flower bed--I crept along quietly
+to the corner. The kitchen door stood open.
+
+"Well, Harriet!" I said, stepping inside.
+
+"Mercy! David!"
+
+I have rarely known Harriet to be in quite such a reckless mood. She
+kept thinking of a new kind of sauce or jam for supper (I think there
+were seven, or were there twelve? on the table before I got through).
+And there was a new rhubarb pie such as only Harriet can make, just
+brown enough on top, and not too brown, with just the right sort of
+hills and hummocks in the crust, and here and there little sugary
+bubbles where a suggestion of the goodness came through--such a pie--!
+and such an appetite to go with it!
+
+"Harriet," I said, "you're spoiling me. Haven't you heard how dangerous
+it is to set such a supper as this before a man who is perishing with
+hunger? Have you no mercy for me?"
+
+This remark produced the most extraordinary effect. Harriet was at that
+moment standing in the corner near the pump. Her shoulders suddenly
+began to shake convulsively.
+
+"She's so glad I'm home that she can't help laughing," I thought, which
+shows how penetrating I really am.
+
+She was crying.
+
+"Why, Harriet!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Hungry!" she burst out, "and j-joking about it!"
+
+I couldn't say a single word; something--it must have been a piece of
+the rhubarb pie--stuck in my throat. So I sat there and watched her
+moving quietly about in that immaculate kitchen. After a time I walked
+over to where she stood by the table and put my arm around her quickly.
+She half turned her head, in her quick, businesslike way. I noted how
+firm and clean and sweet her face was.
+
+"Harriet," I said, "you grow younger every year."
+
+No response.
+
+"Harriet," I said, "I haven't seen a single person anywhere on my
+journey that I like as much as I do you."
+
+The quick blood came up.
+
+"There--there--David!" she said.
+
+So I stepped away.
+
+"And as for rhubarb pie, Harriet--"
+
+When I first came to my farm years ago there were mornings when I woke
+up with the strong impression that I had just been hearing the most
+exquisite sounds of music. I don't know whether this is at all a common
+experience, but in those days (and farther back in my early boyhood) I
+had it frequently. It did not seem exactly like music either, but was
+rather a sense of harmony, so wonderful, so pervasive that it cannot
+be described. I have not had it so often in recent years, but on the
+morning after I reached home it came to me as I awakened with a strange
+depth and sweetness. I lay for a moment there in my clean bed. The
+morning sun was up and coming in cheerfully through the vines at the
+window; a gentle breeze stirred the clean white curtains, and I could
+smell even there the odours of the garden.
+
+I wish I had room to tell, but I cannot, of all the crowded experiences
+of that day--the renewal of acquaintance with the fields, the cattle,
+the fowls, the bees, of my long talks with Harriet and Dick Sheridan,
+who had cared for my work while I was away; of the wonderful visit of
+the Scotch Preacher, of Horace's shrewd and whimsical comments upon the
+general absurdity of the head of the Grayson family--oh, of a thousand
+things--and how when I went into my study and took up the nearest book
+in my favourite case--it chanced to be "The Bible in Spain"--it opened
+of itself at one of my favourite passages, the one beginning:
+
+"Mistos amande, I am content--"
+
+
+So it's all over! It has been a great experience; and it seems to me
+now that I have a firmer grip on life, and a firmer trust in that Power
+which orders the ages. In a book I read not long ago, called "A Modern
+Utopia," the writer provides in his imaginary perfect state of society
+a class of leaders known as Samurai. And, from time to time, it is the
+custom of these Samurai to cut themselves loose from the crowding world
+of men, and with packs on their backs go away alone to far places in the
+deserts or on Arctic ice caps. I am convinced that every man needs some
+such change as this, an opportunity to think things out, to get a new
+grip on life, and a new hold on God. But not for me the Arctic ice cap
+or the desert! I choose the Friendly Road--and all the common people who
+travel in it or live along it--I choose even the busy city at the end of
+it.
+
+I assure you, friend, that it is a wonderful thing for a man to cast
+himself freely for a time upon the world, not knowing where his next
+meal is coming from, nor where he is going to sleep for the night. It is
+a surprising readjuster of values. I paid my way, I think, throughout
+my pilgrimage; but I discovered that stamped metal is far from being the
+world's only true coin. As a matter of fact, there are many things that
+men prize more highly--because they are rarer and more precious.
+
+My friend, if you should chance yourself some day to follow the Friendly
+Road, you may catch a fleeting glimpse of a man in a rusty hat, carrying
+a gray bag, and sometimes humming a little song under his breath for the
+joy of being there. And it may actually happen, if you stop him, that he
+will take a tin whistle from his bag and play for you, "Money Musk," or
+"Old Dan Tucker," or he may produce a battered old volume of Montaigne
+from which he will read you a passage. If such an adventure should
+befall you, know that you have met
+
+Your friend,
+
+David Grayson.
+
+P. S.--Harriet bemoans most of all the unsolved mystery of the sign man.
+But it doesn't bother me in the least. I'm glad now I never found him.
+The poet sings his song and goes his way. If we sought him out how
+horribly disappointed we might be! We might find him shaving, or eating
+sausage, or drinking a bottle of beer. We might find him shaggy and
+unkempt where we imagined him beautiful, weak where we thought him
+strong, dull where we thought him brilliant. Take then the vintage of
+his heart and let him go. As for me, I'm glad some mystery is left in
+this world. A thousand signs on my roadways are still as unexplainable,
+as mysterious, and as beguiling as this. And I can close my narrative
+with no better motto for tired spirits than that of the country
+roadside:
+
+[ REST ]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Friendly Road, by 
+(AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRIENDLY ROAD ***
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