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 entirebook, but only to put down the more or less unusual impressions, theevents and adventures, of certain quiet pilgrimages in country roads. But when I had written down all of these things, I found I had materialin 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 "TheCountry Road, " or something equally simple, for I would not have thetitle arouse any appetite which the book itself could not satisfy. Onepleasant 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 acrossthe quiet fields I could see in the distance a curving bit of the townroad. I could see the valley below it and the green hill beyond, andmy mind went out swiftly along the country road which I had so recentlytravelled on foot, and I thought with deep satisfaction of all thepeople I had met on my pilgrimages--the Country Minister with hisproblems, the buoyant Stanleys, Bill Hahn the Socialist, the Vedders intheir garden, the Brush Peddler. I thought of the Wonderful City, and ofhow for a time I had been caught up into its life. I thought of themen I met at the livery stable, especially Healy, the wit, and of thatstrange Girl of the Street. And it was good to think of them all livingaround me, not so very far away, connected with me through darkness andspace by a certain mysterious human cord. Most of all I love that whichI cannot see beyond the hill. 

"Harriet, " I said aloud, "it grows more wonderful every year how fullthe world is of friendly people!"

So I got up quickly and came in here to my room, and taking a freshsheet 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 yourselfinto contentment. But if you chance to be a truly serious person, putdown my book. Let nothing stay your hurried steps, nor keep you fromyour 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 eveningovertakes us, we'll eat the food of hospitality--and make friends forlife!

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 roadfor almost three hours. At five I left the town of Holt, before six Ihad crossed the railroad at a place called Martin's Landing, and an hourago, at seven, I could see in the distance the spires of Nortontown. Andall the morning as I came tramping along the fine country roads with mypack-strap resting warmly on my shoulder, and a song in my throat--justnameless words to a nameless tune--and all the birds singing, and allthe brooks bright under their little bridges, I knew that I must soonstep aside and put down, if I could, some faint impression of thefeeling of this time and place. I cannot hope to convey any adequatesense of it all--of the feeling of lightness, strength, clearness, Ihave as I sit here under this maple tree--but I am going to write aslong 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 awaytoward newer hills and richer scenes. 

Until to-day I have not really been quite clear in my own mind as to thestep I have taken. My sober friend, have you ever tried to do anythingthat the world at large considers not quite sensible, not quite sane?Try it! It is easier to commit a thundering crime. A friend of minedelights in walking to town bareheaded, and I fully believe theneighbourhood is more disquieted thereby than it would be if my friendcame home drunken or failed to pay his debts. 

Here I am then, a farmer, forty miles from home in planting time, takinghis ease under a maple tree and writing in a little book held on hisknee! Is not that the height of absurdity? Of all my friends the ScotchPreacher was the only one who seemed to understand why it was that Imust 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 ofme--for is there not a photography so delicate that it will catch thedim thought-shapes which attend upon our lives?--if you could have hadsuch a truthful picture of me, you would have seen, besides a farmernamed Grayson with a gray bag hanging from his shoulder, a strangecompany following close upon his steps. Among this crew you would havemade out easily:

Two fine cows. Four Berkshire pigs. One team of gray horses, theold mare a little lame in her right foreleg. About fifty hens, fourcockerels, and a number of ducks and geese. 

More than this--I shall offer no explanation in these writings of anymiracles that may appear--you would have seen an entirely respectableold farmhouse bumping and hobbling along as best it might in the rear. And in the doorway, Harriet Grayson, in her immaculate white apron, withthe veritable look in her eyes which she wears when I am not comportingmyself 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 youcould have heard that motley crew of the barnyard as I did--the hensall cackling, the ducks quacking, the pigs grunting, and the old mareneighing and stamping, you would have thought it a miracle that Iescaped 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 possessus. For ten years I have been the humble servant, attending upon thecommonest daily needs of sundry hens, ducks, geese, pigs, bees, and ofa 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 whofinds the door of his cell suddenly open, and fears to escape. Why, Ihad almost become ALL farmer. 

On the first morning after I left home I awoke as usual about fiveo'clock with the irresistible feeling that I must do the milking. Sowell disciplined had I become in my servitude that I instinctivelythrust my leg out of bed--but pulled it quickly back in again, turnedover, 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 quicklyfor so many years grew perceptibly fainter, the hens cackled lessdomineeringly, the pigs squealed less insistently, and as for thestrutting cockerel, that lordly and despotic bird stopped fairly in themiddle 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 mydefiance 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 ourlives by merely crying out a rebellious "Avaunt!"

But in spite of this bold beginning, I assure you it required severaldays to break the habit of cows and hens. The second morning I awakenedagain at five o'clock, but my leg did not make for the side of thebed; the third morning I was only partially awakened, and on the fourthmorning I slept like a millionaire (or at least I slept as a millionaireis supposed to sleep!) until the clock struck seven. 

For some days after I left home--and I walked out as casually thatmorning as though I were going to the barn--I scarcely thought ortried to think of anything but the Road. Such an unrestrained sense ofliberty, such an exaltation of freedom, I have not known since I was alad. When I came to my farm from the city many years ago it was as onebound, as one who had lost out in the World's battle and was seekingto get hold again somewhere upon the realities of life. I have relatedelsewhere how I thus came creeping like one sore wounded from the fieldof battle, and how, among our hills, in the hard, steady labour in thesoil of the fields, with new and simple friends around me, I found asort of rebirth or resurrection. I that was worn out, bankrupt bothphysically and morally, learned to live again. I have achieved somethingof high happiness in these years, something I know of pure contentment;and I have learned two or three deep and simple things about life: Ihave learned that happiness is not to be had for the seeking, but comesquietly to him who pauses at his difficult task and looks upward. I havelearned that friendship is very simple, and, more than all else, I havelearned the lesson of being quiet, of looking out across the meadows andhills, and of trusting a little in God. 

And now, for the moment, I am regaining another of the joys ofyouth--that of the sense of perfect freedom. I made no plans when Ileft 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 havedreamed of that! It seems almost as though, after ten years, I mightagain really touch the highest joys of adventure!

So I took the Road as it came, as a man takes a woman, for better orworse--I took the Road, and the farms along it, and the sleepy littlevillages, and the streams from the hillsides--all with high enjoyment. They were good coin in my purse! And when I had passed the narrowhorizon of my acquaintanceship, and reached country new to me, it seemedas 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 theeagerness of discovery I felt at climbing each new hill, nor the longbreath I took at the top of it as I surveyed new stretches of pleasantcountryside. 

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 andgreener--and the lilacs are still blooming, and the catbirds and oriolesare here. The oaks are not yet in full leaf, but the maples have nearlyreached their full mantle of verdure--they are very beautiful andcharming 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 armyof agriculture, regulars and reserves, is so fully drafted for servicein the fields. And all the doors and windows, both in the littlevillages and on the farms, stand wide open to the sunshine, and all thewomen 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 tothe open road--all the peddlers and agents and umbrella-menders, all thenursery salesmen and fertilizer agents, all the tramps and scientistsand poets--all abroad in the wide sunny roads. They, too, know well thishospitable moment of the spring; they, too, know that doors and heartsare open and that even into dull lives creeps a bit of the spirit ofadventure. Why, a farmer will buy a corn planter, feed a tramp, orlisten 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 lifeof the Road that I scarcely spoke to a living soul, but strode straightahead. The spring has been late and cold: most of the corn and some ofthe potatoes are not yet in, and the tobacco lands are still bare andbrown. Occasionally I stopped to watch some ploughman in the fields:I saw with a curious, deep satisfaction how the moist furrows, freshlyturned, glistened in the warm sunshine. There seemed to be somethingright and fit about it, as well as human and beautiful. Or at eveningI would stop to watch a ploughman driving homeward across his new brownfields, raising a cloud of fine dust from the fast drying furrowcrests. The low sun shining through the dust and glorifying it, theweary-stepping horses, the man all sombre-coloured like the earthitself and knit into the scene as though a part of it, made a pictureexquisitely fine to see. 

And what a joy I had also of the lilacs blooming in many a dooryard, theodour often trailing after me for a long distance in the road, and ofthe pungent scent at evening in the cool hollows of burning brushheaps and the smell of barnyards as I went by--not unpleasant, notoffensive--and above all, the deep, earthy, moist odour of new-ploughedfields. 

And then, at evening, to hear the sound of voices from the dooryards asI pass quite unseen; no words, but just pleasant, quiet intonations ofhuman voices, borne through the still air, or the low sounds of cattlein the barnyards, quieting down for the night, and often, if near avillage, the distant, slumbrous sound of a church bell, or even therumble of a train--how good all these sounds are! They have all cometo me again this week with renewed freshness and impressiveness. I amliving 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 primevaltakings 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 desireto know something of all the strange and interesting people who areworking in their fields, or standing invitingly in their doorways, or sobusily afoot in the country roads. Let me add, also, for this is one ofthe most important parts of my present experience, that this new desirewas far from being wholly esoteric. I had also begun to have cravingswhich would not in the least be satisfied by landscapes or dulled by thesights and sounds of the road. A whiff here and there from a doorwayat mealtime had made me long for my own home, for the sight of Harrietcalling from the steps:

"Dinner, David. "

But I had covenanted with myself long before starting that I wouldliterally "live light in spring. " It was the one and primary condition Imade with myself--and made with serious purpose--and when I came away Ihad only enough money in my pocket and sandwiches in my pack to see methrough the first three or four days. Any man may brutally pay his wayanywhere, but it is quite another thing to be accepted by your humankindnot as a paid lodger but as a friend. Always, it seems to me, I havewanted to submit myself, and indeed submit the stranger, to that test. Moreover, how can any man look for true adventure in life if he alwaysknows to a certainty where his next meal is coming from? In a world socompletely dominated by goods, by things, by possessions, and smotheredby security, what fine adventure is left to a man of spirit save theadventure of poverty?

I do not mean by this the adventure of involuntary poverty, for Imaintain that involuntary poverty, like involuntary riches, is a creditto no man. It is only as we dominate life that we really live. What Imean 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, thatwhich draws the world to them in secret sympathy is not that they livedlives of poverty, but rather, having riches at their hands, or for thevery 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 finallogic of an achieved poverty. I have merely abolished temporarily frommy life a few hens and cows, a comfortable old farmhouse, and--certainother emoluments and hereditaments--but remain the slave of sundry clothupon my back and sundry articles in my gray bag--including a fat pocketvolume or so, and a tin whistle. Let them pass now. To-morrow I may wishto attempt life with still less. I might survive without my batteredcopy of "Montaigne" or even submit to existence without that senseof distant companionship symbolized by a postage-stamp, and as fortrousers--

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! WhatI am seeking is something as simple and as quiet as the trees or thehills--just to look out around me at the pleasant countryside, to enjoya little of this show, to meet (and to help a little if I may) a fewhuman beings, and thus to get nearly into the sweet kernel of humanlife. My friend, you may or may not think this a worthy object; ifyou do not, stop here, go no further with me; but if you do, why, we'llexchange 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 onwardby the corn, the eggs, and the honey of my past labours, and beforeWednesday noon I began to experience in certain vital centresrecognizable symptoms of a variety of discomfort anciently familiar toman. And it was all the sharper because I did not know how or where Icould assuage it. In all my life, in spite of various ups and downs ina fat world, I don't think I was ever before genuinely hungry. Oh, I'vebeen hungry in a reasonable, civilized way, but I have always knownwhere in an hour or so I could get all I wanted to eat--a conditionaccountable, in this world, I am convinced, for no end of stupidity. Butto be both physically and, let us say, psychologically hungry, and notto know where or how to get anything to eat, adds something to the zestof 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 thesuspicion with which the ordinary farmer meets the Man of the Road--theman who appears to wish to enjoy the fruits of the earth without workingfor them with his hands. It is a distrust deep-seated and ages old. Norcan the Man of the Road ever quite understand the Man of the Fields. Andhere was I, for so long the stationary Man of the Fields, essayingthe role of the Man of the Road. I experienced a sudden sense of theenlivenment of the faculties: I must now depend upon wit or cunning orhuman nature to win my way, not upon mere skill of the hand or strengthin the bent back. Whereas in my former life, when I was assailed by aMan of the Road, whether tramp or peddler or poet, I had only to standstock-still within my fences and say nothing--though indeed I nevercould do that, being far too much interested in every one who came myway--and the invader was soon repelled. There is nothing so resistant asthe 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 anattack. Oh, I measured the houses and barns I saw with a new eye! Thekind of country I had known so long and familiarly became a new andforeign land, full of strange possibilities. I spied out the men in thefields and did not fail, also, to see what I could of the commissarydepartment of each farmstead as I passed. I walked for miles lookingthus for a favourable opening--and with a sensation of embarrassment atonce disagreeable and pleasurable. As the afternoon began to deepen Isaw that I must absolutely do something: a whole day tramping in theopen air without a bite to eat is an irresistible argument. 

Presently I saw from the road a farmer and his son planting potatoes ina sloping field. There was no house at all in view. At the bars stood alight wagon half filled with bags of seed potatoes, and the horse whichhad drawn it stood quietly, not far off, tied to the fence. The man andthe boy, each with a basket on his arm, were at the farther end of thefield, dropping potatoes. I stood quietly watching them. They steppedquickly and kept their eyes on the furrows: good workers. I liked thelooks of them. I liked also the straight, clean furrows; I liked theappearance 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 stoodthere. 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 ofthe field. 

"Step lively, Ben, " I heard the man say with some impatience; "we've gotto finish this field to-day. "

"I AM steppin' lively, dad, " responded the boy, "but it's awful hot. Wecan't possibly finish to-day. It's too much. "

"We've got to get through here to-day, " the man replied grimly; "we'realready two weeks late. "

I know just how the man felt; for I knew well the difficulty a farmerhas in getting help in planting time. The spring waits for no man. Myheart went out to the man and boy struggling there in the heat of theirfield. For this is the real warfare of the common life. 

"Why, " I said to myself with a curious lift of the heart, "they haveneed of a fellow just like me. "

At that moment the boy saw me and, missing a step in the rhythm of theplanting, the father also looked up and saw me. But neither said a worduntil the furrows were finished, and the planters came to refill theirbaskets. 

"Fine afternoon, " I said, sparring for an opening. 

"Fine, " responded the man rather shortly, glancing up from his work. Irecalled the scores of times I had been exactly in his place, and hadglanced 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. Theboy said nothing at all, but eyed me with absorbing interest. The gloomylook had already gone from his face. 

I slipped my gray bag from my shoulder, took off my coat, and put themboth down inside the fence. Then I found the basket and began to fill itfrom one of the bags. Both man and boy looked up at me questioningly. Ienjoyed the situation immensely. 

"I heard you say to your son, " I said, "that you'd have to hurry inorder to get in your potatoes to-day. I can see that for myself. Let metake a hand for a row or two. "

The unmistakable shrewd look of the bargainer came suddenly into theman's face, but when I went about my business without hesitation orquestioning, he said nothing at all. As for the boy, the change in hiscountenance was marvellous to see. Something new and astonishing hadcome into the world. Oh, I know what a thing it is to be a boy and towork 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 favourablebeginning of my enterprise; there is nothing which so draws men togetheras their employment at a common task. 

Ben was a lad some fifteen years old-very stout and stocky, with a fineopen countenance and a frank blue eye--all boy. His nose was as freckledas the belly of a trout. The whole situation, including the prospect ofhelp in finishing a tiresome job, pleased him hugely. He stole a glimpsefrom 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 aboy. "

And with that I began to step ahead more quickly and make the piecesfairly fly. 

"We old fellows, " I said to the father, "must give these young sprouts alesson once in a while. "

"You will, will you?" responded the boy, and instantly began to drop thepotatoes 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 ofthe 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 pleasingthan the frank admiration of a boy. 

We paused a moment and I said to the man: "This looks like fine potatoland. "

"The' ain't any better in these parts, " he replied with some pride inhis voice. 

And so we went at the planting again: and as we planted we had greattalk of seed potatoes and the advantages and disadvantages of mechanicalplanters, of cultivating and spraying, and all the lore of prices andprofits. Once we stopped at the lower end of the field to get a drinkfrom a jug of water set in the shade of a fence corner, and once we setthe horse in the thills and moved the seed farther up the field. Andtired and hungry as I felt I really enjoyed the work; I really enjoyedtalking with this busy father and son, and I wondered what their homelife was like and what were their real ambitions and hopes. Thus the sunsank 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 Bencried out:

"There's Sis!"

I glanced up and saw standing near the gateway a slim, bright girl ofabout 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 clearsky. "

"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 shadycountry road. The evening was coming on, and the air was full of thescent 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 motherlywoman came out from the house, spoke to her son, and nodded pleasantlyto me. There was no especial introduction. I said merely, "My name isGrayson, " and I was accepted without a word. 

I waited to help the man, whose name I had now learned--it wasStanley--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 justwithin a little cleanly swept, open shed. Rolling back my collar andbaring my arms I washed myself in the cool water, dashing it over myhead until I gasped, and then stepping back, breathless and refreshed, I found the slim girl, Mary, at my elbow with a clean soft towel. AsI stood wiping quietly I could smell the ambrosial odours from thekitchen. In all my life I never enjoyed a moment more than that, Ithink. 

"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 alsoan 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 upour 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 usthrough another night. "

I suppose it was a very ordinary farm meal, but it seems to me I nevertasted a better one. The huge piles of new baked bread, the sweet farmbutter, already delicious with the flavour of new grass, the bacon andeggs, the potatoes, the rhubarb sauce, the great plates of new, hotgingerbread and, at the last, the custard pie--a great wedge of it, withfresh cheese. After the first ravenous appetite of hardworking men wassatisfied, there came to be a good deal of lively conversation. Thegirls 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 therather grim farmer of the afternoon, revealed a capacity for a huskysort of fun, joking Ben about his potato-planting and telling in alively way of his race with me. As for Mrs. Stanley, she sat smilingbehind her tall coffee pot, radiating good cheer and hospitality. Theyasked me no questions at all, and I was so hungry and tired that Ivolunteered no information. 

After supper we went out for half or three quarters of an hour to dosome final chores, and Mr. Stanley and I stopped in the cattle yard andlooked over the cows, and talked learnedly about the pigs, and I admiredhis spring calves to his hearts content, for they really were afine lot. When we came in again the lamps had been lighted in thesitting-room and the older daughter was at the telephone exchangingthe news of the day with some neighbour--and with great laughter andenjoyment. Occasionally she would turn and repeat some bit of gossip tothe 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 frontroom--the parlour--and came out with a first-rate phonograph which theyplaced 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 anda musical clangour of bells. When it wound up with a bang, Mr. Stanleytook 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 olderdaughter, Kate, broke into the song with a full, strong thoughuncultivated voice--which pleased us all very much indeed. 

Presently Mrs. Stanley, who was sitting under the lamp with a basket ofsocks 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. Theolder daughter gave me a hand lamp and showed me the way upstairs to alittle room at the end of the house. 

"I think, " she said with pleasant dignity, "you will find everything youneed. "

I cannot tell with what solid pleasure I rolled into bed or how soundlyand 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 tinwhistle. There was a wandering old fellow in our town who would sit forhours on the shady side of a certain ancient hotel-barn, and with hislittle whistle to his lips, and gently swaying his head to his tune andtapping one foot in the gravel, he would produce the most wonderfuland beguiling melodies. His favourite selections were very lively; heplayed, I remember, "Old Dan Tucker, " and "Money Musk, " and the tune ofa rollicking old song, now no doubt long forgotten, called "Wait forthe Wagon. " I can see him yet, with his jolly eyes half closed, hislips puckered around the whistle, and his fingers curiously and stifflypoised over the stops. I am sure I shall never forget the thrill whichhis music gave to the heart of a certain barefoot boy. 

At length, by means I have long since forgotten, I secured a tin whistleexactly like Old Tom Madison's and began diligently to practise suchtunes as I knew. I am quite sure now that I must have made a nuisanceof myself, for it soon appeared to be the set purpose of every memberof the family to break up my efforts. Whenever my father saw me with thewhistle 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 atthe very sight of my stern aunt I would instantly secrete my whistlein my blouse and fly for the garret or cellar, like a cat caught in thecream. 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 eavesand pointed a dusty golden finger into that hay-scented interior, Ipractised 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 beststyle--even to the last nod and final foot-tap. I turned a certainchurch hymn called "Yield Not to Temptation" into something quiteinspiriting, and I played "Marching Through Georgia" until all the"happy hills of hay" were to the fervid eye of a boy's imagination fullof tramping soldiers. Oh, I shall never forget the joys of those hoursin the hay-barn, nor the music of that secret tin whistle! I can hearyet the crooning of the pigeons in the eaves, and the slatey sound oftheir wings as they flew across the open spaces in the great barn; I cansmell yet the odour of the hay. 

But with years, and the city, and the shame of youth, I put aside andalmost forgot the art of whistling. When I was preparing for the presentpilgrimage, however, it came to me with a sudden thrill of pleasure thatnothing in the wide world now prevented me from getting a whistle andseeing whether I had forgotten my early cunning. At the very firstgood-sized town I came to I was delighted to find at a little candy andtoy shop just the sort of whistle I wanted, at the extravagant price often 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 Ichoose?"

Isn't it the strangest thing in the world how long it takes us to learnto accept the joys of simple pleasures?--and some of us never learn atall. "Boo!" says the neighbourhood, and we are instantly frightened intodoing a thousand unnecessary and unpleasant things, or prevented fromdoing a thousand beguiling things. 

For the first few days I was on the road I thought often with pleasureof the whistle lying there in my bag, but it was not until after I leftthe 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 verycheerful frame of mind. They convinced me that some of the great thingsI had expected of my pilgrimage were realizable possibilities. Why, Ihad walked right into the heart of as fine a family as I have seen thesemany days. 

I remained with them the entire day following the potato-planting. Wewere out at five o'clock in the morning, and after helping withthe chores, and eating a prodigious breakfast, we went again to thepotato-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 theplanting of the previous day. 

In the afternoon a slashing spring rain set in, and Mr. Stanley, whowas 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, Benturning the grindstone and I holding the blades and telling him storiesinto the bargain. Mr. Stanley and his stout older son overhauled thework-harness and tinkered the corn-planter. The doors at both endsof the barn stood wide open, and through one of them, framed like apicture, we could see the scudding floods descend upon the meadows, andthrough the other, across a fine stretch of open country, we could seeall the roads glistening and the treetops moving under the rain. 

"Fine, fine!" exclaimed Mr. Stanley, looking out from time to time, "wegot in our potatoes just in the nick of time. "

After supper that evening I told them of my plan to leave them on thefollowing 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 aman like you all summer. There ain't any one around here will pay a goodman 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 Icame began to break through. Oh, I know how difficult it is to let thewanderer get by without taking toll of him! There are not so many peoplehere in the country that we can afford to neglect them. And as I hadnothing in the world to conceal, and, indeed, loved nothing better thanthe give and take of getting acquainted, we were soon at it in goodearnest. 

But it was not enough to tell them that my name was David Grayson andwhere my farm was located, and how many acres there were, and how muchstock I had, and what I raised. The great particular "Why?"--as I knewit would be--concerned my strange presence on the road at this season ofthe 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 quiteimpossible for him to imagine why any one should care to wander; andas for the wanderer it is inconceivable to him how any one can remainpermanently at home. 

We were all sitting comfortably around the table in the living-room. Thelamps were lighted, and Mr. Stanley, in slippers, was smoking his pipeand Mrs. Stanley was darning socks over a mending-gourd, and the twoyoung Stanleys were whispering and giggling about some matter of supremeconsequence to youth. The windows were open, and we could smell thesweet scent of the lilacs from the yard and hear the drumming of therain 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 myfarm that I wasn't quite sure whether I owned it or it owned me. And Imade up my mind I'd get away for a while from my own horses and cattleand see what the world was like. I wanted to see how people lived uphere, 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 agood broad man as well as a good farmer, I grew more and more interestedand enthusiastic. Mr. Stanley took his pipe slowly from his mouth, heldit poised until it finally went out, and sat looking at me with a raptexpression. I never had a better audience. Finally, Mr. Stanley saidvery 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 confusedlysearched in his pockets for a match; but I knew I had struck down deepinto a common experience. Here was this brisk and prosperous farmerhaving 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 theboy Ben understood all that I said, for I was dealing with experiencescommon mostly to older men, but he somehow seemed to get the spirit ofit, for quite unconsciously he began to hitch his chair toward me, thenhe laid his hand on my chair-arm and finally and quite simply he restedhis arm against mine and looked at me with all his eyes. I keep learningthat there is nothing which reaches men's hearts like talking straightout the convictions and emotions of your innermost soul. Those who hearyou may not agree with you, or they may not understand you fully, butsomething incalculable, something vital, passes. And as for a boy orgirl it is one of the sorriest of mistakes to talk down to them; almostalways your lad of fifteen thinks more simply, more fundamentally, thanyou do; and what he accepts as good coin is not facts or precepts, butfeelings 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 tobe anything or anybody else. "

"That's right, that's right, " exclaimed Mr. Stanley, nodding his headvigorously. 

"It's about the oldest wisdom there is, " I said, and with that I thoughtof the volume I carried in my pocket, and straightway I pulled it outand after a moment's search found the passage I wanted. 

"Listen, " I said, "to what this old Roman philosopher said"--and I heldthe book up to the lamp and read aloud:

"'You can be invincible if you enter into no contest in which it isnot in your power to conquer. Take care, then, when you observe a manhonoured before others or possessed of great power, or highly esteemedfor any reason, not to suppose him happy and be not carried away by theappearance. For if the nature of the good is in our power, neither envynor jealousy will have a place in us. But you yourself will not wish tobe a general or a senator or consul, but a free man, and there is onlyone way to do this, to care not for the things which are not in ourpower. '"

"That, " said Mr. Stanley, "is exactly what I've always said, but Ididn't know it was in any book. I always said I didn't want to be asenator or a legislator, or any other sort of office-holder. It's goodenough 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 saideagerly. 

At this the older brother, who was sitting not far off, broke into alaugh, 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 letanything 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 inlike a friend and brother. I've enjoyed it. "

So Mrs. Stanley half filled my knapsack with the finest luncheon I'veseen in many a day, and thus, with as pleasant a farewell as if I'dbeen a near relative, I set off up the country road. I was a littledistressed in parting to see nothing of the boy Ben, for I had formed agenuine liking for him, but upon reaching a clump of trees which hidthe house from the road I saw him standing in the moist grass of a fencecorner. 

"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 withoutseeing you again. Walk a bit with me. "

So we walked side by side, talking quietly and when at last I shook hishand I said:

"Ben, don't you ever be afraid of acting up to the very best thoughtsyou 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, andlooked back, I saw him still standing there bare-footed in the roadlooking after me. I waved my hand and he waved his: and I saw him nomore. 

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 countrywhile so many of them are still to be found upon the farms and in thetowns of this land. 

So I tramped onward full of cheerfulness. The rain had ceased, but allthe world was moist and very green and still. I walked for more thantwo hours with the greatest pleasure. About ten o'clock in the morning Istopped near a brook to drink and rest, for I was warm and tired. And itwas then that I bethought me of the little tin pipe in my knapsack, andstraightway I got it out, and, sitting down at the foot of a tree nearthe brook, I put it to my lips and felt for the stops with unaccustomedfingers. At first I made the saddest sort of work of it, and was not alittle disappointed, indeed, with the sound of the whistle itself. Itwas nothing to my memory of it! It seemed thin and tinny. 

However, I persevered at it, and soon produced a recognizable imitationof Tom Madison's "Old Dan Tucker. " My success quite pleased me, andI 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 morekept me company. He sat on a twig just across the brook, cocking hishead at me, and saucily wagging his tail. Occasionally he would dart offamong the trees crying shrilly; but his curiosity would always get thebetter of him and back he would come again to try to solve the mysteryof this rival whistling, which I'm sure was as shrill and as harsh ashis own. 

Presently, quite to my astonishment, I saw a man standing near thebrookside not a dozen paces away from me. How long he had been thereI don't know, for I had heard nothing of his coming. Beyond him in thetown road I could see the head of his horse and the top of his buggy. Isaid not a word, but continued with my practising. Why shouldn't I? Butit gave me quite a thrill for the moment; and at once I began to thinkof the possibilities of the situation. What a thing it was have so manyunexpected and interesting situations developing! So I nodded my headand 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 hadfinished my tune I removed my whistle deliberately and wiped my lips. 

"Why, enjoying myself, " I replied with greatest good humour. "What areyou doing?"

"Why, " he said, "watching you enjoy yourself. I heard you playing as Ipassed in the road, and couldn't imagine what it could be. "

I told him I thought it might still be difficult, having heard me nearat hand, to imagine what it could be--and thus, tossing the ball ofgood-humoured repartee back and forth, we walked down to the roadtogether. He had a quiet old horse and a curious top buggy with theunmistakable 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 boxand showed me the greatest assortment of big and little brushes: bristlebrushes, broom brushes, yarn brushes, wire brushes, brushes for man andbrushes for beast, brushes of every conceivable size and shape that everI saw in all my life. He had out one of his especial pets--he calledit his "leader"--and feeling it familiarly in his hand he instinctivelybegan the jargon of well-handled and voice-worn phrases which went withthat particular brush. It was just as though some one had touched abutton and had started him going. It was amazing to me that any onein the world should be so much interested in mere brushes--until heactually began to make me feel that brushes were as interesting asanything else!

What a strange, little, dried-up old fellow he was, with his ballsof muttonchop sidewhiskers, his thick eyebrows, and his lively blueeyes!--a man evidently not readily turned aside by rebuffs. He hadalready shown that his wit as a talker had been sharpened by longand varied contact with a world of reluctant purchasers. I was reallycurious to know more of him, so I said finally:

"See here, Mr. Canfield, it's just noon. Why not sit down here with meand 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 thentethered him where he could nip the roadside grass. I opened my bag andexplored the wonders of Mrs. Stanley's luncheon. I cannot describe theabsolutely carefree feeling I had. Always at home, when I would haveliked to stop at the roadside with a stranger, I felt the nudge of aconscience troubled with cows and corn, but here I could stop where Iliked, or go on when I liked, and talk with whom I pleased, as long as Ipleased. 

So we sat there, the brush-peddler and I, under the trees, and ateMrs. Stanley's fine luncheon, drank the clear water from the brook, and talked great talk. Compared with Mr. Canfield I was a babe atwandering--and equally at talking. Was there any business he had notbeen in, or any place in the country he had not visited? He had soldeverything from fly-paper to threshing-machines, he had picked up alarge working knowledge of the weaknesses of human nature, and hadarrived at the age of sixty-six with just enough available cash to paythe manufacturer for a new supply of brushes. In strict confidence, Idrew certain conclusions from the colour of his nose! He had once hada family, but dropped them somewhere along the road. Most of our briskneighbours would have put him down as a failure--an old man, and nothinglaid by! But I wonder--I wonder. One thing I am coming to learn in thisworld, and that is to let people haggle along with their lives as Ihaggle along with mine. 

We both made tremendous inroads on the luncheon, and I presume we mighthave sat there talking all the afternoon if I had not suddenly bethoughtmyself with a not unpleasant thrill that my resting-place for the nightwas still gloriously undecided. 

"Friend, " I said, "I've got to be up and going. I haven't so much as apenny 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 upboth his hands and cried out:

"You're that way, are you?"--as though for the first time he reallyunderstood. We were at last on common ground. 

"Partner, " said he, "you needn't tell nothin' about it. I've been rightthere myself. "

At once he began to bustle about with great enthusiasm. He was fortaking complete charge of me, and I think, if I had permitted it, wouldinstantly have made a brush-agent of me. At least he would have carriedme along with him in his buggy; but when he suggested it I felt verymuch, I think, as some old monk must have who had taken a vow to dosome particular thing in some particular way. With great difficulty Iconvinced him finally that my way was different from his--though he wasregally impartial as to what road he took next--and, finally, with somereluctance, he started to climb into his buggy. 

A thought, however, struck him suddenly, and he stepped down again, ranaround to the box at the back of his buggy, opened it with a mysteriousand smiling look at me, and took out a small broom-brush with which heinstantly began brushing off my coat and trousers--in the liveliest andmost exuberant way. When he had finished this occupation, he quicklyhanded 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 quicklyinto his buggy, and was for driving off instantly, but paused andbeckoned me toward him. When I approached the buggy, he took hold of onethe 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 isthe world's greatest civilizer. Are you looking seedy or dusty?--why, this here brush will instantly make you a respectable citizen. Take myword for it, friend, never go into any strange house without stoppin'and brushin' off. It's money in your purse! You can get along withoutdinner 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 thehill. I stood watching him and when he turned around I waved the brushhigh over my head in token of a grateful farewell. 

It was a good, serviceable, friendly brush. I carried it throughout mywanderings; and as I sit here writing in my study, at this moment, I cansee 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 ownmarket has gone in it. "

It came near being a sorry fair for me on the afternoon following myparting with the amiable brush-peddler. The plain fact is, my successat 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 ofthe Road that I proceeded with altogether too much assurance. 

I am firmly convinced that the prime quality to be cultivated by thepilgrim is humility of spirit; he must be willing to accept Adventure inwhatever garb she chooses to present herself. He must be able to see theshining 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 manya pleasant farmstead where men were working in the fields, and many anopen doorway, and a mill or two, and a town--always looking for someGreat Adventure. 

Somewhere upon this road, I thought to myself, I shall fall in with aGreat Person, or become a part of a Great Incident. I recalled with keenpleasure the experience of that young Spanish student of Carlylewrites in one of his volumes, who, riding out from Madrid one day, cameunexpectedly upon the greatest man in the world. This great man, of whomCarlyle observes (I have looked up the passage since I came home), "akindlier, meeker, braver heart has seldom looked upon the sky in thisworld, " had ridden out from the city for the last time in his life "totake one other look at the azure firmament and green mosaic pavementsand the strange carpentry and arras work of this noble palace of aworld. "

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 ofkeeping up with them. One of the party made answer that the blamelay with the horse of Don Miguel de Cervantes, whose trot was of thespeediest. He had hardly pronounced the name when the student dismountedand, touching the hem of Cervantes' left sleeve, said, 'Yes, yes, it isindeed the maimed perfection, the all-famous, the delightful writer, thejoy and darling of the Muses! You are that brave Miguel. '"

It may seem absurd to some in this cool and calculating twentiethcentury that any one should indulge in such vain imaginings as I havedescribed--and yet, why not? All things are as we see them. I once hearda man--a modern man, living to-day--tell with a hush in his voice, anda peculiar light in his eye, how, walking in the outskirts of anunromantic town in New Jersey, he came suddenly upon a vigorous, bearded, rather rough-looking man swinging his stick as he walked, andstopping often at the roadside and often looking up at the sky. I shallnever 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, Ilet the big full afternoon slip by--I let slip the rich possibilitiesof half a hundred farms and scores of travelling people--and as eveningbegan to fall I came to a stretch of wilder country with wooded hillsand a dashing stream by the roadside. It was a fine and beautifulcountry--to look at--but the farms, and with them the chances of dinner, and a friendly place to sleep, grew momentarily scarcer. Upon the hillshere and there, indeed, were to be seen the pretentious summer homesof rich dwellers from the cities, but I looked upon them with no greathopefulness. 

"Of all places in the world, " I said to myself, "surely none could bemore unfriendly to a man like me. "

But I amused myself with conjectures as to what might happen (until theadventure seemed almost worth trying) if a dusty man with a bag onhis back should appear at the door of one of those well-groomedestablishments. It came to me, indeed, with a sudden deep sense ofunderstanding, that I should probably find there, as everywhere else, just men and women. And with that I fell into a sort of Socraticdialogue 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 thatthey have not?

MYSELF: Believe me, of all people in the world those who want themost are those who have the most. These people are also consumed withdesires. 

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 littlemystery in their lives. 

"That's it!" I said aloud; "that's it! Mystery--the things of thespirit, the things above ordinary living--is not that theessential thing for which the world is sighing, and groaning, andlonging--consciously, or unconsciously?"

I have always believed that men in their innermost souls desire thehighest, bravest, finest things they can hear, or see, or feel in allthe world. Tell a man how he can increase his income and he will begrateful to you and soon forget you; but show him the highest, mostmysterious things in his own soul and give him the word which willconvince him that the finest things are really attainable, and he willlove and follow you always. 

I now began to look with much excitement to a visit at one of thehouses on the hill, but to my disappointment I found the next two thatI approached still closed up, for the spring was not yet far enoughadvanced to attract the owners to the country. I walked rapidly onwardthrough the gathering twilight, but with increasing uneasiness as to theprospects for the night, and thus came suddenly upon the scene of an oddadventure. 

From some distance I had seen a veritable palace set high among thetrees and overlooking a wonderful green valley--and, drawing nearer, I saw evidences of well-kept roadways and a visible effort to makeinvisible 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 thesnort of a climbing motor-car, but I had scarcely decided to make my wayup to the house when I came, at the turning of the country road, upona 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 somehowto belong to the great estate above it, and I concluded, at the firstglance, that it was the home of some caretaker or gardener. 

It was a charming place to see, and especially the plantation of treesand shrubs. My eye fell instantly upon a fine magnolia--rare in thiscountry--which had not yet cast all its blossoms, and I paused fora moment to look at it more closely. I myself have tried to raisemagnolias near my house, and I know how difficult it is. 

As I approached nearer to the cottage, I could see a man and womansitting on the porch in the twilight and swaying back and forth inrocking-chairs. I fancied--it may have been only a fancy--that when Ifirst saw them their hands were clasped as they rocked side by side. 

It was indeed a charming little cottage. Crimson ramblers, givingpromise of the bloom that was yet to come, climbed over one end of theporch, 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 lastreached my destination. I cannot give any idea of the lift of the heartwith which I entered upon this new adventure. Without the premeditationand not knowing what I should say or do, I realized that everythingdepended upon a few sentences spoken within the next minute or two. Believe me, this experience to a man who does not know where his nextmeal is coming from, nor where he is to spend the night, is well worthhaving. It is a marvellous sharpener of the facts. 

I knew, of course, just how these people of the cottage would ordinarilyregard an intruder whose bag and clothing must infallibly class him as afollower 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 stoodthere. 

"As I passed your garden, " I said, grasping desperately for a way ofapproach, "I saw your beautiful specimen of the magnolia tree--the onestill in blossom. I myself have tried to grow magnolias--but withsmall success--and I'm making bold to inquire what variety you are sosuccessful with. "

It was a shot in the air--but I knew from what I had seen that they mustbe enthusiastic gardeners. The man glanced around at the magnolia withevident pride, and was about to answer when the woman rose and with apleasant, 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 soI saw, on the table just behind me a number magazines and books--booksof unusual sizes and shapes, indicating that they were not mere summernovels. 

"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 onethat 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 bothbooks gardens they would know Downing--Bible of the gardener. And ifthey did, we belonged to the same church. 

"The very same, " exclaimed the woman; "it was Downing's enthusiasm forthe 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 bepermitted latitude in their comments so long as it is all within thecloister?--we indulged in a bit of higher criticism. 

"It won't do, " said the man, "to follow too slavishly every detail ofpractice as recommended by Downing. We have learned a good many thingssince the forties. "

"The fact is, " I said, "no literal-minded man should be trusted withDowning. "

"Any more than with the Holy Scriptures, " exclaimed the woman. 

"Exactly!" I responded with the greatest enthusiasm; "exactly! We go tohim for inspiration, for fundamental teachings, for the great literatureand poetry of the art. Do you remember, " I asked, "that passage inwhich Downing quotes from some old Chinaman upon the true secret of thepleasures of a garden--?"

"Do we?" exclaimed the man, jumping up instantly; "do we? Just let meget the book--"

With that he went into the house and came back immediately bringing alamp 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 producea happy heart as good books and a farm or garden. "

Mr. Vedder, having returned, slipped on his spectacles, sat forward onthe 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 Citizensin Country Life. '"

He turned the leaves eagerly. 

"No, " he said, "here it is in 'Rural Taste. ' Let me read you thepassage, Mr. --"

"Grayson. "

"--Mr. Grayson. The Chinaman's name was Lieu-tscheu. 'What is it, ' asksthis old Chinaman, 'that we seek in the pleasure of a garden? It hasalways been agreed that these plantations should make men amendsfor living at a distance from what would be their more congenialand agreeable dwelling-place--in the midst of nature, free andunrestrained. '"

"That's it, " I exclaimed, "and the old Chinaman was right! A gardenexcuses civilization. "

"It's what brought us here, " said Mrs. Vedder. 

With that we fell into the liveliest discussion of gardening and farmingand country life in all their phases, resolving that while there werebugs and blights, and droughts and floods, yet upon the whole there wasno life so completely satisfying as life in which one may watch dailythe unfolding of natural life. 

A hundred things we talked about freely that had often risen dimly inmy own mind almost to the point--but not quite--of spilling over intoarticulate form. The marvellous thing about good conversation is thatit brings to birth so many half-realized thoughts of our own--besidessowing the seed of innumerable other thought-plants. How they enjoyedtheir garden, those two, and not only the garden itself, but all thelore and poetry of gardening!

We had been talking thus an hour or more when, quite unexpectedly, I hadwhat 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 hadpay 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 whichis full of the spirit of the garden as we have long known it, althoughthe author is not treating directly of gardens, but of farming and ofhuman nature. "

"It is really all one subject, " I interrupted. 

"Certainly, " said Mr. Vedder, "but many gardeners are nothing butgardeners. Well, the book to which I refer is called 'Adventures inContentment, ' and is by--Why, a man of your own name!"

With that Mr. Vedder reached for a book--a familiar-looking book--on thetable, but Mrs. Vedder looked at me. I give you my word, my heart turnedentirely over, and in a most remarkable way righted itself again; and Isaw Roman candles and Fourth of July rockets in front of my eyes. Neverin all my experience was I so completely bowled over. I felt likea small boy who has been caught in the pantry with one hand in thejam-pot--and plenty of jam on his nose. And like that small boy Ienjoyed 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. Vedderrising as though she had seen a spectre, and pointing dramatically atme, she exclaimed:

"You are David Grayson!"

I can say truthfully now that I know how the prisoner at the bar mustfeel when the judge, leaning over his desk, looks at him sternly andsays:

"I declare you guilty of the offence as charged, and sentence you--" andso on, and so on. 

Mr. Vedder stiffened up, and I can see him yet looking at me through hisglasses. 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 along time. "

I shall not attempt to relate the conversation which followed, nor tellof the keen joy I had in it--after the first cold plunge. We found thatwe had a thousand common interests and enthusiasms. I had to tell themof my farm, and why I had left it temporarily, and of the experiences onthe road. No sooner had I related what had befallen me at the Stanleys'than Mrs. Vedder disappeared into the house and came out again presentlywith a tray loaded with cold meat, bread, a pitcher of fine milk, andother good things. 

"I shall not offer any excuses, " said I, "I'm hungry, " and with that Ilaid in, Mr. Vedder helping with the milk, and all three of us talkingas fast as ever we could. 

It was nearly midnight when at last Mr. Vedder led the way to theimmaculate little bedroom where I spent the night. 

The next morning I awoke early, and quietly dressing, slipped downto the garden and walked about among the trees and the shrubs and theflower-beds. The sun was just coming up over the hill, the air wasfull of the fresh odours of morning, and the orioles and cat-birds weresinging. 

In the back of the garden I found a charming rustic arbour with seatsaround a little table. And here I sat down to listen to the morningconcert, and I saw, cut or carved upon the table, this verse, which sopleased 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 bringHarriet, and we will live here always. What's a farm compared with afriend?"

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 athome. 

"It's astonishing how many fine people there are in this world, " I saidaloud; "one can't escape them!"

"Good morning, David Grayson, " I heard some one saying, and glancing upI 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 variousspireas and Japanese barberries, of which he was very proud, we walkedinto the house together. 

I did not think of it especially at time--Harriet says I never seeanything 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 (withwhich it was loaded), but with the quality of the china and silver. Itwas plainly the table of no ordinary gardener or caretaker--but thisconclusion did not come to me until afterward, for as I remember it, wewere in a deep discussion of fertilizers. 

Mrs. Vedder cooked and served breakfast herself, and did it with a skillalmost equal to Harriet's--so skillfully that the talk went on and wenever once heard the machinery of service. 

After breakfast we all went out into the garden, Mrs. Vedder in anold straw hat and a big apron, and Mr. Vedder in a pair of old brownoveralls. Two men had appeared from somewhere, and were digging in thevegetable garden. After giving them certain directions Mr. Vedder andI both found five-tined forks and went into the rose garden and beganturning over the rich soil, while Mrs. Vedder, with pruning-shears, keptnear 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 ahundred little excursions into other parts of the garden, to see thisor that wonder of vegetation, brought us to dinner-time before we fairlyknew it. 

About the middle of the afternoon I made the next discovery. I heardfirst the choking cough of a big motor-car in the country road, anda moment later it stopped at our gate. I thought I saw the Veddersexchanging significant glances. A number of merry young people tumbledout, and an especially pretty girl of about twenty came running throughthe garden. 

"Mother, " she exclaimed, "you MUST come with us!"

"I can't, I can't, " said Mrs. Vedder, "the roses MUST be pruned--andsee! 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 thatMr. And Mrs. Vedder were not the caretakers but the owners of the estateand of the great house I had seen on the hill. That evening, with an airalmost 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 knowof country life the more we wanted to get down into it. We found itimpossible up there--so many unnecessary things to see to and carefor--and we couldn't--we didn't see--"

"The fact is, " Mr. Vedder put in, "we were losing touch with eachother. "

"There is nothing like a big house, " said Mrs. Vedder, "to separate aman and his wife. "

"So we came down here, " said Mr. Vedder, "built this little cottage, anddeveloped this garden mostly with our own hands. We would have sold thebig 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 manypossessions, too much property, to the peace and quietude of a gardenwhere they could be lovers again. 

"It seems, sometimes, " said Mrs. Vedder, "that I never really believedin 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 formany years: here we seem to get back to Him. "

I had fully intended to take the road again that afternoon, but howcould any one leave such people as those? We talked again late thatnight, but the next morning, at the leisurely Sunday breakfast, I setmy hour of departure with all the firmness I could command. I leftthem, indeed, before ten o'clock that forenoon. I shall never forgetthe parting. They walked with me to the top of the hill, and there westopped and looked back. We could see the cottage half hidden among thetrees, and the little opening that the precious garden made. For a timewe stood there quite silent. 

"Do you remember, " I said presently, "that character in Homer who wasa friend of men and lived in a house by the side of the road? I shallalways 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, DavidGrayson, " exclaimed Mrs. Vedder. 

And so we parted like old friends, and I left them to return to theirgarden, where "'tis very sure God walks. "

CHAPTER IV. I AM THE SPECTATOR OF A MIGHTY BATTLE, IN WHICH CHRISTIANMEETS APPOLLYON

It is one of the prime joys of the long road that no two days are everremotely alike--no two hours even; and sometimes a day that beginscalmly will end with the most stirring events. 

It was thus, indeed, with that perfect spring Sunday, when I left myfriends, the Vedders, and turned my face again to the open country. Itbegan as quietly as any Sabbath morning of my life, but what an end ithad! I would have travelled a thousand miles for the adventures which abounteous road that day spilled carelessly into my willing hands. 

I can give no adequate reason why it should be so, but there are Sundaymornings 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 Iyielded to the ingratiating mood of the day. Usually I am an activewalker, loving the sense of quick motion and the stir it imparts to bothbody and mind, but that morning I found myself loitering, looking widelyabout me, and enjoying the lesser and quieter aspects of nature. It wasa fine wooded country in which I found myself, and I soon struck off thebeaten road and took to the forest and the fields. In places the groundwas almost covered with meadow-rue, like green shadows on the hillsides, not yet in seed, but richly umbrageous. In the long green grass of themeadows shone the yellow star-flowers, and the sweet-flags were bloomingalong the marshy edges of the ponds. The violets had disappeared, butthey were succeeded by wild geraniums and rank-growing vetches. 

I remember that I kept thinking from time to time, all the forenoon, asmy mind went back swiftly and warmly to the two fine friends from whom Ihad so recently parted:

How the Vedders would enjoy this! Or, I must tell the Vedders that. Andtwo or three times I found myself in animated conversations with themin which I generously supplied all three parts. It may be true for somenatures, as Leonardo said, that "if you are alone you belong wholly toyourself; if you have a companion, you belong only half to yourself";but it is certainly not so with me. With me friendship never divides: itmultiplies. 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 thatSunday forenoon, not knowing in the least that Chance held me closeby the hand and was leading me onward to great events. I knew, ofcourse, that I had yet to find a place for the night, and that this mightbe difficult on Sunday, and yet I spent that forenoon as a man spendshis immortal youth--with a glorious disregard for the future. 

Some time after noon--for the sun was high and the day was growing muchwarmer--I turned from the road, climbed an inviting little hill, andchose a spot in an old meadow in the shade of an apple tree and thereI lay down on the grass, and looked up into the dusky shadows of thebranches above me. I could feel the soft airs on my face; I could hearthe buzzing of bees in the meadow flowers, and by turning my head just alittle I could see the slow fleecy clouds, high up, drifting across theperfect blue of the sky. And the scent of the fields in spring!--he whohas 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 trulyworshipping God. That Sunday morning everything about me seemed somehowto be a miracle--a miracle gratefully accepted and explainable only bythe presence of God. There was another strange, deep feeling which I hadthat morning, which I have had a few other times in my life at the rareheights of experience--I hesitate always when I try to put down thedeep, deep things of the human heart--a feeling immeasurably real, that if I should turn my head quickly I should indeed SEE that ImmanentPresence. .. . 

One of the few birds I know that sings through the long midday is thevireo. The vireo sings when otherwise the woods are still. You do notsee him; you cannot find him; but you know he is there. And his singingis wild, and shy, and mystical. Often it haunts you like the memory ofsome former happiness. That day I heard the vireo singing. .. . 

I don't know how long I lay there under the tree in the meadow, butpresently I heard, from no great distance, the sound of a church-bell. It was ringing for the afternoon service which among the farmers of thispart of the country often takes the place, in summer, of both morningand evening services. 

"I believe I'll go, " I said, thinking first of all, I confess, of theinteresting people I might meet there. 

But when I sat up and looked about me the desire faded, and rummagingin my bag I came across my tin whistle. Immediately I began practisinga tune called "Sweet Afton, " which I had learned when a boy; and, asI played, my mood changed swiftly, and I began to smile at myself asa tragically serious person, and to think of pat phrases with which tocharacterize the execrableness of my attempts upon the tin whistle. Ishould have liked some one near to joke with. 

Long ago I made a motto about boys: Look for a boy anywhere. Never besurprised when you shake a cherry tree if a boy drops out of it;never be disturbed when you think yourself in complete solitude if youdiscover 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 outof a thicket by the roadside; and a moment later two others appeared. 

Instantly I switched into "Marching Through Georgia, " and began tonod my head and tap my toe in the liveliest fashion. Presently one boyclimbed up on the fence, then another, then a third. I continued toplay. 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 towear 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 amore devoted audience. I don't know what interesting event might havehappened next, for the bold leader, who stood nearest, was becomingdangerously inflated with questions--I don't know what might havehappened had we not been interrupted by the appearance of a Spectre inBlack. It appeared before us there in the broad daylight in the middleof a sunny afternoon while we were playing "Yankee Doodle. " First Isaw the top of a black hat rising over the rim of the hill. This wasfollowed 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 ironnerve in facing such phenomena, I continued to play "Yankee Doodle. "In spite of this counter-attraction, toward which all four boys turneduneasy glances, I held my audience. The Black Spectre, with a black bookunder its arm, drew nearer. Still I continued to play and nod my headand tap my toe. I felt like some modern Pied Piper piping away thechildren of these modern hills--piping them away from older people whocould not understand them. 

I could see an accusing look on the Spectre's face. I don't know whatput it into my head, and I had no sooner said it than I was sorry for mylevity, but the figure with the sad garments there in the matchless andtriumphant spring day affected me with a curious, sharp impatience. Hadany one the right to look out so dolefully upon such a day and such ascene of simple happiness as this? So I took my whistle from my lips andasked:

"Is God dead?"

I shall never forget the indescribable look of horror and astonishmentthat swept over the young man's face. 

"What do you mean, sir?" he asked with an air of stern authority whichsurprised me. His calling for the moment lifted him above himself: itwas 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, toshow 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, butwhen I saw you coming up the hill, looking so gloomy and disconsolate onthis bright day, as though you disapproved of God's world, the questionslipped out before I knew it. "

My words evidently struck deep down into some disturbed innerconsciousness, for he asked--and his words seemed to slip out before hethought:

"Is THAT the way I impressed you?"

I found my heart going out strongly toward him. "Here, " I thought tomyself, "is a man in trouble. "

I took a good long look at him. He still a young man, thoughworn-looking--and sad as I now saw it, rather than gloomy--with thesensitive lips and the unworldly look one sees sometimes in the faces ofsaints. His black coat was immaculately neat, but the worn button-coversand the shiny lapels told their own eloquent story. Oh, it seemed to meI knew him as well as if every incident of his life were writtenplainly upon his high, pale forehead! I have lived long in a countryneighbourhood, and I knew him--poor flagellant of the rural church--Iknew how he groaned under the sins of a Community too comfortablywilling to cast all its burdens on the Lord, or on the Lord's accreditedlocal representative. I inferred also the usual large family and the lowsalary (scandalously unpaid) and the frequent moves from place to place. 

Unconsciously heaving a sigh the young man turned partly aside and saidto 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 withthat I put aside my whistle, took up my bag and moved down the hill withthem. 

"The fact is, " I said, "when I heard your bell I thought of going tochurch myself. "

"Did you?" he asked eagerly. "Did you?"

I could see that my proposal of going to church had instantly affectedhis spirits. Then he hesitated abruptly with a sidelong glance at my bagand rusty clothing. I could see exactly what was passing in his mind. 

"No, " I said, smiling, as though answering a spoken question, "I am notexactly 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 Ithought--"

But he did not tell me what he thought; and, though he walked quietlyat my side, he was evidently deeply disturbed. Something of hisdiscouragement I sensed even then, and I don't think I was ever sorrierfor a man in my life than I was for him at that moment. Talk about thesuffering sinners! I wonder if they are to be compared with the trialsof 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 objectof much inquiring and suspicious scrutiny, and took my place in aconvenient pew. It was a small church with an odd air of domesticity, and the proportion of old ladies and children in the audience waspathetically large. As a ruddy, vigorous, out-of-door person, with thedust 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 wasNash, Mr. J. H. Nash (I did not know then that I was soon to make hisacquaintance)--the Chief Pharisee looked as hard as nails, a middle-agedman with stiff chin-whiskers, small round, sharp eyes, and a pugnaciousjaw. 

"That man, " said I to myself, "runs this church, " and instantly I foundmyself looking upon him as a sort of personification of the troubles Ihad seen in the minister's eyes. 

I shall not attempt to describe the service in detail. There was adiscouraging droop and quaver in the singing, and the mournful-lookingdeacon who passed the collection-plate seemed inured to disappointment. The prayer had in it a note of despairing appeal which fell like a coldhand upon one's living soul. It gave one the impression that thiswas indeed a miserable, dark, despairing world, which deserved to bewrathfully destroyed, and that this miserable world was full of equallymiserable, broken, sinful, sickly people. 

The sermon was a little better, for somewhere hidden within him thispale young man had a spark of the divine fire, but it was so dampened bythe atmosphere of the church that it never rose above a pale luminosity. 

I found the service indescribably depressing. I had an impulse to riseup and cry out--almost anything to shock these people into opening theireyes upon real life. Indeed, though I hesitate about setting it downhere, I was filled for some time with the liveliest imaginings of thefollowing 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 thecondition of the church. 

"The only live thing here, " I would tell him, "is the spark in that paleminister's soul; and you're doing your best to smother that. "

And I fully made up my mind that when he answered back in hischief-pharisaical way I would gently--but firmly remove him from hisseat, shake him vigorously two or three times (men's souls have oftenbeen saved with less!), deposit him flat in the aisle, and yes--stand onhim while I elucidated the situation to the audience at large. WhileI confined this amusing and interesting project to the humours of theimagination I am still convinced that something of the sort would havehelped enormously in clearing up the religious and moral atmosphere ofthe place. 

I had a wonderful sensation of relief when at last I stepped out againinto the clear afternoon sunshine and got a reviving glimpse of thesmiling green hills and the quiet fields and the sincere trees--and feltthe welcome of the friendly road. 

I would have made straight for the hills, but the thought of that paleminister held me back; and I waited quietly there under the trees tillhe came out. He was plainly looking for me, and asked me to wait andwalk along with him, at which his four boys, whose acquaintance I hadmade under such thrilling circumstances earlier in the day, seemedhighly delighted, and waited with me under the tree and told me ahundred important things about a certain calf, a pig, a kite, and otherthings at home. 

Arriving at the minister's gate, I was invited in with awhole-heartedness that was altogether charming. The minister's wife, a faded-looking woman who had once possessed a delicate sort ofprettiness, was waiting for us on the steps with a fine chubby baby onher arm--number five. 

The home was much the sort of place I had imagined--a small houseundesirably located (but cheap!), with a few straggling acres ofgarden and meadow upon which the minister and his boys were trying withinexperienced hands to piece out their inadequate living. At the veryfirst 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, afterall, something incalculable, something pervasively beautiful about thispoor household. The moment the minister stepped inside his own door hebecame a different and livelier person. Something boyish crept into hismanner, and a new look came into the eyes of his faded wife that madeher almost pretty again. And the fat, comfortable baby rolled andgurgled about on the floor as happily as though there had been twonurses and a governess to look after him. As for the four boys, I havenever seen healthier or happier ones. 

I sat with them at their Sunday-evening luncheon. As the minister bowedhis head to say grace I felt him clasp my hand on one side while theoldest boy clasped my hand on the other, and thus, linked together, andaccepting 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 calledrusk--a preparation unfamiliar to me, made by browning and crushing thecrusts of bread and then rolling them down into a coarse meal. A bowl ofthis, with sweet, rich, yellow milk (for they kept their own cow), madeone of the most appetizing dishes that ever I ate. It was downrightgood: it gave one the unalloyed aroma of the sweet new milk and thesatisfying taste of the crisp bread. 

Nor have I ever enjoyed a more perfect hospitality. I have been inmany a richer home where there was not a hundredth part of the truegentility--the gentility of unapologizing simplicity and kindness. 

And after it was over and cleared away--the minister himself donning along apron and helping his wife--and the chubby baby put to bed, we allsat around the table in the gathering twilight. 

I think men perish sometimes from sheer untalked talk. For lack ofa creative listener they gradually fill up with unexpressed emotion. Presently this emotion begins to ferment, and finally--bang!--they blowup, burst, disappear in thin air. In all that community I suppose therewas no one but the little faded wife to whom the minister dared open hisheart, and I think he found me a godsend. All I really did was to lookfrom one to the other and put in here and there an inciting comment orask an understanding question. After he had told me his situation andthe difficulties which confronted him and his small church, he exclaimedsuddenly:

"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 andmoulded 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 thiscommunity, 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 tobe a fighter!"

It was beautiful, the boyish flush which now came into his face and thelight that came into his eyes. I should never have identified him withthe Black Spectre of the afternoon. 

"Why, " said I, "you ARE a fighter; you're fighting the greatest battlein the world today--the only real battle--the battle for the spiritualview of life. "

Oh, I knew exactly what was the trouble with his religion--at least thereligion which, under the pressure of that church he felt obliged topreach! It was the old, groaning, denying, resisting religion. It wasthe sort of religion which sets a man apart and assures him that theentire universe in the guise of the Powers of Darkness is leaguedagainst him. What he needed was a reviving draught of the new faithwhich affirms, accepts, rejoices, which feels the universe triumphantlybehind it. And so whenever the minister told me what he ought to be--forhe too sensed the new impulse--I merely told him he was just that. Heneeded 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 thiscommunity. "

How a woman loves concrete applications. She is your only truepragmatist. If a philosophy will not work, says she, why bother with it?

The minister rose quickly from his chair, threw back his head, andstrode 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 thatlittle Mrs. Minister, as she glanced up at him, looked actually pretty. 

The minister continued to stride up and down the room with his chin inthe air. 

"Mr. Nash, " said she in a low voice to me, "is always trying to holdhim down and keep him back. My husband WANTS to do the greatthings"--wistfully. 

"By every right, " the minister was repeating, quite oblivious of ourpresence, "I should lead these people. "

"He sees the weakness of the church, " she continued, "as well asany one, and he wants to start some vigorous community work--haveagricultural meetings and boys' clubs, and lots of things like that--butMr. Nash says it is no part of a minister's work: that it cheapensreligion. He says that when a parson--Mr. Nash always calls him parson, and I just LOATHE that name--has preached, and prayed, and visited thesick, that's enough for HIM. "

At this very moment a step sounded upon the walk, and an instant later afigure appeared in the doorway. 

"Why, Mr. Nash, " exclaimed little Mrs. Minister, exhibiting thatastonishing gift of swift recovery which is the possession of even thesimplest women, "come right in. "

It was some seconds before the minister could come down from the heightsand 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 greatman. 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 accusingexpression. He evidently did not approve of me, nor could I wholly blamehim, for I knew well how he, as a rich farmer, must look upon a rustyman of the road like me. I should have liked dearly to cross swords withhim myself, but greater events were imminent. 

In no time at all the discussion, which had evidently been broken off atsome previous meeting, concerning the proposed farmers' assembly at thechurch, had taken on a really lively tone. Mr. Nash was evidently inthe somewhat irritable mood with which important people may sometimesindulge themselves, for he bit off his words in a way that wascalculated to make any but an unusually meek and saintly man exceedinglyuncomfortable. But the minister, with the fine, high humility of thosewhose passion is for great or true things, was quite oblivious to theharsh words. Borne along by an irresistible enthusiasm, he told inglowing terms what his plan would mean to the community, how thepeople needed a new social and civic spirit--a "neighbourhood religiousfeeling" he called it. And as he talked his face flushed, and his eyesshone with the pure fire of a great purpose. But I could see that allthis enthusiasm impressed the practical Mr. Nash as mere moonshine. He grew more and more uneasy. Finally he brought his hand down with aresounding 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 aparson'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 anymixin' of religion an' farmin' in THIS neighbourhood. "

My eyes were on the pale man of God. I felt as though a human soul werebeing weighed in the balance. What would he do now? What was he worthREALLY as a man as well as a minister?

He paused a moment with downcast eyes. I saw little Mrs. Minister glanceat him--once--wistfully. He rose from his place, drew himself up to hisfull height--I shall not soon forget the look on his face--and utteredthese amazing words:

"Martha, bring the ginger-jar. "

Mrs. Minister, without a word, went to a little cupboard on the fartherside of the room and took down a brown earthenware jar, which shebrought over and placed on the table, Mr. Nash following her movementswith astonished eyes. No one spoke. 

The minister took the jar in his hands as he might the communion-cupjust 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 pouringout 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 outcertain coins, said:

"Here's one dollar and eighty-four cents more. That makes twenty-sixdollars. Now, Mr. Nash, you're the largest contributor to my salary inthis neighbourhood. You gave twenty-six dollars last year--fifty cents aweek. 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 asewing-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 theminister here. I am convinced that what the community needs is more of areligious and social spirit, and I am going about getting it in the waythe Lord leads me. "

At this I saw Mrs. Minister look up at her husband with such a light inher eyes as any man might well barter his life for--I could not keep myown eyes from pure beauty of it. 

I knew too what this defiance meant. It meant that this little familywas placing its all upon the altar--even the pitiful coins for whichthey had skimped and saved for months for a particular purpose. Talk ofthe heroism of the men who charged with Pickett at Gettysburg! Here wasa courage higher and whiter than that; here was a courage that dared tofight alone. 

As for Mr. Nash, the face of that Chief Pharisee was a study. Nothing isso paralyzing to a rich man as to find suddenly that his money willno longer command him any advantage. Like all hard-shelled, practicalpeople, Mr. Nash could only dominate in a world which recognized thesame material supremacy that he recognized. Any one who insisted uponflying 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 hissmall round eyes--was it anger, or was it fear, or could it have beenadmiration?

"If you want to waste your time on fiddlin' farmers' meetings--a manthat 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 thedarkness. 

For a moment we all sat perfectly silent, then the minister rose, andsaid solemnly:

"Martha, let's sing something. "

Martha crossed the room to the cottage organ and seated herself on thestool. 

"What shall we sing?" said she. 

"Something with fight in it, Martha, " he responded; "something withplenty of fight in it. "

So we sang "Onward, Christian Soldier, Marching as to War, " and followedup with:

Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve And press with rigour on; A heavenlyrace demands thy zeal And an immortal crown. 

When we had finished, and as Martha rose from her seat, the ministerimpulsively 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 boyishlaugh 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, takinga hand with them in the garden, but of the events of that day I shallspeak 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 morningwith a livelier mind and keener curiosity. If you were to watch menarrowly these days you would see I am slowly shedding my years. Isuspect that some one of the clear hill streams from which I have beendrinking (lying prone on my face) was in reality the fountain of eternalyouth. I shall not go back to see. 

It seems to me, when I feel like this, that in every least thing uponthe roadside, or upon the hill, lurks the stuff of adventure. What aworld it is! A mile south of here I shall find all that Stanley found inthe jungles of Africa; a mile north I am Peary at the Pole!

You there, brown-clad farmer on the tall seat of your wagon, drivingtownward with a red heifer for sale, I can show you that life--yourlife--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 inyour 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 divinedaily fact that adventure knocks so rarely at our door. A thousand timesI have had to learn this truth (what lesson so hard to learn as thelesson of humility!) and I suppose I shall have to learn it a thousandtimes more. This very day, straining my eyes to see the distant wondersof the mountains, I nearly missed a miracle by the roadside. 

Soon after leaving the minister and his family--I worked with them intheir garden with great delight most of the forenoon--I came, within amile--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, thebridges not too well kept, the verdure deep grown along old fences, thehouses opening hospitably at the very roadside, all these things I love. They come to me with the same sort of charm and flavour, only vastlymagnified, which I find often in the essays of the older writers--thoseleisurely old fellows who took time to write, REALLY write. Theimportant thing to me about a road, as about life--and literature, isnot that it goes anywhere, but that it is livable while it goes. Forif I were to arrive--and who knows that I ever shall arrive?--I think Ishould be no happier than I am here. 

Thus I have commonly avoided the Great White Road--the broad, smoothturnpike--rock-bottomed and rolled by a State--without so much as aloitering curve to whet one's curiosity, nor a thank-you-ma'am to laughover, nor a sinful hill to test your endurance--not so much as a dreamyvalley! It pursues its hard, unshaded, practical way directly from someparticular place to some other particular place and from time to time amotor-car shoots in at one end of it and out at the other, leaving itsdust to settle upon quiet travellers like me. 

Thus to-day when I came to the turnpike I was at first for makingstraight across it and taking to the hills beyond, but at that verymoment a motor-car whirled past me as I stood there and a girl with amerry face waved her hand at me. I lifted my hat in return--and asI watched them out of sight I felt a curious new sense of warmth andfriendliness there in the Great Road. 

"These are just people, too, " I said aloud--"and maybe they really likeit!"

And with that I began laughing at myself, and at the whole, big, amazing, interesting world. Here was I pitying them for their benightedstate, and there were they, no doubt, pitying me for mine!

And with that pleasant and satisfactory thought in my mind and a song inmy throat I swung into the Great Road. 

"It doesn't matter in the least, " said I to myself, "whether a man takeshold of life by the great road or the little ones so long as he takeshold. "

And oh, it was a wonderful day! A day with movement in it; a day thatflowed! In every field the farmers were at work, the cattle fed widelyin the meadows, and the Great Road itself was alive with a hundredvaried sorts of activity. Light winds stirred the tree-tops and rippledin the new grass; and from the thickets I heard the blackbirds crying. Everything animate and inanimate, that morning, seemed to have itsown clear voice and to cry out at me for my interest, or curiosity, orsympathy. Under such circumstances it could not have been long--norwas it long--before I came plump upon the first of a series of oddadventures. 

A great many people, I know, abominate the roadside sign. It seems tothem a desecration of nature, the intrusion of rude commercialism uponthe perfection of natural beauty. But not I. I have no such feeling. Oh, the signs in themselves are often rude and unbeautiful, and Inever wished my own barn or fences to sing the praises of swamp root orsarsaparilla--and yet there is something wonderfully human about thesepainted and pasted vociferations of the roadside signs; and I don'tknow why they are less "natural" in their way than a house or barn ora planted field of corn. They also tell us about life. How eagerly theycry out at us, "Buy me, buy me!" What enthusiasm they have in theirown concerns, what boundless faith in themselves! How they speak of theenormous 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 Ioften stand long at the crossings and look up at the finger-posts, andconsider my limitless wealth as a traveller. By this road I may, at myown pleasure, reach the Great City; by that--who knows?--the far wondersof Cathay. And I respond always to the appeal which the devoted pilgrimpaints on the rocks at the roadside: "Repent ye, for the kingdom of Godis at hand, " and though I am certain that the kingdom of God is alreadyhere, I stop always and repent--just a little--knowing that there isalways room for it. At the entrance of the little towns, also, or inthe squares of the villages, I stop often to read the signs of taxesassessed, or of political meetings; I see the evidences of homes brokenup in the notices of auction sales, and of families bereaved in the dryand formal publications of the probate court. I pause, too, beforethe signs of amusements flaming red and yellow on the barns (boys, thecircus is coming to town!), and I pause also, but no longer, to readthe 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 seelife 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 anywherebefore. It was not a large sign--indeed rather inconspicuous--consistingof a single word rather crudely painted in black (as by an amateur) upona white board. It was nailed to a tree where those in swift passing carscould not avoid seeing it:

[ REST ]

I cannot describe the odd sense of enlivenment, of pleasure I had when Isaw this new sign. 

"Rest!" I exclaimed aloud. "Indeed I will, " and I sat down on a stonenot far away. 

"Rest!"

What a sign for this very spot! Here in the midst of the haste andhurry of the Great Road a quiet voice was saying, "Rest. " Some one withimagination, I thought, evidently put that up; some quietist offeringthis mild protest against the breathless progress of the age. How oftenI have felt the same way myself--as though I were being swept onwardthrough life faster than I could well enjoy it. For nature passes thedishes far more rapidly than we can help ourselves. 

Or perhaps, thought I, eagerly speculating, this may be only somecunning advertiser with rest for sale (in these days even rest has itsprice), thus piquing the curiosity of the traveller for the disclosurewhich he will make a mile or so farther on. Or else some humouristwasting his wit upon the Fraternity of the Road, too willing (like me, perhaps) to accept his ironical advice. But it would be well worth whileshould I find him, to see him chuckle behind his hand. 

So I sat there very much interested, for a long time, even framing arather amusing picture in my own mind of the sort of person who paintedthese signs, deciding finally that he must be a zealot rather than atrader or humourist. (Confidentially, I could not make a picture ofhim in which he was not endowed with plentiful long hair). As I walkedonward again, I decided that in any guise I should like to see him, andI enjoyed thinking what I should say if I met him. A mile farther up theroad I saw another sign exactly like the first. 

"Here he is again, " I said exultantly, and that sign being somewhatnearer the ground I was able to examine it carefully front and back, butit bore no evidence of its origin. 

In the next few miles I saw two other signs with nothing on them but theword "Rest. "

Now this excellent admonition--like much of the excellent admonitions inthis 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 torest, and why. It opened indeed a limitless vista for new adventure. 

Presently, away ahead of me in the road, I saw a man standing neara one-horse wagon. He seemed to be engaged in some activity near theroadside, but I could not tell exactly what. As I hastened nearer Idiscovered that he was a short, strongly built, sun-bronzed man inworking-clothes--and with the shortest of short hair. I saw him take ashovel 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 upat 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 andlooked first one way of the road and then the other. "I have from GrabowBrook, but not the bridge, to the top o' Sullivan Hill, and all theculverts between, though two of 'em are by rights bridges. And I claimthat'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 amass of gravel and small boulders lay scattered on the smooth macadam. Iwatched him for a moment. I love to watch the motions of vigorous menat work, the easy play of the muscles, the swing of the shoulders, thevigour of stoutly planted legs. He evidently considered the conversationclosed, 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 manof the road has to surmount before he is accepted on easy terms by theordinary members of the human race. )

A few other well-intentioned observations on my part having elicitednothing but monosyllabic replies, I put my bag down by the roadsideand, going up to the wagon, got out a shovel, and without a word tookmy place at the other end of the landslide and began to shovel for all Iwas worth. 

I said not a word to the husky road-worker and pretended not to lookat him, but I saw him well enough out of the corner of my eye. He wasevidently astonished and interested, as I knew he would be: it wassomething entirely new on the road. He didn't quite know whether to beangry, or amused, or sociable. I caught him looking over at me severaltimes, 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 withgreat inward amusement. Oh, there is nothing like cracking a hard humannut! I decided at that moment, to have him invite me to supper. 

Finally, when I showed no signs of stopping my work, he himself pausedand leaned on his shovel. I kept right on. 

"Say, partner, " said he, finally, "did YOU read those signs as you comeup the road?"

"Yes, " I said, "but they weren't for me, either. My section's a longone, 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--aroad-worker. "

"Put her there, then, partner, " he said, with a broad smile on hisbronzed face. 

He and I struck hands, rested on our shovels (like old hands at it), andlooked with understanding into each other's eyes. We both knew the tradeand 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 longand hard section. It begins at a place called Prosy Common--do you knowit?--and reaches to the top of Clear Hill. There are several bad spotson 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 sodifficult 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 ofthe Great Road. 

"There he goes in the ruts again, " said the husky road-worker. "Why isit, I'd like to know, that every one wants to run in the same identicaltrack when they've got the whole wide road before 'em?"

"That's what has long puzzled me, too, " I said. "Why WILL peoplecontinue 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 bumpedout of the ruts they get into. "

"You're right, " said he enthusiastically, and his voice dropped into thetone 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 dustsprinkled over it, in the middle of the rut, and they'll look out forTHAT rut for some time to come. "

"Ain't it gorgeous, " said the husky road-worker, chuckling joyfully, "tosee 'em bump?"

"It is, " said I--"gorgeous. "

After that, shovelling part of the time in a leisurely way, and part ofthe time responding to the urgent request of the signs by the roadside(it pays to advertise!), the husky road-worker and I discussed manygreat and important subjects, all, however, curiously related to roads. Working all day long with his old horse, removing obstructions, drainingout the culverts, filling ruts and holes with new stone, and repairingthe damage of rain and storm, the road-worker was filled with a world ofpractical information covering roads and road-making. And having learnedthat I was of the same calling, we exchanged views with the greatestenthusiasm. It was astonishing to see how nearly in agreement we were asto what constituted an ideal road. 

"Almost everything, " said he, "depends on depth. If you get a good solidfoundation, the' ain't anything that can break up your road. "

"Exactly what I have discovered, " I responded. "Get down to bedrock anddo an honest job of building. "

"And don't have too many sharp turns. "

"No, " said I, "long, leisurely curves are best--all through life. Youhave observed that nearly all the accidents on the road are due to sharpturnings. "

"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 tothe real summit of enthusiastic agreement. Of all things on the road, orabove the road, or in the waters under the road, there is nothing thatthe road-worker dislikes more than oil. 

"It's all right, " said he, "to use oil for surfacin' and to keep downthe dust. You don't need much and it ain't messy. But sometimes when yousee oil pumped on a road, you know that either the contractor has beenjobbin', 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 almostimpassable 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. Hewants to smooth over the defects, he wants to lay the dust that everypasserby kicks up, he tries to smear over the truth regarding conditionswith messy and ill-smelling oil. Above everything, he doesn't want theroad dug up and rebuilt--says it will interfere with traffic, injurebusiness, and even set people to talking about changing the routeentirely! Oh, haven't I seen it in religion, where they are doing theirbest to oil up roads that are entirely worn out--and as for politics, isnot the cry of the party-roadster and the harmony-oilers abroad in theland?"

In the excited interest with which this idea now bore me along I hadentirely forgotten the existence of my companion, and as I now glancedat him I saw him standing with a curious look of astonishment andsuspicion on his face. I saw that I had unintentionally gone a littletoo 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 notfar up the road where we had been once before. As we were drinking, silently, I looked at the stout young fellow standing there, and Ithought to myself:

What a good, straightforward young fellow he is anyway, and howthoroughly he knows his job. I thought how well he was equipped withunilluminated knowledge, and it came to me whimsically, that here was afine bit of road-mending for me to do. 

Most people have sight, but few have insight; and as I looked intothe clear blue eyes of my friend I had a sudden swift inspiration, andbefore I could repent of it I had said to him in the most serious voicethat 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 youare nearly blind. "

"Me blind!"

It would be utterly impossible to describe the expression on hisface. 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'tknow 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 inearnest, I think I should have been tempted to laugh outright. I hadbegun my talk with him half jestingly, with the amusing idea of breakingthrough his shell, but I now found myself tremendously engrossed, anddesired nothing in the world (at that moment) so much as to make him seewhat 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--" Hetapped his forehead and began to edge away. 

I did not answer his question at all, but continued, with my eyes fixedon him:

"It is a peculiar sort of blindness. Apparently, as you look about, yousee everything there is to see, but as a matter of fact you see nothingin the world but this road--"

"It's time that I was seein' it again then, " said he, making as if toturn back to work, but remaining with a disturbed expression on hiscountenance. 

"The Spectacles I have to sell, " said I, "are powerful magnifiers"--heglanced again at the gray bag. "When you put them on you will see athousand wonderful things besides the road--"

"Then you ain't road-worker after all!" he said, evidently trying to bebluff and outright with me. 

Now your substantial, sober, practical American will stand only aboutso much verbal foolery; and there is nothing in the world that makes himmore uncomfortable--yes, downright mad!--than to feel that he is beingplayed 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 straighthome. So I stepped over toward him and said very earnestly:

"My friend, don't think I am merely joking you. I was never more inearnest 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 simplyas English words could do it, how, when he had spoken of oil for hisroads, I thought of another sort of oil for another sort of roads, andwhen he spoke of curves in his roads I was thinking of curves in theroads I dealt with, and I explained to him what my roads were. I havenever seen a man more intensely interested: he neither moved nor tookhis eyes from my face. 

"And when I spoke of selling you a pair of spectacles, " said I, "it wasonly a way of telling you how much I wanted to make you see my kinds ofroads as well as your own. "

I paused, wondering if, after all, he could be made to see. I know nowhow the surgeon must feel at the crucial moment of his accomplishedoperation. Will the patient live or die?

The road-worker drew a long breath as he came out from under theanesthetic. 

"I guess, partner, " said he, "you're trying to put a stone or two in myruts!"

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. Hewas always sayin' things that meant something else and when you foundout what he was drivin' at you always felt kind of queer in yourinsides. "

I laughed. 

"It's a mighty good sign, " I said, "when a man begins to feel queer inthe insides. It shows that something is happening to him. "

With that we walked back to the road, feeling very close andfriendly--and shovelling again, not saying much. After quite atime, when we had nearly cleaned up the landslide, I heard the huskyroad-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 catchyour point. "

"And now that you've got them on, " said I, "and they are serving youso well, I'm not going to sell them to you at all. I'm going to presentthem to you--for I haven't seen anybody in a long time that I've enjoyedmeeting more than I have you. "

We nurse a fiction that people love to cover up their feelings; but Ihave learned that if the feeling is real and deep they love far betterto find a way to uncover it. 

"Same here, " said the road-worker simply, but with a world of genuinefeeling in his voice. 

Well, when it came time to stop work the road-worker insisted that I getin 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 goodsupper it was--but I spent the night in his little home, close at theside of the road near the foot of a fine hill. And from time to time allnight long, it seemed to me, I could hear the rush of cars going by inthe smooth road outside, and sometimes their lights flashed in at mywindow, 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 thehouse, and of all the road-worker and his wife told me of their simplehistory--but, the road calls!

When I set forth early this morning the road-worker followed me outto the smooth macadam (his wife standing in the doorway with her handsrolled 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'llstop in and show you my new stock of spectacles. Maybe I can sell youanother 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 theevents of another day. 

It will surely be a great adventure, one of these days, to come this wayagain--and to visit the Stanleys, and the Vedders, and the Minister, anddrop in and sell another pair of specs to the Road-worker. It seems tome I have a wonderfully rosy future ahead of me!

P. S. --I have not yet found out who painted the curious signs; but I amnot as uneasy about it as I was. I have seen two more of them alreadythis 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 newspectacles), I remained steadfastly on the Great Road or near it. It wasa prime spring day, just a little hazy, as though promising rain, butsoft and warm. 

"They will be working in the garden at home, " I thought, "and there willbe worlds of rhubarb and asparagus. " Then I remembered how the morningsunshine would look on the little vine-clad back porch (reaching halfwayup the weathered door) of my own house among the hills. 

It was the first time since my pilgrimage began that I had thought withany emotion of my farm--or of Harriet. 

And then the road claimed me again, and I began to look out for somefurther explanation of the curious sign, the single word "Rest, " whichhad interested me so keenly on the preceding day. It may seem absurd tosome who read these lines--some practical people!--but I cannot conveythe 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. Idecided that no one but a poet could have contented himself with a lyricin one word, unless it might have been a humourist, to whom sometimes asingle small word is more blessed than all the verbal riches of Websterhimself. For it is nothing short of genius that uses one word whentwenty will say the same thing!

Or, would he, after all, turn out to be only a more than ordinarilyalluring advertiser? I confess my heart went into my throat thatmorning, 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 eyesof a young farmer. Yes, he s'posed he'd seen him, he said; wore a slouchhat, 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 hisbuggy, nailed something to a tree. A day or two later--the dull wonderof mankind!--the young farmer, passing that way to town, had seen theodd 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 warmlyto the people living all about on the farms or in the hills. It ispleasant at times to feel life, as it were, in general terms: nospecific Mr. Smith or concrete Mr. Jones, but just human life. I love tothink of people all around going out busily in the morning to their workand returning at night, weary, to rest. I like to think of them growingup, growing old, loving, achieving, sinning, failing--in short, living. 

In such a live-minded mood as this it often happens that the mostordinary things appear charged with new significance. I suppose I hadseen 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 mereinert objects of iron and wood. 

But as I tramped, thinking of the people in the hills, I came quiteunexpectedly upon a sandy by-road that came out through a thicketof scrub oaks and hazel-brush, like some shy countryman, to jointhe turn-pike. As I stood looking into it--for it seemed peculiarlyinviting--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 wasover-powering--they were living, eager hands outstretched to thepassing throng I could feel, hear, see the farmers up there in thehills reaching out to me, to all the world, for a thousand inexpressiblethings, 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 theoutstretched hands. At first I did not think of anything I coulddo--save to go up and eat dinner with one of the hill farmers, whichmight 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 mymind what I should say:

Dear Friend: You do not know me. I am a passerby in the road. My name isDavid Grayson. You do not know me, and it may seem odd to you to receivea 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 andyour farm. The fact is, I should like to look you up, and talk with youabout many things. I myself cultivate a number of curious fields, andraise many kinds of crops--

At this interesting point my inspiration suddenly collapsed, for I hada vision, at once amusing and disconcerting, of my hill farmer (and hispractical wife!) receiving such a letter (along with the country paper, a circular advertising a cure for catarrh, and the most recent catalogueof the largest mail-order house in creation). I could see them standingthere in their doorway, the man with his coat off, doubtfully scratchinghis head as he read my letter, the woman wiping her hands on her apronand looking over his shoulder, and a youngster squeezing between the twoand 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, Icould imagine no expression on their faces save one of incredulity andsuspicion. I could fairly see the shrewd worldly wise look come into thefarmer's face; I could hear him say:

"Ha, guess he thinks we ain't cut our eye-teeth!" And he would instantlybegin speculating as to whether this was a new scheme for sellinghim second-rate nursery stock, or the smooth introduction of anothersewing-machine agent. 

Strange world, strange world! Sometimes it seems to me that the hardestthing of all to believe in is simple friendship. Is it not a commentupon our civilization that it is so often easier to believe that aman is a friend-for-profit, or even a cheat, than that he is frankly awell-wisher of his neighbours?

These reflections put such a damper upon my enthusiasm that I was on thepoint of taking again to the road, when it came to me powerfully: Whynot try the experiment? Why not?

"Friendship, " I said aloud, "is the greatest thing in the world. Thereis 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 foundthat I was standing there in the middle of the public road, one clenchedfist absurdly raised in air, delivering an oration to a congregation ofrural-mail boxes!

And yet, in spite of the humorous aspects of the idea, it still appearedto me that such an experiment would not only fit in with the true objectof my journeying, but that it might be full of amusing and interestingadventures. Straightway I got my notebook out of my bag and, sittingdown near the roadside, wrote my letter. I wrote it as though my lifedepended upon it, with the intent of making some one household there inthe hills feel at least a little wave of warmth and sympathy from thegreat world that was passing in the road below. I tried to prove thevalidity of a kindly thought with no selling device attached to it; Itried to make it such a word of frank companionship as I myself, workingin my own fields, would like to receive. 

Among the letter-boxes in the group was one that stood a little detachedand behind the others, as though shrinking from such prosperous company. It was made of unpainted wood, with leather hinges, and looked shabbyin comparison with the jaunty red, green, and gray paint of some of theother boxes (with their cocky little metallic flags upraised). It borethe good American name of Clark--T. N. Clark--and it seemed to me that Icould 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 hisbox. 

It was with a sense of joyous adventure that I now turned aside into thesandy road and climbed the hill. My mind busied itself with thinking howI should carry out my experiment, how I should approach these Clarks, and how and what they were. A thousand ways I pictured to myself thereceipt of the letter: it would at least be something new for them, something just a little disturbing, and I was curious to see whetherit might open the rift of wonder wide enough to let me slip into theirlives. 

I have often wondered why it is that men should be so fearful of newventures in social relationships, when I have found them so fertile, so enjoyable. Most of us fear (actually fear) people who differ fromourselves, either up or down the scale. Your Edison pries fearlesslyinto the intimate secrets of matter; your Marconi employs the mysteriousproperties of the "jellied ether, " but let a man seek to experiment withthe laws of that singular electricity which connects you and me (thoughyou be a millionaire and I a ditch-digger), and we think him a wildvisionary, an academic person. I think sometimes that the science ofhumanity to-day is in about the state of darkness that the naturalsciences were when Linneus and Cuvier and Lamarck began groping for thegreat laws of natural unity. Most of the human race is still groaningunder 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, weare beginning to learn that unity is as much a law of life as selfishstruggle, and love a more vital force than avarice or lust of power orplace. A Wandering Carpenter knew it, and taught it, twenty centuriesago. 

"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 Ithought she looked at me oddly. 

I had been walking briskly for some three miles, and it was with keenexpectation that I now mounted the ridge and saw the farm for which Iwas looking, lying there in the valley before me. It was altogether awild and beautiful bit of country--stunted cedars on the knolls of therolling hills, a brook trailing its way among alders and willows down along valley, and shaggy old fields smiling in the sun. As I came nearerI could see that the only disharmony in the valley was the work (oridleness) of men. A broken mowing-machine stood in the field whereit had been left the summer before, rusty and forlorn, and dead weedsmarked the edges of a field wherein the spring ploughing was now onlyhalf done. The whole farmstead, indeed, looked tired. As for the houseand barn, they had reached that final stage of decay in which thebest thing that could be said of them was that they were picturesque. Everything was as different from the farm of the energetic and joyousStanleys, whose work I had shared only a few days before, as anythingthat 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 Iknow we have become first-rate friends. One doesn't dream of thepossibilities 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 satidly; and children were at play in the yard. I went in at the gate, notknowing in the least what I should say or do, but determined to get holdof the problem somewhere. As I approached the step, I swung my bag frommy shoulder. 

"Don't want to buy nothin', " said the man. 

"Well, " said I, "that is fortunate, for I have nothing to sell. Butyou'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 justappeared in the doorway. 

"Mandy, bring a dipper of water. "

As I stood there the children gathered curiously around me, and the mancontinued to sit in his chair, saying absolutely nothing, a picture ofdull 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 beganto open it. The shy girl paused, dipper in hand, the children stoodon tiptoe, and even the man showed signs of curiosity. With studieddeliberation I took out two books I had with me and put them on theporch; then I proceeded to rummage for a long time in the bottom of thebag as though I could not find what I wanted. Every eye was glued uponme, and I even heard the step of Mrs. Clark as she came to the but I didnot look up or speak. Finally I pulled out my tin whistle and, leaningback against the porch column, placed it to my lips, and began playingin Tom Madison's best style (eyes half closed, one toe tapping tothe music, head nodding, fingers lifted high from the stops), I beganplaying "Money Musk, " and "Old Dan Tucker. " Oh, I put vim into it, I cantell you! And bad as my playing was, I had from the start an absorptionof attention from my audience that Paderewski himself might have envied. I wound up with a lively trill in the high notes and took my whistlefrom my lips with a hearty laugh, for the whole thing had been downrightgood fun, the playing itself, the make-believe which went with it, thesurprise and interest in the children's faces, the slow-breaking smileof the little girl with the dipper. 

"I'll warrant you, madam, " I said to the woman who now stood franklyin the doorway with her hands wrapped in her apron, "you haven't heardthose 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, Ibegan with even greater zest to play "Yankee Doodle. "

When I had gone through it half a dozen times with such added variationsand trills as I could command, and had two of the children hopping aboutin the yard, and the forlorn man tapping his toe to the tune, and asmile on the face of the forlorn woman, I wound up with a rush andthen, as if I could hold myself in no longer (and I couldn't either!), Isuddenly 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 Ilooked up at the woman in the doorway there were tears in her eyes!

"Do you know 'John Brown's Body'?" eagerly inquired the little girlwith the dipper, and then, as if she had done something quite bold andimproper, she blushed and edged toward the doorway. 

"How does it go?" I asked, and one of the bold lads in the yardinstantly puckered his lips to show me, and immediately they were alltrying it. 

"Here goes, " said I, and for the next few minutes, and in my very beststyle, I hung Jeff Davis on the sour apple-tree, and I sent the soulof John Brown marching onward with an altogether unnecessary number ofhallelujahs. 

I think sometimes that people--whole families of 'em--literallyperish for want of a good, hearty, whole-souled, mouth-opening, throat-stretching, side-aching laugh. They begin to think themselves theabused of creation, they begin to advise with their livers and to hatetheir neighbours, and the whole world becomes a miserable dark blueplace quite unfit for human habitation. Well, all this is often only theresult of a neglect to exercise properly those muscles of the body (andof the soul) which have to do with honest laughter. 

I've never supposed I was an especially amusing person, but before I gotthrough with it I had the Clark family well loosened up with laughter, although I wasn't quite sure some of the time whether Mrs. Clarkwas laughing or crying. I had them all laughing and talking, askingquestions and answering them as though I were an old and valuedneighbour. 

Isn't it odd how unconvinced we often are by the crises in the lives ofother 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, areas commanding as the crises in the life of the greatest statesman ormillionaire, for they involve equally the whole personality, the entireprospects. 

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 itall, the cherished pig had died!

From all accounts (and the man on the porch quite lost his apathy intelling me about it) it must have been a pig of remarkable virtuesand attainments, a paragon of pigs--in whom had been bound up the manypossibilities of new shoes for the children, a hat for the lady, a newpair of overalls for the gentleman, and I know not what other kindredluxuries. I do not think, indeed, I ever had the portrait of a pigdrawn for me with quite such ardent enthusiasm of detail, and the morequestions I asked the more eager the story, until finally it becamenecessary for me to go to the barn, the cattle-pen, the pig-pen andthe chicken-house, that I might visualize more clearly the scene of thetragedy. The whole family trooped after us like a classic chorus, butMr. Clark himself kept the centre of the stage. 

How plainly I could read upon the face of the land the story of thishill farmer and his meagre existence--his ill-directed effort to wringa poor living for his family from these upland fields, his poverty, and, above all, his evident lack of knowledge of his own calling. Added tothese things, and perhaps the most depressing of all his difficulties, was the utter loneliness of the task, the feeling that it matteredlittle to any one whether the Clark family worked or not, or indeedwhether they lived or died. A perfectly good American family was herebeing wasted, with the precious land they lived on, because no one hadtaken the trouble to make them feel that they were a part of this GreatAmerican Job. 

As we went back to the house, a freckled-nosed neighbour's boy came inat 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 interestI have rarely experienced. I had no idea what a mere letter--a mereunopened 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 hastilyput on a pair of steel-bowed spectacles. 

"Let me see it, " he said, and when he also had inspected it minutely hesolemnly tore open the envelope and drew forth my letter. 

'I assure you I never awaited the reading of any writing of mine withsuch breathless interest. How would they take it? Would they catch themeaning that I meant to convey? And would they suspect me of havingwritten it?

Mr. Clark sat on the porch and read the letter slowly through to theend, turned the sheet over and examined it carefully, and then beganreading 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 fordays or weeks--had not the older girl, now flushed of face and ratherpretty, looked at me and said breathlessly (she was as sharp as abriar):

"You wrote it. "

I stood the battery of all their eyes for a moment, smiling and ratherexcited. 

"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 mysurprise it was accepted as simply as a neighbourly good morning. Isuppose the mystery of it was eclipsed by my astonishing presence thereupon the scene with my tin whistle. 

At any rate, it was a changed, eager, interested family which nowoccupied the porch of that dilapidated farmhouse. And immediately wefell into a lively discussion of crops and farming, and indeed the wholefarm question, in which I found both the man and his wife singularlyacute--sharpened upon the stone of hard experience. 

Indeed, I found right here, as I have many times found among ourAmerican farmers, an intelligence (a literacy growing out of what Ibelieve to be improper education) which was better able to discuss theproblems of rural life than to grapple with and solve them. A dull, illiterate Polish farmer, I have found, will sometimes succeed muchbetter at the job of life than his American neighbour. 

Talk with almost any man for half an hour, and you will find that hisconversation, like an old-fashioned song, has a regularly recurrentchorus. I soon discovered Mr. Clark's chorus. 

"Now, if only I had a little cash, " he sang, or, "If I had a fewdollars, I could do so and so. "

Why, he was as helplessly, dependent upon money as any soft-handedmillionairess. He considered himself poor and helpless because he lackeddollars, whereas people are really poor and helpless only when they lackcourage and faith. 

We were so much absorbed in our talk that I was greatly surprised tohear 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 tuneI knew, and some I didn't, four or five times, and after that wetold stories and cracked jokes in a way that must have been utterlyastonishing in that household. After the children had been, yes, drivento bed, Mr. Clark seemed about to drop back into his lamentations overhis condition (which I have no doubt had come to give him a sort ofpleasure), but I turned to Mrs. Clark, whom I had come to respect veryhighly, and began to talk about the little garden she had started, whichwas about the most enterprising thing about the place. 

"Isn't it one of the finest things in this world, " said I, "to go outinto a good garden in the summer days and bring in loaded baskets filledwith beets and cabbages and potatoes, just for the gathering?"

I knew from the expression on Mrs. Clark's face that I had touched asounding note. 

"Opening the green corn a little at the top to see if it is ready andthen stripping it off and tearing away the moist white husks--"

"And picking tomatoes?" said Mrs. Clark. "And knuckling the watermelonsto see if they are ripe? Oh, I tell you there are thousands of people inthis 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 bestto hear the hens cackling in the barnyard in the morning after they'velaid, 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. Nomatter 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 getsme where I live!"

"It IS good!" said Mrs. Clark with a laugh that could certainly becalled nothing if not girlish. 

All this time I had been keeping one eye on Mr. Clark. It was amusingto see him struggling against a cheerful view of life. He now broke intothe conversation. 

"Well, but--" he began. 

Instantly I headed him off. 

"And think, " said I, "of living a life in which you are beholden tono man. It's a free life, the farmer's life. No one can discharge youbecause you are sick, or tired, or old, or because you are a Democrat ora Baptist!"

"Well, but--"

"And think of having to pay no rent, nor of having to live upstairs in atenement!"

"Well, but--"

"Or getting run over by a street-car, or having the children play in thegutters. "

"I never did like to think of what my children would do if we went totown, " said Mrs. Clark. 

"I guess not!" I exclaimed. 

The fact is, most people don't think half enough of themselves and oftheir 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 hiseyes (your American is an irrepressible trader) as though I mightpossibly be some would-be purchaser in disguise. 

(I shall write some time a dissertation on the advantages, of wearingshabby clothing. )

The farm really had many good points. One of them was a shaggy oldorchard of good and thriving but utterly neglected apple-trees. 

"Man alive, " I said, when we went out to see it in the morning, "you'vegot a gold mine here!" And I told him how in our neighbourhood we wererenovating the old orchards, pruning them back, spraying, and bringingthem 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. Clarkwith my enthusiasm, and she promised at once to send for a bulletin onapple-tree renovation, published by the state experiment station. I amsure I was no more earnest in my advice than the conditions warranted. 

After breakfast we went into the field, and I suggested that instead ofploughing any more land--for the season was already late--we get out allthe accumulations of rotted manure from around the barn and strew it onthe land already ploughed and harrow it in. 

"A good job on a little piece of land, " I said, "is far more profitablethan a poor job on a big piece of land. "

Without more ado we got his old team hitched up and began loading, andhauling out the manure, and spent all day long at it. Indeed, such wasthe height of enthusiasm which T. N. Clark now reached (for his was atemperament 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. Inthat one day his crop of corn, in perspective, overflowed his crib, hecould not find boxes and barrels for his apples, his shed would not holdall his tobacco, and his barn was already being enlarged to accommodatea couple more cows! He was also keeping bees and growing ginseng. 

But it was fine, that evening, to see Mrs. Clark's face, the renewedhope and courage in it. I thought as I looked at her (for she was thestrong and steady one in that house):

"If you can keep the enthusiasm up, if you can make that husband ofyours grow corn, and cows, and apples as you raise chickens and makegarden, there is victory yet in this valley. "

That night it rained, but in spite of the moist earth we spent almostall of the following day hard at work in the field, and all the timetalking 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 pilgrimagethat I look back upon with so much wistful affection as I do upon theevents of the day--the day and the wonderful night--which followed mylong visit with the forlorn Clark family upon their hill farm. At firstI hesitated about including an account of it here because it contains solittle 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 tablewhere (had I let go) they would have fallen into the convenient oblivionof the waste-basket. But something held me back. 

"No, " said I, "I'll tell it; if it means so much to me, it may meansomething to the friends who are following these lines. "

For, after all, it is not what goes on outside of a man, the clash andclatter of superficial events, that arouses our deepest interest, butwhat goes on inside. Consider then that in this narrative I shall opena little door in my heart and let you look in, if you care to, upon theexperiences of a day and a night in which I was supremely happy. 

If you had chanced to be passing, that crisp spring morning, you wouldhave seen a traveller on foot with a gray bag on his shoulder, swingingalong the country road; and you might have been astonished to see himlift his hat at you and wish you a good morning. You might have turnedto look back at him, as you passed, and found him turning also to lookback at you--and wishing he might know you. But you would not have knownwhat he was chanting under his breath as he tramped (how little we knowof a man by the shabby coat he wears), nor how keenly he was enjoyingthe 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 theworld lay stretched before him like the open palm of his hand, and hadcome thus to the boundaries of the Undiscovered Country. He had been fordays troubled with the deep problems of other people, and it seemed tohim this morning as though a great stone had been rolled from the doorof 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 agocaught 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 waschanting under his breath as he tramped, for they seem charged with thespirit of the hour:

I've bartered my sheets for a starlit bed; I've traded my meat for acrust of bread; I've changed my book for a sapling cane, And I'm off tothe end of the world again. 

In the Undiscovered Country that morning it was wonderful how freshthe spring woods were, and how the birds sang in the trees, and how thebrook sparkled and murmured at the roadside. The recent rain had washedthe atmosphere until it was as clear and sparkling and heady as newwine, and the footing was firm and hard. As one tramped he couldscarcely keep from singing or shouting aloud for the very joy of theday. 

"I think, " I said to myself, "I've never been in a better country, " andit did not seem to me I cared to know where the gray road ran, nor howfar away the blue hills were. 

"It is wonderful enough anywhere here, " I said. 

And presently I turned from the road and climbed a gently slopinghillside among oak and chestnut trees. The earth was well carpetedfor my feet, and here and there upon the hillside, where the sun camethrough the green roof of foliage, were warm splashes Of yellow light, and here and there, on shadier slopes, the new ferns were spread uponthe earth like some lacy coverlet. I finally sat down at the foot ofa tree where through a rift in the foliage in the valley below I couldcatch 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 timequietly looking about me, scarcely thinking at all, but seeing, hearing, smelling--feeling the spring morning, and the woods and the hills, andthe patch of sky I could see. 

For a long, long time I sat thus, but finally my mind began to flowagain, and I thought how fine it would be if I had some good friendthere with me to enjoy the perfect surroundings--some friend who wouldunderstand. And I thought of the Vedders with whom I had so recentlyspent a wonderful day; and I wished that they might be with me; therewere so many things to be said--to be left unsaid. Upon this it occurredto 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 tomy 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 quitecaptivated 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 themost important news for you. The mountain laurels are blooming, andthe wild strawberries are setting their fruit. Yes, yes, and in thefields--all around here, to-day there are wonderful white patches ofdaisies, and from where I sit I can see an old meadow as yellow as goldwith 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 atthe turning by the tulip-tree, and you will find me at home. Come rightin 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 herethen--some day, we shall be able to call our friends through space andtime. Some day we shall discover that marvellously simple coherer bywhich we may better utilize the mysterious ether of love. 

For a time I was sad with thoughts of the unaccomplished future, andthen I reflected that if I could not call up the Vedders so informallyI could at least write down a few paragraphs which would give them somefaint impression of that time and place. But I had no sooner takenout my note-book and put down a sentence or two than I stuck fast. Howfoolish and feeble written words are anyway! With what glib facilitythey describe, but how inadequately they convey. A thousand times I havethought to myself, "If only I could WRITE!"

Not being able to write I turned, as I have so often turned before, tosome good old book, trusting that I might find in the writing of anotherman what I lacked in my own. I took out my battered copy of Montaigneand, 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 (andworthless) information, darkened with Latin quotations. This reading hadan unexpected effect upon me. 

I could not seem to keep my mind down upon the printed page; it keptbounding away at the sight of the distant hills, at the sound of awoodpecker on a dead stub which stood near me, and at the thousand andone faint rustlings, creepings, murmurings, tappings, which animatethe mystery of the forest. How dull indeed appeared the printed pagein comparison with the book of life, how shut-in its atmosphere, howtinkling and distant the sound of its voices. Suddenly I shut my bookwith a snap. 

"Musty coaches and Latin quotations!" I exclaimed. "Montaigne's nowriter 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 theroadside or in the woods with my books, but this was almost the firstopportunity I had found for reading (as it was almost the last), so fullwas the present world of stirring events. As for poor old Montaigne, Ihave been out of harmony with him ever since, nor have I wanted him inthe intimate case at my elbow. 

After a long time in the forest, and the sun having reached the highheavens, I gathered up my pack and set forth again along the slope ofthe hills--not hurrying, just drifting and enjoying every sight andsound. And thus walking I came in sight, through the trees, of aglistening pool of water and made my way straight toward it. 

A more charming spot I have rarely seen. In some former time an oldmill had stood at the foot of the little valley, and a ruinous stonedam 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 pleasantmusical sound, the water dripped over the mossy stone lips of the damand fell into the rocky pool below. Nature had long ago healed thewounds of men; she had half-covered the ruined mill with verdure, hadsoftened the stone walls of the dam with mosses and lichens, and hadcrept down the steep hillside and was now leaning so far out over thepool that she could see her reflection in the quiet water. 

Near the upper end of the pond I found a clear white sand-bank, whereno doubt a thousand fishermen had stood, half hidden by the willows, tocast for trout in the pool below. I intended merely to drink and moistenmy face, but as I knelt by the pool and saw my reflection in the clearwater wanted something more than that! In a moment I had thrown aside mybag and clothes and found myself wading naked into the water. 

It was cold! I stood a moment there in the sunny air, the great worldopen around me, shuddering, for I dreaded the plunge--and then with arun, 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 thepond. The first chill was succeeded by a tingling glow, and I can conveyno idea whatever of the glorious sense of exhilaration I had. I swamwith 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 thewater lapping my chin. Thus I came to the end of the pool near the olddam, touched my feet on the bottom, gave a primeval whoop, and dove backinto 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 shouldersand singing at my ears, and finally, reaching the centre of the pond, Iturned over on my back and, paddling lazily, watched the slow processionof light clouds across the sunlit openings of the trees above me. Awayup in the sky I could see a hawk slowly swimming about (in his elementas I was in mine), and nearer at hand, indeed fairly in the thicketabout the pond, I could hear a wood-thrush singing. 

And so, shaking the water out of my hair and swimming with long andleisurely strokes, I returned to the sand-bank, and there, standing in aspot of warm sunshine, I dried myself with the towel from my bag. And Isaid 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 Ifound an inviting spot in an old meadow where I threw myself down on thegrass under an apple-tree and looked up into the shadowy places in thefoliage above me. I felt a delicious sense of physical well-being, and Iwas pleasantly tired. 

So I lay there--and the next thing I knew, I turned over, feeling coldand stiff, and opened my eyes upon the dusky shadows of late evening. Ihad been sleeping for hours!

The next few minutes (or was it an hour or eternity?), I recall ascontaining some of the most exciting and, when all is said, amusingincidents in my whole life. And I got quite a new glimpse of thatsometimes 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 rapidlyacross the meadow, in my excitement tripping and falling several timesin the first hundred yards. In daylight I have no doubt that I shouldeasily 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 fieldwas surrounded on every side by impenetrable forests. Absurd as itmay 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 forLivingstone, in which he relates how he escaped from a difficult placein the jungle by KEEPING STRAIGHT AHEAD. 

I print these words in capitals because they seemed written that nightupon the sky. KEEPING STRAIGHT AHEAD, I entered the forest on one sideof the meadow (with quite a heroic sense of adventure), but scraped myshin on a fallen log and ran into a tree with bark on it that felt likea gigantic currycomb--and stopped!

Up to this point I think I was still partly asleep. Now, however, Iwaked up. 

"All you need, " said I to myself in my most matter-of-fact tone, "is alittle cool sense. Be quiet now and reason it out. "

So I stood there for some moments reasoning it out, with the result thatI turned back and found the meadow again. 

"What a fool I've been!" I said. "Isn't it perfectly plain that I shouldhave gone down to the pond, crossed over the inlet, and reached the roadby the way I came?"

Having thus settled my problem, and congratulating myself on myperspicacity, I started straight for the mill-pond, but to my utteramazement, in the few short hours while I had been asleep, that entirebody of water had evaporated, the dam had disappeared, and the streamhad dried up. I must certainly present the facts in this remarkable caseto some learned society. 

I then decided to return to the old apple-tree where I had slept, whichnow seemed quite like home, but, strange to relate, the apple-tree hadalso completely vanished from the enchanted meadow. At that I began tosuspect that in coming out of the forest I had somehow got into anotherand somewhat similar old field. I have never had a more confused oreerie sensation; not fear, but a sort of helplessness in which foran instant I actually began to doubt whether it was I myself, DavidGrayson, who stood there in the dark meadow, or whether I was the victimof a peculiarly bad dream. I suppose many other people have had thesesensations under similar conditions, but they were new to me. 

I turned slowly around and looked for a light; I think I never wanted somuch 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 ameadow 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 hundredof the people in America to-day, I had never before found myself wherenothing stood between nature and me, where I had no place to sleep, noshelter for the night--nor any prospect of finding one. I was infinitelyless resourceful at that moment than a rabbit, or a partridge, or a graysquirrel. 

Presently I sat down on the ground where I had been standing, with avague fear (absurd to look back upon) that it, too, in some manner mightslip away from under me. And as I sat there I began to have familiargnawings at the pit of my stomach, and I remembered that, save fora couple of Mrs. Clark's doughnuts eaten while I was sitting on thehillside, 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 cameover me, and, beginning with a chuckle, I wound up, as my mind dweltupon 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 myfeet 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 theworld. I felt a sudden lift and thrill of the spirits, a warm sense thatthis too was part of the great adventure--the Thing Itself. 

"This is the light, " I said looking up again at the sky and the singlebright 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 thewood. It was an unknown, unexplored world I was in, and I, the fortunatediscoverer, had here to shift for himself, make his home under thestars! Marquette on the wild shores of the Mississippi, or Stanley inAfrica, 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 asomewhat sheltered spot at the foot of a large tree--and yet a spot notso obscured that I could not look out over the open spaces of the meadowand see the sky. Here, groping in the darkness, like some primitivecreature, I raked together a pile of leaves with my fingers, and founddead twigs and branches of trees; but in that moist forest (where therain had fallen only the day before) my efforts to kindle a fire wereunavailing. 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 sensationof satisfaction I tore out a handful of pages from the back. 

"Better Montaigne than Grayson, " I said, with a chuckle. It was amazinghow Montaigne sparkled and crackled when he was well lighted. 

"There goes a bundle of quotations from Vergil, " I said, "and there'shis observations on the eating of fish. There are more uses than one forthe 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 enoughfuel 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 tofind, among the other things, a small bottle of coffee. This suggestedall sorts of pleasing possibilities and, the spirit of invention beingnow awakened, I got out my tin cup, split a sapling stick so I could fitit into the handle, and set the cup, full of coffee, on the coals at theedge of the fire. It was soon heated, and although I spilled some of itin getting it off, and although it was well spiced with ashes, I enjoyedit, with Mrs. Clark's doughnuts and sandwiches (some of which I toastedwith 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 Iwas well through with my meal I gathered a plentiful supply of wood andplaced 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 thefoot of the tree. 

I wish I could convey the mystery and the beauty of that night. Did youever sit by a campfire and watch the flames dance, and the sparks flyupward into the cool dark air? Did you ever see the fitful light amongthe tree-depths, at one moment opening vast shadowy vistas into theforest, at the next dying downward and leaving it all in sombre mystery?It came to me that night with the wonderful vividness of a freshexperience. 

And what a friendly and companionable thing a campfire is! How generousand outright it is! It plays for you when you wish so be lively, and itglows for you when you wish to be reflective. 

After a while, for I did not feel in the least sleepy, I stepped outof the woods to the edge of the pasture. All around me lay the dark andsilent earth, and above the blue bowl of the sky, all glorious withthe blaze of a million worlds. Sometimes I have been oppressed by thisspectacle of utter space, of infinite distance, of forces too great forme to grasp or understand, but that night it came upon me with freshwonder and power, and with a sense of great humility that I belongedhere too, that I was a part of it all--and would not be neglected orforgotten. It seemed to me I never had a moment of greater faith thanthat. 

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 littledroppings, cracklings, rustlings which seemed to make all the worldalive. I even fancied I could see small bright eyes looking out at myfire, 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 Montaigneto 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 alight 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 streaksof dawn above the trees, I saw the pink glow in the east before thesunrise, and I watched the sun himself rise upon a new day--

When I walked out into the meadow by daylight and looked about mecuriously, I saw, not forty rods away, the back of a barn. 

"Be you the fellow that was daown in my cowpasture all night?" asked thesturdy 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 askedme when I came out of the meadow where I had spent the night under thestars. 

"Well, " I said, turning the question as adroitly as I could, "I'll makeit 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 downher back, whom I had known when I first came to my farm. She had grownup, married, and had borne three children, while I had been looking theother way for a minute or two. She had not been in our neighborhood forseveral years. 

"And how is your sister and Doctor McAlway?"

Well, we had quite a wonderful visit, she made breakfast for me, askingand 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 myleaving, and half of our spare time, I think, was spent in discussingNathan Toombs. I was not able to get him out of my mind for days, forhis death was one of those events which prove so much and leave so muchunproven. 

I can recall vividly my astonishment at the first evidence I ever had ofthe strange old man or of his work. It was not very long after I cameto my farm to live. I had taken to spending my spare evenings--the longevenings of summer--in exploring the country roads for miles around, getting acquainted with each farmstead, each bit of grove and meadow andmarsh, making my best bow to each unfamiliar hill, and taking everywherethat toll of pleasure which comes of quiet discovery. 

One evening, having walked farther than usual, I came quite suddenlyaround a turn in the road and saw stretching away before me anextraordinary sight. 

I feel that I am conveying no adequate impression of what I beheldby giving it any such prim and decorous name as--a Hedge. It was amenagerie, a living, green menagerie! I had no sooner seen it than Ibegan puzzling my brain as to whether one of the curious ornaments intowhich the upper part of the hedge had been clipped and trimmed was madeto 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 orless regular intervals the trees in it had been allowed to grow muchtaller and had been wonderfully pruned into the similitude of towers, pinnacles, bells, and many other strange designs. Here and there thehedge held up a spindling umbrella of greenery, sometimes a doubleumbrella--a little one above the big one--and over the gateway at thecentre; as a sort of final triumph, rose a grandiose arch of interlacedbranches upon which the artist had outdone himself in marvels ofornamentation. 

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 ofthe marvellous adornments. How eagerly, too, I looked over at the housebeyond--a rather bare, bleak house set on a slight knoll or elevationand guarded at one corner by a dark spruce tree. At some distancebehind I saw a number of huge barns, a cattle yard and a silo--all theevidences of prosperity--with well-nurtured fields, now yellowing withthe summer crops, spreading pleasantly away on every hand. 

It was nearly dark before I left that bit of roadside, and I shall neverforget the eerie impression I had as I turned back to take a final lookat the hedge, the strange, grotesque aspect it presented there in thehalf 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 wonderfulhedge. By that time, however, having learned of my interest, I foundthe whole countryside alive with stories about it and about Old NathanToombs, its owner. It was as though I had struck the rock of refreshmentin a weary land. 

I remember distinctly how puzzled was by the stories I heard. Theneighbourhood portrait--and ours is really a friendly neighbourhood--wasby no means flattering. Old Toombs was apparently of that typeof hard-shelled, grasping, self-reliant, old-fashioned farmer notunfamiliar to many country neighbourhoods. He had come of tough oldAmerican stock and he was a worker, a saver, and thus he had grownrich, the richest farmer in the whole neighbourhood. He was a regularindividualistic American. 

"A dour man, " said the Scotch Preacher, "but just--you must admit thathe is just. "

There was no man living about whom the Scotch Preacher could not findsomething 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 anaggressive, undoubtedly irritable old fellow it pictured, but somehow, try as I would, I could not see any such old fellow wasting his moneyedhours clipping bells, umbrellas, and camel's heads on his ornamentalgreenery. It left just that incongruity which is at once the lure, the humour, and the perplexity of human life. Instead of satisfying mycuriosity I was more anxious than ever to see Old Toombs with my owneyes. 

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 thecommunity without ever really becoming a part of it. His neighboursaccepted him as they accepted a hard hill in the town road. From timeto time he would foreclose a mortgage where he had loaned money to someless thrifty farmer, or he would extend his acres by purchase, hard cashdown, or he would build a bigger barn. When any of these things happenedthe community would crowd over a little, as it were, to give him moreroom. It is a curious thing, and tragic, too, when you come to think ofit, how the world lets alone those people who appear to want to be letalone. "I can live to myself, " says the unneighbourly one. "Well, liveto yourself, then, " cheerfully responds the world, and it goes about itsmore or less amusing affairs and lets the unneighbourly one cut himselfoff. 

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 theneighbourhood, I took to walking out toward his farm, looking freshlyat the wonderful hedge and musing upon that most fascinating of allsubjects--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 OldToombs himself, moving toward me down the country road. Though I hadnever seen him before, I was at no loss to identify him. The first andvital 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 witha brown hickory stick in his hand which at every step he set vigorouslyinto the soft earth. Though not tall, he gave the impression of beingenormously strong. He was thick, solid, firm--thick through the body, thick through the thighs; and his shoulders--what shoulders theywere!--round like a maple log; and his great head with its thatchingof coarse iron-gray hair, though thrust slightly forward, seemed setimmovably upon them. 

He presented such a forbidding appearance that I was of two minds aboutaddressing him. Dour he was indeed! Nor shall I ever forget how helooked when I spoke to him. He stopped short there in the road. On hisbig square nose he wore a pair of curious spring-bowed glasses withblack rims. For a moment he looked at me through these glasses, raisinghis chin a little, and then, deliberately wrinkling his nose, they felloff 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 andof the way in which, afterward, he looked at me from under his bushygray brows. This was in truth the very man of the neighbourhoodportrait. 

"I am a new settler here, " I said, "and I've been interested in lookingat your wonderful hedge. "

The old man's eyes rested upon me a moment with a mingled look ofsuspicion and hostility. 

"So you've heard o' me, " he said in a high-pitched voice, "and you'veheard o' my hedge. "

Again he paused and looked me over. "Well, " he said, with anindescribably harsh, cackling laugh, "I warrant you've heard nothinggood 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 ashe continued to speak his voice rose higher and higher until it waspositively menacing. 

There were just two things I could do--haul down the flag and retreatingloriously, or face the music. With a sudden sense of risingspirits--for such things do not often happen to a man in a quiet countryroad--I paused a moment, looking him square in the eye. 

"Yes, " I said, with great deliberation, "you've given me just about theneighborhood picture of yourself as I have had it. They do say you area skinflint, yes, and a hard man. They say that you are rich andfriendless; they say that while you are a just man, you do not knowmercy. 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 tostrike me with his stick, but he neither stirred nor spoke. It wasevidently a wholly new experience for him. 

"Yes, " I said, "you are not popular in this community, but what doyou suppose I care about that? I'm interested in your hedge. What I'mcurious to know--and I might as well tell you frankly--is how such aman as you are reputed to be could grow such an extraordinary hedge. Youmust have been at it a very long time. "

I was surprised at the effect of my words. The old man turnedpartly aside and looked for a moment along the proud and flauntingembattlements of the green marvel before us. Then he said in a moderatevoice:

"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 infive minutes I had the gruff old fellow stumping along at my side andpointing out the various notable-features of his wonderful creation. His suppressed excitement was quite wonderful to see. He would point hishickory stick with a poking motion, and, when he looked up, instead ofthrowing back his big, rough head, he bent at the hips, thus impartingan 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 andlooked around at me with a sudden dark expression of suspicion. I sawexactly what lay in his mind, but I continued my questioning as thoughI perceived no change in him. It was only momentary, however, and he wassoon as much interested as before. He talked as though he had not hadsuch an opportunity before in years--and I doubt whether he had. Itwas plain to see that if any one ever loved anything in this world, OldToombs loved that hedge of his. Think of it, indeed! He had lived withit, nurtured it, clipped it, groomed it--for thirty-two years. 

So we walked down the sloping field within the hedge, and it seemedas though one of the deep mysteries of human nature was opening therebefore me. What strange things men set their hearts upon!

Thus, presently, we came nearly to the farther end of the hedge. Herethe old man stopped and turned around, facing me. 

"Do you see that valley?" he asked. "Do you see that slopin' valley upthrough 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 downmy valley. "

He drew his breath fiercely. 

"They want to build a road through my land. They want to ruin myfarm--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 pointsand grew red and angry--like the eyes of an infuriated boar. His handsshook. Suddenly he turned upon me, poising his stick in his hand, andsaid 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 theold Mather farm. I am not in the least interested in any of your roadtroubles. "

He looked at me a moment more, and then seemed to shake himself orshudder, his eyes dropped away and he began walking toward his house. He had taken only a few steps, however, before he turned, and, withoutlooking at me, asked if I would like to see the tools he used fortrimming 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 heused 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--agood house. I planned it all myself. I never needed to take lessons ofany carpenter I ever see. And there's my barns. What do you think o' mybarns? Ever see any bigger ones? They ain't any bigger in this countrythan Old Toombs's barns. They don't like Old Toombs, but they ain't anyof one of 'em can ekal his barns!"

He followed me down to the roadside now quite loquacious. Even after Ihad 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 havebeen the result of his sudden fierce explosion of anger, but his handshook, 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 anythinglike it?"

"The' AIN'T nothing like it, " he responded, quickly. "The' ain't nothinglike it anywhere. "

In the twilight as I passed onward I saw the lonely figure of the oldman 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 andlaughter, of how we weep with one another, of how we join in makingbetter roads and better schools, and building up the Scotch Preacher'sfriendly little church. And in all these things Old Toombs has never hada part. He is not even missed. 

As a matter of fact, I reflected, and this is a strange, deep thing, noman is in reality more dependent upon the community which he despisesand holds at arm's length than this same Old Nathan Toombs. Everythinghe has, everything he does, gives evidence of it. And I don't mean thisin any mere material sense, though of course his wealth and his farmwould mean no more than the stones in his hills to him if he did nothave us here around him. Without our work, our buying, our selling, ourgoverning, his dollars would be dust. But we are still more necessaryto him in other ways: the unfriendly man is usually the one whodemands most from his neighbours. Thus, if he have not people's love orconfidence, 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 notime in making further inquiries. I learned, speedily, that there wasindeed something in the old man's dread of a road being built throughhis farm. The case was already in the courts. His farm was a very oldone and extensive, and of recent years a large settlement of smallfarmers had been developing the rougher lands in the upper part of thetownships called the Swan Hill district. Their only way to reach therailroad was by a rocky, winding road among the 'hills, ' while theiroutlet was down a gently sloping valley through Old Toombs's farm. Theywere now so numerous and politically important that they had stirred upthe town authorities. A proposition had been made to Old Toombs fora right-of-way; they argued with him that it was a good thing for thewhole 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 landwas actually worth, but he had spurned them--I can imagine with whatvehemence. 

"Let 'em drive round, " he said. "Didn't they know what they'd have to dowhen 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 tocondemn the land for a road through Old Toombs's farm. 

"What can we do?" asked the Scotch Preacher, who was deeply distressedby 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 onehad 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 hisdifficulties. As to reaching the Swan Hill settlers, they were nowaroused to an implacable state of bitterness; and they had the people ofthe 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 waswalking in the town road late one afternoon when I heard a wagonrattling behind me, and then, quite suddenly, a shouted, "Whoa. "

Looking around, I saw Old Toombs, his great solid figure mounted highon the wagon seat, the reins held fast in the fingers of one hand. I wasstruck 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 inthe town road it is in my heart to cry out to him, "Good morning, friend, " or, "How are you, brother?" but I had no suchprompting that day. 

"Git in, Grayson, " he said; "git in, git in. "

I climbed up beside him, and he slapped me on the knee with anotherburst 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 noroad case. I beat 'em. I says to 'em, 'What right hev any o' you onmy property? Go round with you, ' I says. Oh, I beat 'em. If they'd hadtheir 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 seemednothing that could be said. I remember I stood for some time watchingthe 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 ofheaviness at the heart. 

"Harriet, " I said, "there are some things in this world beyond humanremedy. "

Two evenings later I was surprised to see the Scotch Preacher drive upto my gate and hastily tie his horse. 

"David, " said he, "there's bad business afoot. A lot of the youngfellows in Swan Hill are planning a raid on Old Toombs's hedge. They arecoming down to-night. "

I got my hat and jumped in with him. We drove up the hilly road and outaround Old Toombs's farm and thus came, near to the settlement. I had noconception 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 haveI seen him rise to greater heights than he did that night. It is not inhis preaching that Doctor McAlway excels, but what a power he is amongmen! He was like some stern old giant, standing there and holding up theportals of civilization. I saw men melt under his words like wax; I sawwild young fellows subdued into quietude; I saw unwise old men set tothinking. 

"Man, man, " he'd say, lapsing in his earnestness into the broad Scotchaccent of his youth, "you canna' mean plunder, and destruction, andriot! 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 majestythat looked from his eye. 

"Old Toombs!" he said in a voice that thrilled one to the bone, "OldToombs! Have you no faith, that you stand in the place of Almighty Godand measure punishments?"

Before we left it was past midnight and we drove home, almost silent, inthe darkness. 

"Doctor McAlway, " I said, "if Old Toombs could know the history of thisnight 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 standingas gorgeous as ever. The community had again stepped aside and let OldToombs 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 whathad threatened him that night, nor how the forces of religion, of socialorder, of neighbourliness in the community which he despised had, afterall, held him safe. There is a supreme faith among common people--it is, indeed, the very taproot of democracy--that although the unfriendly onemay persist long in his power and arrogance, there is a moving Forcewhich commands events. 

I suppose if I were writing a mere story I should tell how Old Toombswas miraculously softened at the age of sixty-eight years, and came intonew relationships with his neighbours, or else I should relate how themills of God, grinding slowly, had crushed the recalcitrant human atominto dust. 

Either of these results conceivably might have happened--all things arepossible--and being ingeniously related would somehow have answereda need in the human soul that the logic of events be constantly andconclusively demonstrated in the lives of individual men and women. 

But as a matter of fact, neither of these things did happen in thisquiet community of ours. There exists, assuredly, a logic of events, oh, a terrible, irresistible logic of events, but it is careless of the spanof any one man's life. We would like to have each man enjoy the sweetsof his own virtues and suffer the lash of his own misdeeds--but itrarely 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, raisemore cattle, collect more interest, and the wonderful hedge continuedto flaunt its marvels still more notably upon the country road. To whatend? Who knows? Who knows?

I saw him afterward from time to time, tried to maintain some sort offriendly relations with him; but it seemed as the years passed that hegrew ever lonelier and more bitter, and not only more friendless, butseemingly more incapable of friendliness. In times past I have seenwhat men call tragedies--I saw once a perfect young man die in hisstrength--but it seems to me I never knew anything more tragic than thelife and death of Old Toombs. If it cannot be said of a man when he diesthat either his nation, his state, his neighborhood, his family, or atleast his wife or child, is better for his having lived, what CAN besaid for him?

Old Toombs is dead. Like Jehoram, King of Judah, of whom it is terriblysaid in the Book of Chronicles, "he departed without being desired. "

Of this story of Nathan Toombs we talked much and long there in theRansome home. I was with them, as I said, about two days--kept insidemost of the time by a driving spring rain which filled the valley witha 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 andthe open country. 

CHAPTER IX. THE MAN POSSESSED

I suppose I was predestined (and likewise foreordained) to reach thecity sooner or later. My fate in that respect was settled for me whenI placed my trust in the vagrant road. I thought for a time that I wasmore than a match for the Road, but I soon learned that the Roadwas 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 followedthe Road where it led through innocent meadows or climbed leisurely hillslopes only to find that it had crept around slyly and led me before Iknew it into the back door of some busy town. 

Mostly in this country the towns squat low in the valleys, they lie inwait by the rivers, and often I scarcely know of their presence untilI am so close upon them that I can smell the breath of their heatednostrils and hear their low growlings and grumblings. 

My fear of these lesser towns has never been profound. I have even beenbold enough, when I came across one of them, to hasten straight throughas though assured that Cerberus was securely chained; but I found, after a time, what I might indeed have guessed, that the Road, also ledirresistibly to the lair of the Old Monster himself, the He-one of thespecies, where he lies upon the plain, lolling under his soiled grayblanket of smoke. 

It is wonderful to be safe at home again, to watch the tender, reddishbrown shoots of the Virginia creeper reaching in at my study window, tosee the green of my own quiet fields, to hear the peaceful clucking ofthe hens in the sunny dooryard--and Harriet humming at her work in thekitchen. 

When I left the Ransomes that fine spring morning, I had not theslightest presentiment of what the world held in store for me. Afterbeing a prisoner of the weather for so long, I took to the Road withfresh joy. All the fields were of a misty greenness and there were poolsstill shining in the road, but the air was deliciously clear, clean, and soft. I came through the hill country for three or four miles, evenrunning down some of the steeper places for the very joy the motion gaveme, the feel of the air on my face. 

Thus I came finally to the Great Road, and stood for a moment lookingfirst this way, then that. 

"Where now?" I asked aloud. 

With an amusing sense of the possibilities that lay open before me, Iclosed my eyes, turned slowly around several times and then stopped. When I opened my eyes I was facing nearly southward: and that way I setout, 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 manypeople upon the busy road. Automobiles there were in plenty, and loadedwagons, and jolly families off for town, and a herdsman driving sheep, and small boys on their way to school with their dinner pails, and agypsy wagon with lean, led horses following behind, and even a Jewishpeddler with a crinkly black beard, whom I was on the very point ofstopping. 

"I should like sometime to know a Jew, " I said to myself. 

As I travelled, feeling like one who possesses hidden riches, I camequite without warning upon the beginning of my great adventure. I hadbeen looking for a certain thing all the morning, first on one sideof 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 myforehead, and looked about me with satisfaction, for it was a pleasantcountry. 

I had not been sitting there above two minutes when my eyes fell uponone of the oddest specimens of humanity (I thought then) that ever Isaw. He had been standing near the roadside, just under the tree uponwhich 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 thingshappen. "

The stranger's appearance was indeed extraordinary. He seemed at firstglimpse to be about twice as large around the hips as he was atthe shoulders, but this I soon discovered to be due to no naturalavoir-dupois but to the prodigious number of soiled newspapers andmagazines with which the low-hanging pockets of his overcoat werestuffed. For he was still wearing an old shabby overcoat though theweather was warm and bright--and on his head was an odd and outlandishhat. It was of fur, flat at the top, flat as a pie tin, with themoth-eaten earlaps turned up at the sides and looking exactly like smallfurry ears. These, with the round steel spectacles which he wore--theonly distinctive feature of his countenance--gave him an indescribablydroll 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 myapproach. My first vivid impression of his face--I remember it afterwardshining with a strange inward illumination--was not favourable. It was adeep-lined, scarred, worn-looking face, insignificant if not indeed uglyin its features, and yet, even at the first glance, revealing somethinginexplainable--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 inhis words. 

"I think it is, " I replied, and I noticed as he lifted his hand to thankme that one finger was missing and that the hand itself was cruellytwisted and scarred. 

The stranger instantly set off up the Road without giving me much moreattention than he would have given any other signpost. I stood a momentlooking after him--the wings of his overcoat beating about his legs andthe 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 onecomes along--even though he be amusing and insignificant--who is really(and passionately) going somewhere, what a stir he communicates to adull world! We catch sparks of electricity from the very friction of hispassage. 

It was so with this odd stranger. Though at one moment I could not helpsmiling 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; andas I approached I was much agitated as to the best method of grapplingand boarding. I finally decided, being a lover of bold methods, to letgo my largest gun first--for moral effect. 

"So, " said I, as I ran alongside, "you are the man who puts up thesigns. "

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 determinedto see if there was any treasure aboard--which, I suppose, should be theprocedure 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 roundspectacles. 

"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 thentook it with a quick warm pressure in one of his, and gave it a littleshake, 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 aboutto return it in kind when I saw plainly in his face a look of solemnintent. 

"So, " he said, "we shall travel like comrades. "

He thrust his scarred hand through my arm, and we walked up the roadside by side, his bulging pockets beating first against his legs andthen 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 hepointed 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, thecapitalists are watchin' for me, all right. "

I cannot convey the strange excitement I felt. It seemed as though thesewords suddenly opened a whole new world around me--a world I had heardabout for years, but never entered. And the tone in which he had usedthe word "capitalist!" I had almost to glance around to make sure thatthere 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 firsttime I had ever had a live Socialist on my arm. I could not have beenmore surprised if the stranger had said, "Yes, I am Theodore Roosevelt. "

One of the discoveries we keep making all our life long (provided weremain humble) is the humorous discovery of the ordinariness of theextraordinary. Here was this disrupter of society, this man of thered flag--here he was with his mild spectacled eyes and his furry earswagging as he walked. It was unbelievable!--and the sun shining on himquite as impartially as it shone on me. 

Coming at last to a pleasant bit of woodland, where a stream ran underthe 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 afirm believer in cooperation. "

Without more urging he followed me into the woods, where we sat downcomfortably under a tree. 

Now, when I take a fine thick sandwich out of my bag, I always feel likemaking it a polite bow, and before I bite into a big brown doughnut, Iam tempted to say, "By your leave, madam, " and as for MINCE PIE-----BeauBrummel himself could not outdo me in respectful consideration. ButBill Hahn neither saw, nor smelled, nor, I think, tasted Mrs. Ransome'scookery. As soon as we sat down he began talking. From time to timehe would reach out for another sandwich or doughnut or pickle (withoutknowing in the least which he was getting), and when that was gone somereflex impulse caused him to reach out for some more. When the lastcrumb of our lunch had disappeared Bill Hahn still reached out. His handgroped absently about, and coming in contact with no more doughnuts orpickles he withdrew it--and did not know, I think, that the meal wasfinished. (Confidentially, I have speculated on what might have happenedif the supply had been unlimited!)

But that was Bill Hahn. Once started on his talk, he never thought offood or clothing or shelter; but his eyes glowed, his face lighted upwith a strange effulgence, and he quite lost himself upon the tide ofhis own oratory. I saw him afterward by a flare-light at the centre of agreat 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 "economicdeterminism" and "syndicalism. " It was quite wonderful! And from time totime, he would bring in a smashing quotation from Aristotle, Napoleon, Karl Marx, or Eugene V. Debs, giving them all equal value, and he citedstatistics!--oh, marvellous statistics, that never were on sea or land. 

Once he was so swept away by his own eloquence that he sprang to hisfeet and, raising one hand high above his head (quite unconscious thathe was holding up a dill pickle), he worked through one of his mostthrilling 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 growingrespect and admiration for him. He was not only sincere, but he wasgenuinely simple--a much higher virtue, as Fenelon says. For whilesincere people do not aim at appearing anything but what they are, they are always in fear of passing for something they are not. They areforever thinking about themselves, weighing all their words and thoughtsand dwelling upon what they have done, in the fear of having donetoo much or too little, whereas simplicity, as Fenelon says, is anuprightness of soul which has ceased wholly to dwell upon itself or itsactions. Thus there are plenty of sincere folk in the world but few whoare simple. 

Well, the longer he talked, the less interested I was in what he saidand the more fascinated I became in what he was. I felt a wistfulinterest in him: and I wanted to know what way he took to purge himselfof himself. I think if I had been in that group nineteen hundred yearsago, which surrounded the beggar who was born blind, but whose anointedeyes now looked out upon glories of the world, I should have been amongthe questioners:

"What did he to thee? How opened he thine eyes?"

I tried ineffectually several times to break the swift current of hisoratory and finally succeeded (when he paused a moment to finish off abit 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-twoyears--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 thosewords--the monotone of an emotion long ago burned out, and yet leavingfrightful scars. 

"My friend!" I exclaimed, and I could not help laying my hand on hisarm. 

I had the feeling I often have with troubled children--an indescribablepity that they have had to pass through the valley of the shadow, and Inot 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 youthup. That is, I called myself a Socialist, but, comrade, I've learnedthis here truth: that it ain't of so much importance that you possess abelief, 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--asthough he were speaking of some third person in whom he felt only abrotherly interest, but from time to time some incident or observationwould flame up out of the narrative, like the opening of the door of amolten pit--so that the glare hurt one!--and then the story would dieback again into quiet narrative. 

Like most working people he had never lived in the twentieth century atall. He was still in the feudal age, and his whole life had been a blindand ceaseless struggle for the bare necessaries of life, broken fromtime to time by fierce irregular wars called strikes. He had never knownanything of a real self-governing commonwealth, and such progress ashe and his kind had made was never the result of their citizenship, of their powers as voters, but grew out of the explosive and raggedupheavals, of their own half-organized societies and unions. 

It was against the "black people" he said, that he was first on strikeback in the early nineties. He told me all about it, how he had beenworking 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 grewcabbages and onions and turnips--everything grew fine!--in the gardenbehind 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 peoplefrom Southern Europe, he called them "hordes"--"hordes and hordesof 'em"--Italians mostly, and they began getting into the mills andunderbidding for the jobs, so that wages slowly went down and at thesame time the machines were speeded up. It seems that many of these"black people" were single men or vigorous young married people withonly themselves to support, while the old American workers were men withfamilies and little homes to pay for, and plenty of old grandfathers andmothers, 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 longbitterness of that strike, the empty cupboards, the approach of winterwith no coal for the stoves and no warm clothing for the children. Hetold me that many of the old workers began to leave the town (some boundfor the larger cities, some for the Far West). 

"But, " said he with a sudden outburst of emotion, "I couldn't leave. Ihad the woman and the children!"

And presently the strike collapsed, and the workers rushed helterskelter back to the mills to get their old jobs. "Begging like whippeddogs, " he said bitterly. 

Many of them found their places taken by the eager "black people, " andmany had to go to work at lower wages in poorer places--punished for thefight they had made. 

But he got along somehow, he said--"the woman was a good manager"--untilone 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 wasnot. He was laid up for several weeks, and the company, claiming thatthe accident was due to his own stupidity and carelessness, refusedeven to pay his wages while he was idle. Well, the family had to livesomehow, and the woman and the daughter--"she was a little thing, " hesaid, "and frail"--the woman and the daughter went into the mill. Buteven with this new source of income they began to fall behind. Moneywhich 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 thegrocer. 

"We had to live, " said Bill Hahn. 

Again and again he used this same phrase, "We had to live!" as a sort ofbedrock explanation for all the woes of life. 

After a time, with one finger gone and a frightfully scarred hand--heheld 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'tstand it any longer. "

He and a group of friends got together secretly and tried to organize aunion, tried to get the workmen together to improve their own condition;but in some way ("they had spies everywhere, " he said) the managerlearned of the attempt and one morning when he reported at the mill hewas handed a slip asking him to call for his wages, that his help was nolonger required. 

"I'd been with that one company for twenty years and four months, " hesaid bitterly, "I'd helped in my small way to build it up, make it a bigconcern payin' 28 per cent. Dividends every year; I'd given part of myright 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 thelittle home and the garden, and his wife and daughter were still atwork, so he hung on grimly, trying to get some other job. "But what goodis a man for any other sort of work, " he said, "when he has been trainedto 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--andBill Hahn threw himself into it with all his strength. He was one ofthe leaders. I shall not attempt to repeat here his description of thebitter struggle, the coming of the soldiery, the street riots, the longlists of arrests ("some, " said he, "got into jail on purpose, sothat they could at least have enough to eat!"), the late meetings ofstrikers, the wild turmoil and excitement. 

Of all this he told me, and then he stopped suddenly, and after a longpause he said in a low voice:

"Comrade, did ye ever see your wife and your sickly daughter and yourkids 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 havingturned 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 likeBill Hahn, and the company had conceived the idea that if these mencould be eliminated the organization would collapse, and the strikers beforced back to work. One day Bill Hahn found that proceedings had beenstarted to turn him out of his home, upon which he had not been able tokeep up his payments, and at the same time the merchant, of whom he hadbeen a respected customer for years, refused to give him any furthercredit. 

"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 hemade a great discovery: that the "black people" against whom they hadstruck in 1894 were not to blame!

"I tell you, " said he, "we found when we got started that them blackpeople--we used to call 'em dagoes--were just workin' people likeus--and in hell with us. They were good soldiers, them Eyetalians andPoles and Syrians, they fought with us to the end. "

I shall not soon forget the intensely dramatic but perfectly simple wayin 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 pointedone finger upward. 

"I seen the big hand in the sky, " he said, "I seen it as clear asdaylight. "

He said he saw at last what Socialism meant. One day he went home from astrikers' meeting--one of the last, for the men were worn out withtheir long struggle. It was a bitter cold day, and he was completelydiscouraged. When he reached his own street he saw a pile of householdgoods on the sidewalk in front of his home. He saw his wife therewringing 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 wascurious, " he said, "but the only thing I could see or think about wasour old family clock which they had stuck on top of the pile, halftipped over. It looked odd and I wanted to set it up straight. It wasthe clock we bought when we were married, and we'd had it about twentyyears 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 ofnothing but that clock, " he said, "but so it was. "

When he got home, he found his frail daughter just coming out of theempty house, "coughing as though she was dyin'. " Something, he said, seemed to stop inside him. Those were his words: "Something seemed tostop inside 'o me. "

He turned away without saying a word, walked back to strikeheadquarters, borrowed a revolver from a friend, and started out alongthe 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 millsthere and the largest store and the newspaper--he pretty nearly ownedthe town. "

He told me much more about Robert Winter which betrayed still a curioussort 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 ahemlock hedge (for the stone gateway was guarded) and walked through thesnow toward the great house. 

"An' all the time I seemed to be seein' my daughter Margy right therebefore my eyes coughing as though she was dyin'. "

It was just nightfall and all the windows were alight. He crept up to aclump of bushes under a window and waited there a moment while he drewout and cocked his revolver. Then he slowly reached upward until hishead cleared the sill and he could look into the room. "A big, warmroom, " 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 beenfighting for five long months--and he was down on his hands and knees onthe 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'tdo 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 stampedefor work--but Bill Hahn did not go back. He knew it would be useless. Aweek 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 abullet at her through a window. "

"And what did you do after that?" I asked, when he had paused for a longtime with his chin on his breast. 

"Well, " said he, "I did a lot of thinking them days, and I says tomyself: 'This thing is wrong, and I will go out and stop it--I will goout and stop it. '"

As he uttered these words, I looked at him curiously--his absurd flatfur hat with the moth-eaten ears, the old bulging overcoat, theround spectacles, the scarred, insignificant face--he seemed somehowtransformed, a person elevated above himself, the tool of some vastincalculable force. 

I shall never forget the phrase he used to describe his own feelingswhen he had reached this astonishing decision to go out and stop thewrongs 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 cleaninside. "

It seemed, he explained, as though something big and strong had got holdof him, and he began to be happy. 

"Since then, " he said in a low voice, "I've been happier than I everwas before in all my life. I ain't got any family, nor any home--rightlyspeakin'--nor any money, but, comrade, you see here in front of you, ahappy man. "

When he had finished his story we sat quiet for some time. 

"Well, " said he, finally, "I must be goin'. The committee will wonderwhat's become o' me. "

I followed him out to the road. There I put my hand on his shoulder, andsaid:

"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 Icould not do it. I stopped near the top of the hill where one can see inthe 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 ameadow. There were many things I wanted to think about, to get clear inmy mind. 

As I sat looking out toward that great city, I saw three men walkingin the white road. As I watched them, I could see them coming quickly, eagerly. Presently they threw up their hands and evidently began toshout, though I could not hear what they said. At that moment I saw myfriend Bill Hahn running in the road, his coat skirts flapping heavilyabout 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 theRoman 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 anend of creation, has arrived. "

After a time I got up and walked down the hill--some strange forcecarrying 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 feltwhen I entered the city of Kilburn. Every sight, every sound, recalledvividly and painfully the unhappy years I had once spent in another andgreater city. Every mingled odour of the streets--and there is nothingthat will so surely re-create (for me) the inner emotion of a time orplace as a remembered odour--brought back to me the incidents of thatimmemorial existence. 

For a time, I confess it frankly here, I felt afraid. More than once Istopped short in the street where I was walking, and considered turningabout and making again for the open country. Some there may be who willfeel that I am exaggerating my sensations and impressions, but they donot 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, andthinking (as I have related elsewhere) that I should never again setfoot upon a paved street. These things went deep with me. Only the otherday, when a friend asked me how old I was, I responded instantly--ourunpremeditated words are usually truest--with the date of my arrival atthis farm. 

"Then you are only ten years old!" he exclaimed with a laugh, thinking Iwas joking. 

"Well, " I said, "I am counting only the years worth living. "

No; I existed, but I never really lived until I was reborn, thatwonderful summer here among these hills. 

I said I felt afraid in the streets of Kilburn, but it was no physicalfear. Who could be safer in a city than the man who has not a penny inhis pockets? It was rather a strange, deep, spiritual shrinking. Thereseemed something so irresistible about this life of the city, so utterlyoverpowering. I had a sense of being smaller than I had previouslyfelt myself, that in some way my personality, all that was strong orinteresting 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 adifficult thing to describe: I never felt just that way before. 

I stopped at last on the main street of Kilburn in the very heart ofthe town. I stopped because it seemed necessary to me, like a man in aflood, to touch bottom, to get hold upon something immovable and stable. It was just at that hour of evening when the stores and shops arepouring forth their rivulets of humanity to join the vast flood of thestreets. I stepped quickly aside into a niche near the corner of animmense building of brick and steel and glass, and there I stood with myback to the wall, and I watched the restless, whirling, torrential tideof the streets. I felt again, as I had not felt it before in years, the mysterious urge of the city--the sense of unending, overpoweringmovement. 

There was another strange, indeed uncanny, sensation that began to creepover me as I stood there. Though hundreds upon hundreds of men and womenwere passing me every minute, not one of them seemed to see me. Mostof them did not even look in my direction, and those who did turn theireyes toward me see me to glance through me to the building behind. Iwonder if this is at all a common experience, or whether I was undulysensitive that day, unduly wrought up? I began to feel like one clad ingarments 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 tospeak to me, or at least appraise me with their eyes; but here I was awraith, a ghost--not a palpable human being at all. For a moment I feltunutterably lonely. 

It is this way with me. When I have reached the very depths of anyserious situation or tragic emotion, something within me seems at lastto stop--how shall I describe it?--and I rebound suddenly and seethe world, as it were, double--see that my condition instead of beingserious or tragic is in reality amusing--and I usually came out of itwith 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 ofone 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 totown. "

I had the sudden, almost irresistible notion of climbing up a step nearme, holding up one hand, and crying out:

"Here I am, my friends. I am David Grayson. I am real and solid andopaque; I have plenty of red blood running in my veins. I assure youthat I am a person well worth knowing. "

I should really have enjoyed some such outlandish enterprise, and I amnot at all sure yet that it would not have brought me adventures andmade me friends worth while. We fail far more often by under-daring thanby over-daring. 

But this imaginary object had the result, at least, of giving me a newgrip on things. I began to look out upon the amazing spectacle beforeme in a different mood. It was exactly like some enormous anthill intowhich an idle traveller had thrust his cane. Everywhere the ants wererunning out of their tunnels and burrows, many carrying burdens andgiving one strangely the impression that while they were intensely aliveand active, not more than half of them had any clear idea of where theywere going. And serious, deadly serious, in their haste! I felt a stronginclination 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 hereand there at the bottom of that gulch of a street, which had begun tofill with soft, bluish-gray shadows, the evening lights a appeared. Theair had grown cooler; in the distance around a corner I heard a streetorgan break suddenly and joyously into the lively strains of "TheWearin' o' the Green. "

I stepped out into the street with quite a new feeling of adventure. Andas if to testify that I was now a visible person a sharp-eyed newsboydiscovered me--the first human being in Kilburn who had actually seenme--and came up with a paper in his hand. 

"Herald, boss?"

I was interested in the shrewd, world-wise, humorous look in theurchin's eyes. 

"No, " I began, with the full intent of bantering him into some sort ofacquaintance; but he evidently measured my purchasing capacity quiteaccurately, for he turned like a flash to another customer. "Herald, boss?"

"You'll have to step lively, David Grayson, " I said to myself, "if youget aboard in this city. "

A slouchy negro with a cigarette in his fingers glanced at me in passingand 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 alittle the sensation of aloofness I had felt, and I strolled slowly downthe street, looking in at the gay windows, now ablaze with lights, andwatching the really wonderful procession of vehicles of all shapes andsizes that rattled by on the pavement. Even at that hour of the day Ithink there were more of them in one minute than I see in a whole monthat my farm. 

It's a great thing to wear shabby clothes and an old hat. Some of thebest things I have ever known, like these experiences of the streets, have resulted from coming up to life from underneath; of being taken forless than I am rather than for more than I am. 

I did not always believe in this doctrine. For many years--the yearsbefore I was rightly born into this alluring world--I tried quite theopposite course. I was constantly attempting to come down to life fromabove. Instead of being content to carry through life a sufficientlywonderful being named David Grayson I tried desperately to set up andsupport 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 theeyes of the world. Oh, I spent quite a lifetime trying to satisfy otherpeople!

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 servedwell for a scarecrow. A wisp of straw stuck out through a hole in hisfinest hat. 

And I--the man within--I escaped, and have been out freely upon thegreat adventure of life. 

If a shabby coat (and I speak here also symbolically, not forgetful ofspiritual significances) lets you into the adventurous world ofthose who are poor it does not on the other hand rob you of any truefriendship 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 shabbycoat (as I see through his fine one), I shall gain nothing by knowinghim. 

I've permitted myself all this digression--left myself walking alonethere in the streets of Kilburn while I philosophized upon the waysand means of life--not without design, for I could have had no suchexperiences as I did have in Kilburn if I had worn a better coat orcarried upon me the evidences of security in life. 

I think I have already remarked upon the extraordinary enlivenment ofwits which comes to the man who has been without a meal or so and doesnot know when or where he is again to break his fast. Try it, friend andsee! It was already getting along in the evening, and I knew or supposedI knew no one in Kilburn save only Bill Hahn, Socialist who was littlebetter off than I was. 

In this emergency my mind began to work swiftly. A score of fascinatingplans for getting my supper and a bed to sleep in flashed through mymind. 

"Why, " said I, "when I come to think of it, I'm comparatively rich. I'llwarrant there are plenty of places in Kilburn, and good ones, too, whereI could barter a chapter of Montaigne and a little good conversationfor a first-rate supper, and I've no doubt that I could whistle up a bedalmost 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'tknow yet how very near they were to being boarded by a somewhat shabbylooking farmer who would have offered them, let us say, a notablemusical production called "Old Dan Tucker, " exquisitely performed on atin whistle, in exchange for a good honest supper. 

There was one man in particular--a fine, pompous citizen who came downthe street swinging his cane and looking as though the universe was asort of Christmas turkey, lying all brown and sizzling before him readyto be carved--a fine pompous citizen who never realized how nearly Fatewith a battered volume of Montaigne in one hand and a tin whistle in theother--came to pouncing upon him that evening! And I am firmly convincedthat if I had attacked him with the Great Particular Word he would havecarved 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 buildinga number of lounging men with two or three cabs or carriages standingnearby 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 themthrough horses and cattle and cold winds and sunshine. I like them andunderstand them, and they seem to like me and understand me. So I walkedup to the group of jolly drivers and stablemen intending to ask mydirections. The talking died out and they all turned to look at me. Isuppose 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 justa little taken aback, but I laughed, too, knowing that there was a wayof getting at them if only I could find it. 

"It may surprise you, " I said, "but this is the first time in some dozenyears that I've been in a big city like this. "

"You hadn't 'ave told us, partner!" said one of them, evidently the witof the group, in a rich Irish brogue. 

"Well, " I responded, laughing with the best of them, "you've been livingright here all the time, and don't realize how amusing and curious thecity looks to me. Why, I feel as though I had been away sleeping fortwenty years, like Rip Van Winkle. When I left the city there wasscarcely an automobile to be seen anywhere--and now look at themsnorting through the streets. I counted twenty-two passing that cornerup there in five minutes by the clock. "

This was a fortunate remark, for I found instantly that the invasionof the automobile was a matter of tremendous import to such Knights ofBucephalus as these. 

At first the wit interrupted me with amusing remarks, as wits will, butI soon had him as quiet as the others. For I have found the things thatchiefly interest people are the things they already know about--providedyou show them that these common things are still mysterious, stillmiraculous, as indeed they are. 

After a time some one pushed me a stable stool and I sat down amongthem, and we had quite a conversation, which finally developed into anamusing comparison (I wish I had room to repeat it here) between thecity and the country. I told them something about my farm, how much Ienjoyed it, and what a wonderful free life one had in the country. Inthis I was really taking an unfair advantage of them, for I was tradingon the fact that every man, down deep in his heart, has more or less ofan instinct to get back to the soil--at least all outdoor men have. Andwhen I described the simplest things about my barn, and the cattle andpigs, and the bees--and the good things we have to eat--I had every oneof 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 alldouble-yolked, and my cornfields tropical jungles. Practical Harriet! Myapples 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 Ibelieve, I KNOW, from my own experience that these fields and hills arecapable of healing men's souls. And when I see people wandering arounda lonesome city like Kilburn, with never a soft bit of soil to put theirheels into, nor a green thing to cultivate, nor any corn or apples orhoney 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--hisname I soon learned was Healy--a jolly, round, red-nosed, outdoor chapwith fists that looked like small-sized hams, and a rich, warm Irishvoice. At first he was inclined to use me as the ready butt of hislively mind, but presently he became so much interested in what I wassaying that he sat squarely in front of me with both his jolly eyes andhis smiling mouth wide open. 

"If ever you pass my way, " I said to him, "just drop in and I'll giveyou a dinner of baked beans"--and I smacked--"and home made bread" and Ismacked again--"and pumpkin pie"--and I smacked a third time--"that willmake your mouth water. "

All this smacking and the description of baked beans and pumpkin piehad an odd counter effect upon ME; for I suddenly recalled my own tragicstate. So I jumped up quickly and asked directions for getting down tothe mill neighbourhood, where I hoped to find Bill Hahn. My friend Healyinstantly volunteered the information. 

"And now, " I said, "I want to ask a small favour of you. I'm looking fora friend, and I'd like to leave my bag here for the night. "

"Sure, sure, " said the Irishman heartily. "Put it there in theoffice--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 friendsaid to me:

"Come in, partner, and have a drink before you go"--and he pointed to anearby saloon. 

"Thank you, " I answered heartily, for I knew it was as fine a bit ofhospitality as he could offer me, "thank you, but I must find my friendbefore it gets too late. "

"Aw, come on now, " he cried, taking my arm. "Sure you'll be better offfor a bit o' warmth inside. "

I had hard work to get away from them, and I am as sure as can be thatthey would have found supper and a bed for me if they had known I neededeither. 

"Come agin, " Healy shouted after me, "we're glad to see a farmer anytoime. "

My way led me quickly out of the well-groomed and glittering mainstreets of the town. I passed first through several blocks of quietresidences, and then came to a street near the river which was garishlylighted, and crowded with small, poor shops and stores, with a saloon onnearly every corner. I passed a huge, dark, silent box of a mill, and Isaw what I never saw before in a city, armed men guarding the streets. 

Although it was growing late--it was after nine o'clock--crowdsof people were still parading the streets, and there was somethingintangibly restless, something tense, in the very atmosphere of theneighbourhood. It was very plain that I had reached the strike district. I was about to make some further inquiries for the headquarters of themill men or for Bill Hahn personally, when I saw, not far ahead of me, ablack crowd of people reaching out into the street. Drawing nearer Isaw that an open space or block between two rows of houses was literallyblack with human beings, and in the centre on a raised platform, under agasolene flare, I beheld my friend of the road, Bill Hahn. The overcoatand the hat with the furry ears had disappeared, and the little manstood there bare-headed, before that great audience. 

My experience in the world is limited, but I have never heard anythinglike that speech for sheer power. It was as unruly and powerful andresistless as life itself. It was not like any other speech I everheard, for it was no mere giving out by the orator of ideas and thoughtsand feelings of his own. It seemed rather--how shall I describe it?--asthough the speaker was looking into the very hearts of that vastgathering of poor men and poor women and merely telling them whatthey themselves felt, but could not tell. And I shall never forget thebreathless hush of the people or the quality of their responses to theorator's words. It was as though they said, "Yes, yes" with a feeling ofvast relief--"Yes, yes--at last our own hopes and fears and desires arebeing uttered--yes, yes. "

As for the orator himself, he held up one maimed hand and leaned overthe edge of the platform, and his undistinguished face glowed with thewhite light of a great passion within. The man had utterly forgottenhimself. 

I confess, among those eager working people, clad in their poorgarments, I confess I was profoundly moved. Faith is not so bounteous acommodity in this world that we can afford to treat even its unfamiliarmanifestations with contempt. And when a movement is hot with life, whenit stirs common men to their depths, look out! look out!

Up to that time I had never known much of the practical workings ofSocialism; and the main contention of its philosophy has never accordedwholly 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 oflife is perfectly balanced rarely soil themselves with the dust ofbattle. The heat necessary to produce social conflict (and socialprogress--who knows?) is generated by a supreme faith that certainprinciples are universal in their application when in reality they areonly local or temporary. 

Thus while one may not accept the philosophy of Socialism as a finalexplanation of human life, he may yet look upon Socialism in action asa powerful method of stimulating human progress. The world has beenlagging behind in its sense of brotherhood, and we now have theSocialists knit together in a fighting friendship as fierce and narrowin its motives as Calvinism, pricking us to reform, asking the cogentquestion:

"Are we not all brothers?"

Oh, we are going a long way with these Socialists, we are going todiscover a new world of social relationships--and then, and then, like amighty wave; will flow in upon us a renewed and more wonderful sense ofthe worth of the individual human soul. A new individualism, bringingwith it, perhaps, some faint realization of our dreams of a race ofSupermen, lies just beyond! Its prophets, girded with rude garmentsand feeding upon the wild honey of poverty, are already crying in thewilderness. 

I think I could have remained there at the Socialist meeting all nightlong: there was something about it that brought a hard, dry twist to mythroat. But after a time my friend Bill Hahn, evidently quite worn out, yielded his place to another and far less clairvoyant speaker, and thecrowd, among whom I now discovered quite a number of policemen, began tothin out. 

I made my way forward and saw Bill Hahn and several other men justleaving the platform. I stepped up to him, but it was not until I calledhim 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 companionsas "Brother Grayson. " They all shook hands with me warmly. 

Although he was perspiring, Bill put on his overcoat and the old fur hatwith the ears, and as he now took my arm I could feel one of his bulgingpockets beating against my leg. I had not the slightest idea where theywere going, but Bill held me by the arm and presently we came, a blockor 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 ortwo, the high voice of a woman asserting and denying. Feeling our wayalong the wall, we came to the top and went into a long, low, ratherdimly lighted room set about with tables and chairs--a sort ofrestaurant. A number of men and a few women had already gathered there. Among them my eyes instantly singled out a huge, rough-looking man whostood 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 andraked and scarred, where it had been burned in a Powder blast. He hadbeen a miner. His gray eyes, which had a surprisingly youthful and evenhumorous expression, looked out from under coarse, thick, gray brows. Avery remarkable face and figure he presented. I soon learned that hewas R---- D----, the leader of whom I had often heard, and heard no goodthing. He was quite a different type from Bill Hahn: he was the manof 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 beenthrilled by the intensity of the passion of the throng, but here themood suddenly changed to one of friendly gayety. Fully a third of thosepresent were women, some of them plainly from the mills and some ofthem curiously different--women from other walks in life who had thrownthemselves heart and soul into the strike. Without ceremony but withmuch laughing and joking, they found their places around the tables. Acook, who appeared in a dim doorway was greeted with a shout, to whichhe responded with a wide smile, waving the long spoon which he held inhis hand. 

I shall not attempt to give any complete description of the gatheringor of what they said or did. I think I could devote a dozen pages to thesingle man who was placed next to me. I was interested in him from theoutset. 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 withthe pallor peculiar to the indoor worker. I soon learned that he was aweaver in the mills, an Englishman by birth, and we had not talked twominutes before I found that, while he had never had any education inthe schools, he had been a gluttonous reader of books--all kind ofbooks--and, what is more, had thought about them and was ready withvigorous (and narrow) opinions about this author or that. And he knewmore about economics and sociology, I firmly believe, than half thecollege professors. A truly remarkable man. 

It was an Italian restaurant, and I remember how, in my hunger, Iassailed the generous dishes of boiled meat and spaghetti. A red winewas served in large bottles which circulated rapidly around the table, and almost immediately the room began to fill with tobacco smoke. Everyone seemed to be talking and laughing at once, in the liveliest spiritof good fellowship. They joked from table to table, and sometimes thewhole room would quiet down while some one told a joke, which invariablywound up with a roar of laughter. 

"Why, " I said, "these people have a whole life, a whole society, oftheir own!"

In the midst of this jollity the clear voice of a girl rang out with thefirst 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 dieddown the whole company, as though by a common impulse, arose from theirchairs, 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 weresung. In no sense with jollity--all that seemed to have been droppedwhen they came to their feet--but with an unmistakable fervour of faith. Some of the things I had thought and dreamed about secretly among thehills of my farm all these years, dreamed about as being something faroff and as unrealizable as the millennium, were here being sung abroadwith jaunty faith by these weavers of Kilburn, these weavers and workerswhom 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 ofjolly conversation When I heard a rapping on one of the tables. I sawthe great form of R----- D----- slowly rising. 

"Brothers and sisters, " he said, "a word of caution. The authoritieswill lose no chance of putting us in the wrong. Above all we mustcomport ourselves here and in the strike with great care. We arefighting a great battle, bigger than we are--"

At this instant the door from the dark hallway suddenly opened and aman in a policeman's uniform stepped in. There fell an instant's deadsilence--an explosive silence. Every person there seemed to be petrifiedin the position in which his attention was attracted. Every eye wasfixed on the figure at the door. For an instant no one said a word; thenI heard a woman's shrill voice, like a rifle-shot:

"Assassin!"

I cannot imagine what might have happened next, for the feeling in theroom, as in the city itself, was at the tensest, had not the leadersuddenly brought the goblet which he held in his hand down with a bangupon the table. 

"As I was saying, " he continued in a steady, clear voice, "we arefighting to-day the greatest of battles, and we cannot permit trivialincidents, or personal bitterness, or small persecutions, to turn usfrom the great work we have in hand. However our opponents may comportthemselves, we must be calm, steady, sure, patient, for we know that ourcause is just and will prevail. "

"You're right, " shouted a voice back in the room. 

Instantly the tension relaxed, conversation started again and everyone turned away from the policeman at the door. In a few minutes, hedisappeared without having said a word. 

There was no regular speaking, and about midnight the party began tobreak 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, andthose present soon departed. I went down the long, dark stairway andout into the almost deserted street. Looking up between the buildings Icould see the clear blue sky and the stars. And I walked slowly up anddown 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 Ilay there, listening, that I could hear the city moving in its restlesssleep and sighing as with heavy pain. All night long I lay therethinking. 

CHAPTER XI. I COME TO GRAPPLE WITH THE CITY

I have laughed heartily many times since I came home to think of theFigure of Tragedy I felt myself that morning in the city of Kilburn. Ihad not slept well, had not slept at all, I think, and the experiencesand emotions of the previous night still lay heavy upon me. Not beforein 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 spearof grass or a leafy tree to comfort the eye, or a bird to sing; no quiethills, no sight of the sun coming up in the morning over dewy fields, nosound of cattle in the lane, no cheerful cackling of fowls, nor buzzingof bees! That morning, I remember, when I first went out into thosesqualid streets and saw everywhere the evidences of poverty, dirt, andignorance--and the sweet, clean country not two miles away--the thoughtof my own home among the hills (with Harriet there in the doorway) cameupon 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 andother leaders of the strike were to be engaged in conferences duringthe forenoon, for I wanted to be alone, to try to get a few thingsstraightened out in my mind. 

But I soon found that a city is a poor place for reflection orcontemplation. It bombards one with an infinite variety of newimpressions and new adventures; and I could not escape the impressionmade by crowded houses, and ill-smelling streets, and dirty sidewalks, and swarming human beings. For a time the burden of these things restedupon my breast like a leaden weight; they all seemed so utterly wrong tome, so unnecessary; so unjust! I sometimes think of religion as only ahigh sense of good order; and it seemed to me that morning as thoughthe very existence of this disorderly mill district was a challenge toreligion, and an offence to the Orderer of an Orderly Universe. I don'tnow how such conditions may affect other people, but for a time I felt asharp sense of impatience--yes, anger--with it all. I had an impulse totake off my coat then and there and go at the job of setting things torights. Oh, I never was more serious in my life: I was quite preparedto change the entire scheme of things to my way of thinking whetherthe people who lived there liked it or not. It seemed to me for a fewglorious moments that I had only to tell them of the wonders in ourcountry, the pleasant, quiet roads, the comfortable farmhouses, thefertile fields, and the wooded hills--and, poof! all this crowdedpoverty would dissolve and disappear, and they would all come to thecountry and be as happy as I was. 

I remember how, once in my life, I wasted untold energy trying to makeover my dearest friends. There was Harriet, for example, dear, serious, practical Harriet. I used to be fretted by the way she was forevertrying to clip my wing feathers--I suppose to keep me close to the quietand friendly and unadventurous roost! We come by such a long, long road, sometimes, to the acceptance of our nearest friends for exactly whatthey are. Because we are so fond of them we try to make them over tosuit some curious ideal of perfection of our own--until one day wesuddenly laugh aloud at our own absurdity (knowing that they areprobably 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 thatmorning. As I walked briskly through the streets I began to look outmore broadly around me. It was really a perfect spring morning, the aircrisp, fresh, and sunny, and the streets full of life and activity. Ilooked into the faces of the people I met, and it began to strike methat most of them seemed oblivious of the fact that they should, bygood rights, be looking downcast and dispirited. They had cheered theirapproval the night before when the speakers had told them how miserablethey were (even acknowledging that they were slaves), and yet here theywere this morning looking positively good-humoured, cheerful, some ofthem even gay. I warrant if I had stepped up to one of them that morningand intimated that he was a slave he would have--well, I should havehad serious trouble with him! There was a degree of sociability in thoseback streets, a visiting from window to window, gossipy gatherings infront area-ways, a sort of pavement domesticity, that I had neverseen before. Being a lover myself of such friendly intercourse I couldactually feel the hum and warmth of that neighbourhood. 

A group of brightly clad girl strikers gathered on a corner werechatting and laughing, and children in plenty ran and shouted at theirplay in the street. I saw a group of them dancing merrily around anItalian hand-organ man who was filling the air with jolly music. Irecall what a sinking sensation I had at the pit of my reformer'sstomach when it suddenly occurred to me that these people some of them, anyway, might actually LIKE this crowded, sociable neighbourhood! "Theymight even HATE the country, " I exclaimed. 

It is surely one of the fundamental humours of life to see absurdlyserious little human beings (like D. G. For example) trying to standin the place of the Almighty. We are so confoundedly infallible in ourjudgments, so sure of what is good for our neighbour, so eager to forceupon him our particular doctors or our particular remedies; we are sowilling to put our childish fingers into the machinery of creation--andwe howl so lustily when we get them pinched!

"Why!" I exclaimed, for it came to me like a new discovery, "it'sexactly the same here as it is in the country! I haven't got to makeover the universe: I've only got to do my own small job, and to look upoften at the trees and the hills and the sky and be friendly with allmen. "

I cannot express the sense of comfort, and of trust, which thisreflection brought me. I recall stopping just then at the corner of asmall green city square, for I had now reached the better part of thecity, and of seeing with keen pleasure the green of the grass and thebright colour of a bed of flowers, and two or three clean nursemaidswith clean baby cabs, and a flock of pigeons pluming themselves near astone fountain, and an old tired horse sleeping in the sun with his noseburied in a feed bag. 

"Why, " I said, "all this, too, is beautiful!" So I continued my walkwith quite a new feeling in my heart, prepared again for any adventurelife might have to offer me. 

I supposed I knew no living soul in Kilburn but Bill the Socialist. Whatwas my astonishment and pleasure, then in one of the business streetsto discover a familiar face and figure. A man was just stepping from anautomobile 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--butit 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! Whyare 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 somegood friends I made in front of a livery stable and I spent the night inthe 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 inthe strike as Bill Hahn, but on the other side. He was, indeed, one ofthe directors of the greatest mill in Kilburn--the very one which I hadseen the night before surrounded by armed sentinels. It was thrilling tome, this knowledge, for it seemed to plump me down at once in the middleof things--and soon, indeed, brought me nearer to the brink of greatevents than ever I was before in all my days. 

I could see that Mr. Vedder considered Bill Hahn as a sort of devouringmonster, a wholly incendiary and dangerous person. So terrible, indeed, was the warning he gave me (considering me, I suppose an unsophisticatedperson) 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 hisbulging coat tails, his furry ears, his odd round spectacles. He wasgreatly interested in what I said and began to ask many questions. Itold him with all the earnestness I could command of Bill's history andof his conversion to his present beliefs. I found that Mr. Vedder hadknown Robert Winter very well indeed, and was amazed at the incidentwhich I narrated of Bill Hahn's attempt upon his life. 

I have always believed that if men could be made to understand oneanother they would necessarily be friendly, so I did my best to explainBill Hahn to Mr. Vedder. 

"I'm tremendously interested in what you say, " he said, "and we musthave more talk about it. "

He told me that he had now to put in an appearance at his office, andwanted me to go with him; but upon my objection he pressed me to takeluncheon with him a little later, an invitation which I accepted withreal pleasure. 

"We haven't had a word about gardens, " he said, "and there are no endof things that Mrs. Vedder and I found that we wanted to talk with youabout after you had left us. "

"Well!" I said, much delighted, "let's have a regular old-fashionedcountry talk. "

So we parted for the time being, and I set off in the highest spirits tosee 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 wasworking, apparently without any common agreement or any common purpose, and yet with a high sort of understanding. The first hearing of adifficult piece of music (to an uncultivated ear like mine) often yieldsnothing but a confused sense of unrelated motives, but later and deeperhearings 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 ofthat 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. Ithink, 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 allto ourselves. I shall remember it always as one of the truly pleasantexperiences of my pilgrimage. 

I could see that my friend was sorely troubled, that the strike restedheavy upon him, and so I led the conversation to the hills and theroads and the fields we both love so much. I plied him with a thousandquestions about his garden. I told him in the liveliest way of myadventures after leaving his home, how I had telephoned him from thehills, how I had taken a swim in the mill-pond, and especially how I hadlost myself in the old cowpasture, with an account of all my absurd andlaughable adventures and emotions. 

Well, before we had finished our luncheon I had every line ironed fromthe brow of that poor plagued rich man, I had brought jolly crinkles tothe corners of his eyes, and once or twice I had him chuckling down deepinside (Where chuckles are truly effective). Talk about cheering up thepoor: 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'sconsciousness, 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 makethe mill management in its dealings with its men. 

"I would not speak of it save in explanation of our true attitude ofhelpfulness; but we have really given our men many advantages"--and hetold me of the reading-room the company had established, of the visitingnurse they had employed, and of several other excellent enterprises, which gave only another proof of what I knew already of Mr. Vedder'ssincere kindness of heart. 

"But, " he said, "we find they don't appreciate what we try to do forthem. "

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 tohave their seriousness trifled with. 

"No longer ago than this morning, " I said, "I had exactly that idea ofgiving them advantages; but I found that the difficulty lies not withthe 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 theages--ingots of Emerson and Whitman, for example, gems of Voltaire, andI can't tell what other superfluous coinage!" (And I waved my hand inthe most grandiloquent manner. ) "I've also quite a store of knowledgeof corn and calves and cucumbers, and I've a boundless domain ofexceedingly valuable landscapes. I am prepared to give bountifully ofall these varied riches (for I shall still have plenty remaining), butthe fact is that this generation of vipers doesn't appreciate what I amtrying to do for them. I'm really getting frightened, lest they permitme 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 asjolly 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 forcesand establish a university where truly serious people can take coursesin laughter. "

"Fine idea!" exclaimed Mr. Vedder; "but wouldn't it require an enormousendowment to accommodate all the applicants? You must remember that thisis a very benighted and illiterate world, laughingly speaking. "

"It is, indeed, " I said, "but you must remember that many people, for along time, will be too serious to apply. I wonder sometimes if any oneever learns to laugh really laugh much before he is forty. "

"But, " said Mr. Vedder anxiously, "do you think such an institutionwould be accepted by the proletariat of the serious-minded?"

"Ah, that's the trouble, " said I, "that's the trouble. The proletariatdoesn't appreciate what we are trying to do for them! They don'twant your reading-rooms nor my Emerson and cucumbers. The seat of thedifficulty seems to be that what seems wealth to us isn't necessarilywealth 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 quicklyresponsive than Mr. Vedder. But he now paused for some moments, evidently ruminating. 

"Well, David, " he said seriously, "what are we going to do about thisobstreperous other fellow?"

"Why not try the experiment, " I suggested, "of giving him what heconsiders 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 speakof--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 theinevitable problem of the strike. While we were discussing the meetingof the night before which, I learned, had been luridly reported in themorning 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 Hahnbelieves with his whole soul (and his faith has made him a remarkableman) that if only another class of people--his class--could come intothe control of material property, that all the ills that man is heirto would be speedily cured. But I wonder if when men own propertycollectively--as they are going to one of these days--they will quarreland hate one another any less than they do now. It is not the ownershipof material property that interests me so much as the independence ofit. When I started out from my farm on this pilgrimage it seemed tome the most blessed thing in the world to get away from property andpossession. "

"What are you then, anyway?" asked Mr. Vedder, smiling. 

"Well, I've thought of a name I would like to have applied to mesometimes, " I said. "You see I'm tremendously fond of this world exactlyas it is now. Mr. Vedder, it's a wonderful and beautiful place! I'venever seen a better one. I confess I could not possibly live in therarefied atmosphere of a final solution. I want to live right here andnow for all I'm worth. The other day a man asked me what I thought wasthe best time of life. 'Why, ' I answered without a thought, 'Now. ' Ithas always seemed to me that if a man can't make a go of it, yes, and behappy at this moment, he can't be at the next moment. But most ofall, it seems to me, I want to get close to people, to look into theirhearts, and be friendly with them. Mr. Vedder, do you know what I'd liketo 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 swearthat you were brothers, so near alike are you! You'll find each otherwonderfully interesting once you get over the awkwardness of theintroduction. And Mr. White Man, let me present you particularly to mygood friend, Mr. Negro. You will see if you sit down to it that thiscolour 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 finestwork in the world--to know human beings just as they are, and tomake them acquainted with one another just as they are. Why, it's thefoundation of all the democracy there is, or ever will be. Sometimes Ithink that friendliness is the only achievement of life worth while--andunfriendliness the only tragedy. "

I have since felt ashamed of myself when I thought how I lectured myunprotected host that day at luncheon; but it seemed to boil out of meirresistibly. The experiences of the past two days had stirred me to thevery depths, and it seemed to me I must explain to somebody how it allimpressed me--and to whom better than to my good friend Vedder?

As we were leaving the table an idea flashed across my mind whichseemed, at first, so wonderful that it quite turned me dizzy. 

"See here, Mr. Vedder, " I exclaimed, "let me follow my occupationpractically. I know Bill Hahn and I know you. Let me introduce you. If you could only get together, if you could only understand whatgood fellows you both are, it might go far toward solving thesedifficulties. "

I had some trouble persuading him, but finally he consented, said hewanted to leave no stone unturned, and that he would meet Bill Hahn andsome of the other leaders, if proper arrangements could be made. 

I left him, therefore, in excitement, feeling that I was at the point ofplaying a part in a very great event. "Once get these men together, " Ithought, "and they MUST come to an understanding. "

So I rushed out to the mill district, saying to myself over and over (Ihave smiled about it since!): "We'll settle this strike: we'll settlethis strike: we'll settle this strike. " After some searching I foundmy friend Bill in the little room over a saloon that served as strikeheadquarters. A dozen or more of the leaders were there, faintlydistinguishable through clouds of tobacco smoke. Among them sat thegreat R---- D----, his burly figure looming up at one end of the table, and his strong, rough, iron-jawed face turning first toward this speakerand then toward that. The discussion, which had evidently been lively, died down soon after I appeared at the door, and Bill Hahn came out tome and we sat down together in the adjoining room. Here I broke eagerlyinto an account of the happenings of the day, described my chancemeeting with Mr. Vedder--who was well known to Bill by reputation--andfinally asked him squarely whether he would meet him. I think myenthusiasm 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 histemperament, 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 verylong time; but finally the door opened and Bill Hahn came out bringingR---- D---- himself with him. We all sat down together, and R---- D----began to ask questions (he was evidently suspicious as to who and whatI was); but I think, after I talked with them for some time that I madethem see the possibilities and the importance of such a meeting. I wasgreatly impressed with R---- D----, the calmness and steadiness of theman, his evident shrewdness. "A real general, " I said to myself. "Ishould like to know him better. "

After a long talk they returned to the other room, closing the doorbehind them, and I waited again, still more impatiently. 

It seems rather absurd now, but at that moment I felt firmly convincedthat I was on the way to the permanent settlement of a struggle whichhad occupied the best brains of Kilburn for many weeks. 

While I was waiting in that dingy ante-room, the other door slowlyopened 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 shouldbe inquiring for me, or should know where I was. 

The boy came in, looked at me with jolly round eyes for a moment, anddug a letter out of his pocket. I opened it at once, and glancing at thesignature discovered that it was from Mr. Vedder. 

"He said I'd probably find you at strike headquarters, " remarked theboy. 

This was the letter: marked "Confidential. "

My Dear Grayson: I think you must be something of a hypnotist. After youleft me I began to think of the project you mentioned, and I have talkedit over with one or two of my associates. I would gladly hold thisconference, but it does not now seem wise for us to do so. The interestswe represent are too important to be jeopardized. In theory you areundoubtedly right, but in this case I think you will agree with me (whenyou think it over), we must not show any weakness. Come and stop withus to-night: Mrs. Vedder will be overjoyed to see you and we'll haveanother 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 shouldkeep friends apart?"

But I was given only a moment for reflection for the door opened and myfriend Bill, together with R---- D---- and several other members of thecommittee, came out. I put the letter in my pocket, and for a moment mybrain 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, butR---- D---- was as calm as a judge. He sat down in the chair oppositeand said to me:

"We've been figuring out this proposition of Mr. Vedder's. Your idea isall right, and it would be a fine thing if we could really get togetheras 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 itsimply won't work. Don't you see it's got to be war? Your friend and Icould probably understand each other--but this is a class war. It's allor 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 almostdark before I parted with the committee--I walked straight out throughthe crowded streets, so absorbed in my thoughts that I did not knowin the least where I was going. The street lights came out, the crowdsbegan to thin away, I heard a strident song from a phonograph at theentrance 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 Isaw a sentinel turn slowly at the corner. The light glinted on the steelof his bayonet. He had a fresh, fine, boyish face. 

"We have some distance yet to go in this world, " I said to myself, "noman need repine for lack of good work ahead. "

It was only a little way beyond this mill that an incident occurredwhich occupied probably not ten minutes of time, and yet I have thoughtabout it since I came home as much as I have thought about any otherincident of my pilgrimage. I have thought how I might have acteddifferently under the circumstances, how I could have said this or how Iought to have done that--all, of course, now to no purpose whatever. ButI shall not attempt to tell what I ought to have done or said, but whatI actually did do and say on the spur of the moment. 

It was in a narrow, dark street which opened off the brightly lightedmain thoroughfare of that mill neighbourhood. A girl standing in theshadows 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 shouldbe 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 ofa girl, rather comely, I thought, with small childish features and ahalf-timid, half-bold look in her eyes. I could not remember having seenher before. 

She smiled at me--and then I knew!

Well, if some one had struck me a brutal blow in the face I could nothave been more astonished. 

We know of things!--and yet how little we know until they are presentedto us in concrete form. Just such a little school girl as I have seen athousand 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 somethingwas the matter, for she turned and began to move quickly away. Sucha wave of compassion (and anger, too) swept over me as I cannot welldescribe. 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 seeI am a farmer from the country. I used to live in a city myself, a goodmany years ago, but I got tired and sick and hopeless. There was so muchthat was wrong about it. I tried to keep the pace and could not. I wishI could tell you what the country has done for me. "

We were walking along slowly, side by side, the girl perfectly passivebut 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 begantelling in a quiet, low voice--for, after all, she was only a child--Ibegan telling her about our chickens at the farm and how Harriet hadnamed 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 MarthaWashington and of the number of eggs she laid, and of the sweet new milkwe had to drink, and the honey right out of our own hives, and of thethings growing in the garden. 

Once she smiled a little, and once she looked around at me with acurious, 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 hadfelt 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 wasstanding stock-still just where I had left her--a figure I shall neverforget. 

I have hesitated about telling of a further strange thing that happenedto me that night--but have decided at last to put it in. I did notaccept Mr. Vedder's invitation: I could not; but I returned to the roomin the tenement where I had spent the previous night with Bill Hahn theSocialist. It was a small, dark, noisy room, but I was so weary thatI fell almost immediately into a heavy sleep. An hour or more later Idon't know how long indeed--I was suddenly awakened and found myselfsitting bolt upright in bed. It was close and dark and warm there inthe room, and from without came the muffled sounds of the city. For aninstant I waited, rigid with expectancy. And then I heard as clearly andplainly 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 previoustwo 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 inthe morning: and having decided, I turned over, drew a long, comfortablebreath and did not stir again, I think, until long after the morning sunshone 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 gettingback again. I shall never forget that spring morning when I walked fromthe city of Kilburn into the open country, my bag on my back, a song inmy throat, and the gray road stretching straight before me. I rememberhow eagerly I looked out across the fields and meadows and rested myeyes upon the distant hills. How roomy it all was! I looked up into theclear blue of the sky. There was space here to breathe, and distances inwhich the spirit might spread its wings. As the old prophet says, it wasa 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 underthe bridges, I was glad of the trees I passed, glad of every bird andsquirrel in the branches, glad of the cattle grazing in the fields, gladof 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 whowaved his hand at me and wished me a friendly good morning. It seemed tome 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 ofrelief and escape, nor ever such a feeling of gayety. 

"Here is where I belong, " I said. "This is my own country. Those hillsare mine, and all the fields, and the trees and the sky--and the roadhere 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 awoman working with a trowel in her sunny garden. It was good to see herturn over the warm brown soil; it was good to see the plump green rowsof lettuce and the thin green rows of onions, and the nasturtiums andsweet peas; it was good--after so many days in that desert of a city--toget a whiff of blossoming things. I stood for a moment looking quietlyover the fence before the woman saw me. When at last she turned andlooked 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 beganintently to admire her young cabbages and comment on the perfection ofher geraniums. But I caught her eying me from time to time as I leanedthere on the fence, and I knew that she would come back sooner or laterto my remark about the monster. Having shocked your friend (not toounpleasantly), abide your time, and he will want to be shocked again. SoI 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'veseen many strange sights and met many wonderful people. "

"You may have been in California, then. I have a daughter inCalifornia. "

"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 gonethree 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 fromlaughing. 

"I assure you, " I said, "that if you travel a thousand miles you willfind no one stranger than I am--or you are--nor anything more wonderfulthan 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 wenton down the road. 

"Well, " I said, "she'll have something new to talk about. It may add amonth to her life. Was there ever such an amusing world!"

About noon that day I had an adventure that I have to laugh over everytime I think of it. It was unusual, too, as being almost the onlyincident of my journey which was of itself in the least thrilling or outof 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 likecalling 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 learnfrom them odd and curious things about life; but when I actually cameinto 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 distinctivehistory, and each accounting for himself as logically as I could formyself. And save for the fact that in none of them I met were theoutward graces and virtues too prominently displayed, I have come backquite uncertain as to what a scientist might call type-characteristics. I had thought of following Emerson in his delightfully optimisticdefinition of a weed. A weed, he says, is a plant whose virtues havenot been discovered. A tramp, then, is a man whose virtues have not beendiscovered. Or, I might follow my old friend the Professor (who dearlyloves all growing things) in his even kindlier definition of a weed. He says that it is merely a plant misplaced. The virility of thisdefinition has often impressed me when I have tried to grub theexcellent and useful horseradish plants out of my asparagus bed! Letit be then--a tramp is a misplaced man, whose virtues have not beendiscovered. 

Whether this is an adequate definition or not, it fitted admirably theman I overtook that morning on the road. He was certainly misplaced, andduring my brief but exciting experience with him I discovered no virtueswhatever. 

In one way he was quite different from the traditional tramp. He walkedwith 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 hisheels. He carried a light stick, which he occasionally twirled over inhis hand. As I drew nearer I could hear him whistling and even, fromtime to time, breaking into a lively bit of song. What a devil-may-carechap 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 againinto the song he was singing. And these were the words of his song--atleast, 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 noseset on his face like an overgrown strawberry, and from under the worstderby 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 howamused and pleased I was--though if I had known what was to happen laterI might not have been quite so friendly--yes, I would too!

We fell into conversation, and it wasn't long before I suggested thatwe stop for luncheon together somewhere along the road. He cast a quickappraising eye at my bag, and assented with alacrity. We climbed a fenceand 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 havenothing whatever in his pockets, he proceeded, like a professionalprestidigitator, to produce from his shabby clothing an extraordinarynumber of curious things--a black tin can with a wire handle, a smallbox of matches, a soiled package which I soon learned contained tea, a miraculously big dry sausage wrapped in an old newspaper, and aclasp-knife. I watched him with breathless interest. 

He cut a couple of crotched sticks to hang the pail on and in two orthree minutes had a little fire, no larger than a man's hand, burningbrightly under it. ("Big fires, " said he wisely, "are not for us. ") Thishe fed with dry twigs, and in a very few minutes he had a pot of teafrom which he offered me the first drink. This, with my luncheon andpart of his sausage, made up a very good meal. 

While we were eating, the little dog sat sedately by the fire. From timeto 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 ayelp. His master would toss him a bit of sausage or bread and he wouldcatch it with a snap. 

"Fine dog!" commented my companion. 

"So he seems, " said I. 

After the meal was over my companion proceeded to produce othersurprises from his pockets--a bag of tobacco, a brier pipe (which hekindly offered to me and which I kindly refused), and a soiled packet ofcigarette papers. Having rolled a cigarette with practised facility, heleaned up against a tree, took off his hat, lighted the cigaretteand, having taken a long draw at it, blew the smoke before him with anincredible air of satisfaction. 

"Solid comfort this here--hey!" he exclaimed. 

We had some further talk, but for so jovial a specimen he wassurprisingly uncommunicative. Indeed, I think he soon decided that Isomehow did not belong to the fraternity, that I was a "farmer"--in themost opprobrious sense--and he soon began to drowse, rousing himselfonce 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 experienceof the last two days--and I, too, soon began to drowse. It didn't seemto me then that I lost consciousness at all, but I suppose I must havedone so, for when I suddenly opened my eyes and sat up my companionhad vanished. How he succeeded in gathering up his pail and packages sonoiselessly 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 upmy bag when I suddenly discovered that it was open. My rain-cape wasmissing! 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 jovialcompanion and the cunning way in which he had tricked me, I couldn'thelp laughing. At the same time I jumped up quickly and ran down theroad. 

"I may get him yet, " I said. 

Just as I stepped out of the woods I caught a glimpse of a man somehundreds of yards away, turning quickly from the main road into a laneor by-path. I wasn't altogether sure that he was my man, but I ranacross the road and climbed the fence. I had formed the plan instantlyof cutting across the field and so striking the by-road farther up thehill. I had a curious sense of amused exultation, the very spirit of thechase, and my mind dwelt with the liveliest excitement on what I shouldsay 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 withthe shaggy little dog close at his heels. He was making pretty goodtime, but I skirted swiftly along the edge of the road until I hadnearly overtaken him. Then I slowed down to a walk and stepped out intothe middle of the road. I confess my heart was pounding at a livelyrate. The next time he looked behind him--guiltily enough, too!--I saidin 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 rummageinside. 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 intothe man's face. 

"Say, pardner, what you drivin' at?"

"Well, " I said, "I don't like to see such evidences of haste andinefficiency. "

He stood staring at me helplessly, holding my old rubbers at arm'slength. 

"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 bothrubbers and rain-cape away from him, and ran down the road for all hewas 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. Istood there and laughed until the tears came, and ever since then, atthe thought of the expression on the jolly rover's face when I gave himmy rubbers, I've had to smile. I put the rain-cape and rubbers back intomy bag and turned again to the road. 

Before the afternoon was nearly spent I found myself very tired, formy two days' experience in the city had been more exhausting for me, Ithink, than a whole month of hard labour on my farm. I found haven witha friendly farmer, whom I joined while he was driving his cows in fromthe pasture. I helped him with his milking both that night and the nextmorning, and found his situation and family most interesting--but Ishall not here enlarge upon that experience. 

It was late afternoon when I finally surmounted the hill from whichI knew well enough I could catch the first glimpse of my farm. Fora moment after I reached the top I could not raise my eyes, and whenfinally I was able to raise them I could not see. 

"There is a spot in Arcady--a spot in Arcady--a spot in Arcady--" Soruns the old song. 

There IS a spot in Arcady, and at the centre of it there is aweather-worn old house, and not far away a perfect oak tree, and greenfields all about, and a pleasant stream fringed with alders in thelittle valley. And out of the chimney into the sweet, still evening airrises the slow white smoke of the supper-fire. 

I turned from the main road, and climbed the fence and walked acrossmy upper field to the old wood lane. The air was heavy and sweet withclover blossoms, and along the fences I could see that the raspberrybushes were ripening their fruit. 

So I came down the lane and heard the comfortable grunting of pigs inthe pasture lot and saw the calves licking one another as they stood atthe gate. 

"How they've grown!" I said. 

I stopped at the corner of the barn for a moment. From within I heardthe rattling of milk in a pail (a fine sound), and heard a man's voicesaying:

"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 myhand 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 steppingabout in the stable, the old mare reaching her long head over thestanchion to welcome me, and nipping at my fingers when I rubbed hernose--

And there was the old house with the late sun upon it, the vines hanginggreen over the porch, Harriet's trim flower bed--I crept along quietlyto 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. Shekept thinking of a new kind of sauce or jam for supper (I think therewere 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, justbrown enough on top, and not too brown, with just the right sort ofhills and hummocks in the crust, and here and there little sugarybubbles 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 dangerousit is to set such a supper as this before a man who is perishing withhunger? Have you no mercy for me?"

This remark produced the most extraordinary effect. Harriet was at thatmoment standing in the corner near the pump. Her shoulders suddenlybegan to shake convulsively. 

"She's so glad I'm home that she can't help laughing, " I thought, whichshows 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 ofthe rhubarb pie--stuck in my throat. So I sat there and watched hermoving quietly about in that immaculate kitchen. After a time I walkedover 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 howfirm 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 myjourney 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 wokeup with the strong impression that I had just been hearing the mostexquisite sounds of music. I don't know whether this is at all a commonexperience, but in those days (and farther back in my early boyhood) Ihad it frequently. It did not seem exactly like music either, but wasrather a sense of harmony, so wonderful, so pervasive that it cannotbe described. I have not had it so often in recent years, but on themorning after I reached home it came to me as I awakened with a strangedepth and sweetness. I lay for a moment there in my clean bed. Themorning sun was up and coming in cheerfully through the vines at thewindow; a gentle breeze stirred the clean white curtains, and I couldsmell even there the odours of the garden. 

I wish I had room to tell, but I cannot, of all the crowded experiencesof 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 ofthe Scotch Preacher, of Horace's shrewd and whimsical comments upon thegeneral absurdity of the head of the Grayson family--oh, of a thousandthings--and how when I went into my study and took up the nearest bookin my favourite case--it chanced to be "The Bible in Spain"--it openedof 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 menow that I have a firmer grip on life, and a firmer trust in that Powerwhich orders the ages. In a book I read not long ago, called "A ModernUtopia, " the writer provides in his imaginary perfect state of societya class of leaders known as Samurai. And, from time to time, it is thecustom of these Samurai to cut themselves loose from the crowding worldof men, and with packs on their backs go away alone to far places in thedeserts or on Arctic ice caps. I am convinced that every man needs somesuch change as this, an opportunity to think things out, to get a newgrip on life, and a new hold on God. But not for me the Arctic ice capor the desert! I choose the Friendly Road--and all the common people whotravel in it or live along it--I choose even the busy city at the end ofit. 

I assure you, friend, that it is a wonderful thing for a man to casthimself freely for a time upon the world, not knowing where his nextmeal is coming from, nor where he is going to sleep for the night. It isa surprising readjuster of values. I paid my way, I think, throughoutmy pilgrimage; but I discovered that stamped metal is far from being theworld's only true coin. As a matter of fact, there are many things thatmen prize more highly--because they are rarer and more precious. 

My friend, if you should chance yourself some day to follow the FriendlyRoad, you may catch a fleeting glimpse of a man in a rusty hat, carryinga gray bag, and sometimes humming a little song under his breath for thejoy of being there. And it may actually happen, if you stop him, that hewill 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 Montaignefrom which he will read you a passage. If such an adventure shouldbefall 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 howhorribly disappointed we might be! We might find him shaving, or eatingsausage, or drinking a bottle of beer. We might find him shaggy andunkempt where we imagined him beautiful, weak where we thought himstrong, dull where we thought him brilliant. Take then the vintage ofhis heart and let him go. As for me, I'm glad some mystery is left inthis world. A thousand signs on my roadways are still as unexplainable, as mysterious, and as beguiling as this. And I can close my narrativewith no better motto for tired spirits than that of the countryroadside:

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