y from those hot little groups with their perspiring
orators, and felt again the charm of the tall buildings and the wide
sunny square, and the park with Down-at-Heels warming his ragged shanks,
and the great city clanging heedlessly by. How serious they all were
there in their eddies! Is there no God? Will woman suffrage or socialism
cure all the evils of this mad world which, ill as it is, we would not
be without? Is a belief for forty years in the complete wisdom of the
Book the final solution? Why do not all of the seeking and suffering
thousands flowing by in Twenty-third Street stop here in the eddies to
seek the solution of their woes, the response to their hot desires?

So I came home to the country, thinking of what I had seen and heard,
asking myself, "What is the truth, after all? What _is_ real?"

And I was unaccountably glad to be at home again. As I came down the
hill through the town road the valley had a quiet welcome for me, and
the trees I know best, and the pleasant fields of corn and tobacco, and
the meadows ripe with hay. I know of nothing more comforting to the
questioning spirit than the sight of distant hills....

I found that Bill had begun the hay cutting. I saw him in the lower
field as I came by in the road. There he was, stationed high on the
load, and John, the Pole, was pitching on. When he saw me he lifted one
arm high in the air and waved his hand--and I in return gave him the
sign of the Free Fields.

"Harriet," I said, "it seems to me I was never so glad before to get
home."

"It's what you always say," she remarked placidly.

"This time it's true!" And I put the pamphlets I had accumulated in the
city eddies upon the pile of documents which I fully intend to read but
rarely get to.

The heavenly comfort of an old shirt! The joy of an old hat!

As I walked down quickly into the field with my pitchfork on my shoulder
to help Bill with the hay, I was startled to see, hanging upon a peach
tree at the corner of the orchard, a complete suit of black clothes.
Near it, with the arms waving gently in the breeze, was a white shirt
and a black tie, and at the foot of the tree a respectable black hat. It
was as though the peach tree had suddenly, on that bright day, gone into
mourning.

I laughed to myself.

"Bill," I said, "what does this mean?"

Bill is a stout jolly chap with cheeks that look, after half a day's
haying, like raw beef-steaks. He paused on his load, smiling broadly,