r of fact, I was devoting
more time to them than ever before-and, besides that, making life more
or less uncomfortable for Dick and the children. So I've taken my
courage squarely in my hands and come back here into this blessed old
home, this blessed, ugly, stuffy old home--I've learned _that_ lesson."

At this, she glanced up at me with that rare smile which sometimes
shines out of her very nature: the smile that is herself.

"I found," she said, "that when I had finished the work of becoming
simple--there was nothing else left to do."

I laughed outright, for I couldn't help it, and she joined me. How we do
like people who can laugh at themselves.

"But," I said, "there was sound sense in a great deal that you were
trying to do."

"The fireplace smoked; and the kitchen sink froze up; and the cook left
because we couldn't keep her room warm."

"But you were right," I interrupted, "and I am not going to be put off
by smoking fireplaces or chilly cooks; you were right. We do have too
much, we are smothered in things, we don't enjoy what we do have--"

I paused.

"And you were making a beautiful thing, a beautiful house."

"The trouble with making a beautiful thing," she replied, "is that when
you have got it done you must straightway make another. Now I don't want
to keep on building houses or furnishing rooms. I am not after beauty--I
mean primarily--what I want is to _live_, live simply, live greatly."

She was desperately in earnest.

"Perhaps," I said, feeling as though I were treading on dangerous
ground, "you were trying to be simple for the sake of being simple. I
wonder if true simplicity is ever any thing but a by-product. If we aim
directly for it, it eludes us: but if we are on fire with some great
interest that absorbs on lives to the uttermost, we forget ourselves
into simplicity, Everything falls into simple lines around us, like a
worn garment."

I had the rather uncomfortable feeling on the way home that I had been
preachy; and the moment you became preachy begin to build up barriers
between yourself and your friends: but that's a defect of character I've
never been able, quite, to overcome. I keep thinking I've got the better
of it, but along will come a beautiful temptation and down I go--and
come out as remorseful as I was that afternoon on the way home from Mary
Starkweather's.

A week or two later I happened to meet Richard Starkweather on the
street in Hempfield. He was on his way h