an eye, and whose
unrelated features by some magic had sloughed off, leaving a beautiful
face? Would you not think these things, good kind sir, when you were
twenty-one--even though to-day they seem highly improbable thoughts
for any one to have who was not stark mad? But if we were not all
stark mad sometimes, how would the world go round? If we were not all
mad sometimes, who would make our dreams come true? How would visions
in thin air congeal into facts, how would the aspirations of the race
make history? And if we were all sane all the time, how would the
angels ever get babies into the world at all, at all?

CHAPTER XXII

"Speaking of lunatics," said Mr. Dolan to Mr. Hendricks one June
night, a few weeks after the women had persuaded Mrs. McHurdie not to
drag the poet into politics,--"speaking of lunatics, you may remember
that I was born in Boston, and 'twas my duty as a lad to drive the
Cambridge car, and many a time I have heard Mr. Holmes the poet and
Mr. Emerson the philosopher discussing how the world was made; whether
it was objective or subjective,--which I take it to mean whether the
world is in the universe or only in your eye. One fine winter night we
were waiting on a switch for the Boston car, when Mr. Holmes said to
Mr. Emerson: 'What,' says he, 'would you think if Jake Dolan driving
this car should come in and say, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but the moon I
see this moment is not some millions of miles away, but entirely in my
own noddle?"' 'I'd think,' says the great philosopher, never blinking,
'that Mr. Dolan was drunk,' says he. And there the discussion ended,
but it has been going on in my head ever since. Here I am a man
climbing up my sixties, and when have I seen the moon? Once walking by
this very creek here trying to get me courage up to put me arm around
her that is now Mary Carnine; once with me head poked up close to the
heads of Watts McHurdie, Gabe Carnine, and Philemon Ward, serenading
the girls under the Thayer House window the night before we left for
the army. And again to-night, sitting here on the dam, listening to
the music coming down the mill-pond. Did you notice them, Robert--the
young people--Phil Ward's boy, and John Barclay's girl, and Mary
Carnine's oldest, and Oscar Fernald's youngest, with their guitars and
mandolins, piling into the boats and rowing up stream? And now they're
singing the songs we sang--to their mothers, God bless 'em--the
other day before these