f
society, they get so refined, so idealized, that every particle flies
off on its own special path to the sun, and the Community 's broke; and
if they're made of the lower mud, they keep going down, down
together,--they live to drink and eat, and make themselves as near the
brutes as they can. It isn't easy to believe, Sir, but it's true. I
have seen it. I've seen every one of them the United States can
produce. It's FACTS, Sir; and facts, as Lord Bacon says, 'are the
basis of every sound speculation.'"

The last sentence was slowly brought out, as quotations were not
exactly his forte, but, as he said afterwards,--"You see, that nailed
the parson."

The parson nodded gravely.

"You'll find no such experiment in the Bible," threw in the young
doctor, alluding to "serious things" as a peace-offering to his
reverend friend.

"One, I believe," dryly.

"Well," broke in the farmer, folding up his wool, "that's neither here
nor there. This experiment of Knowles's is like nothing known since
the Creation. Plan of his own. He spends his days now hunting out the
gallows-birds out of the dens in town here, and they're all to be
transported into the country to start a new Arcadia. A few men and
women like himself, but the bulk is from the dens, I tell you. All
start fair, level ground, perpetual celibacy, mutual trust, honour,
rise according to the stuff that's in them,--pah! it makes me sick!"

"Knowles's inclination to that sort of people is easily explained,"
spitefully lisped the doctor. "Blood, Sir. His mother was a
half-breed Creek, with all the propensities of the redskins to
fire-water and 'itching palms.' Blood will out."

"Here he is," maliciously whispered the woolman. "No, it's Holmes," he
added, after the doctor had started into a more respectful posture, and
glanced around frightened.

He, the doctor, rose to meet Holmes's coming footstep,--"a low fellah,
but always sure to be the upper dog in the fight, goin' to marry the
best catch," etc., etc. The others, on the contrary, put on their hats
and sauntered away into the street.

The day broadened hotly; the shadows of the Lombardy poplars curdling
up into a sluggish pool of black at their roots along the dry gutters.
The old school-master in the shade of the great horse-chestnuts
(brought from the homestead in the Piedmont country, every one) husked
corn for his wife, composing, meanwhile, a page of his essay on the
"Sirventes de Bertrand d