earing softly, I regret to say) when it affected me like a Hymn Tune.

And there is Non, too.

I first made Non's acquaintance as our train pulled out of New York, and
we found ourselves going down together on Friday afternoon to spend
Sunday with M---- in North Carolina. The first thing he said was, when
we were seated in the Pullman comfortably watching that big, still world
under glass roll by outside, that he had broken an engagement with his
wife to come. She was giving a Tea, he said, that afternoon, and he had
faithfully promised to be there. But a weekend in North Carolina
appealed to him, and afternoon tea--well, he explained to me, crossing
his legs and beaming at me all over as if he were a whole genial,
successful afternoon tea all by himself--afternoon tea did not appeal to
him.

He thought probably he was a Non-Gregarious Person.

As he was the gusto of our little party and fairly reeked with
sociability, and was in a kind of orgy of gregariousness every minute
all the way to Wilmington (even when he was asleep we heard from him),
we called him the Non-Gregarious Person, and every time he piled on one
more story, we reminded him how non-gregarious he was. We called him
Non-Gregarious all the way after that--Non for short.

This is the way I became acquainted with Non. It has been Non ever
since.

* * * * *

I found in the course of the next three days that when Non was not being
the life of the party or the party did not need any more life for a
while, and we had gone off by ourselves, he became, like most people who
let themselves go, a very serious person. When he talked about his
business, he was even religious. Not that he had any particular
vocabulary for being religious, but there was something about him when
he spoke of business--his own business--that almost startled me at first.
He always seemed to be regarding his business when he spoke of it as
being, for all practical purposes, a kind of little religion by itself.

Now Non is a builder or contractor.

* * * * *

For many years now the best way to make a pessimist or a confirmed
infidel out of anybody has been to get him to build a house. No better
arrangement for not believing in more people, and for not believing in
more kinds of people at once and for life, has ever been invented
probably than building a house. No man has been educated, or has been
really tested in this