nlight, a wide hall and curving stair. She
saw it the common home and inspiration not only of the town but of
the country about. It should contain the court-room (she couldn't get
herself to put in a jail), public library, a collection of excellent
prints, rest-room and model kitchen for farmwives, theater, lecture
room, free community ballroom, farm-bureau, gymnasium. Forming about it
and influenced by it, as mediaeval villages gathered about the castle,
she saw a new Georgian town as graceful and beloved as Annapolis or that
bowery Alexandria to which Washington rode.

All this the Thanatopsis Club was to accomplish with no difficulty
whatever, since its several husbands were the controllers of business
and politics. She was proud of herself for this practical view.

She had taken only half an hour to change a wire-fenced potato-plot into
a walled rose-garden. She hurried out to apprize Mrs. Leonard Warren, as
president of the Thanatopsis, of the miracle which had been worked.

III

At a quarter to three Carol had left home; at half-past four she had
created the Georgian town; at a quarter to five she was in the dignified
poverty of the Congregational parsonage, her enthusiasm pattering upon
Mrs. Leonard Warren like summer rain upon an old gray roof; at two
minutes to five a town of demure courtyards and welcoming dormer windows
had been erected, and at two minutes past five the entire town was as
flat as Babylon.

Erect in a black William and Mary chair against gray and speckly-brown
volumes of sermons and Biblical commentaries and Palestine geographies
upon long pine shelves, her neat black shoes firm on a rag-rug, herself
as correct and low-toned as her background, Mrs. Warren listened without
comment till Carol was quite through, then answered delicately:

"Yes, I think you draw a very nice picture of what might easily come to
pass--some day. I have no doubt that such villages will be found on the
prairie--some day. But if I might make just the least little criticism:
it seems to me that you are wrong in supposing either that the city hall
would be the proper start, or that the Thanatopsis would be the right
instrument. After all, it's the churches, isn't it, that are the
real heart of the community. As you may possibly know, my husband
is prominent in Congregational circles all through the state for
his advocacy of church-union. He hopes to see all the evangelical
denominations joined in one strong bo