ace. Carol had none of the
superiority she felt toward Mrs. Lyman Cass's plutocratic parlor. She
was at home here. She noted with tenderness all the makeshifts: the
darned chair-arms, the patent rocker covered with sleazy cretonne, the
pasted strips of paper mending the birch-bark napkin-rings labeled "Papa"
and "Mama."

She hinted of her new enthusiasm. To find one of the "young folks" who
took them seriously, heartened the Perrys, and she easily drew from
them the principles by which Gopher Prairie should be born again--should
again become amusing to live in.

This was their philosophy complete . . . in the era of aeroplanes and
syndicalism:

The Baptist Church (and, somewhat less, the Methodist, Congregational,
and Presbyterian Churches) is the perfect, the divinely ordained
standard in music, oratory, philanthropy, and ethics. "We don't need
all this new-fangled science, or this terrible Higher Criticism that's
ruining our young men in colleges. What we need is to get back to the
true Word of God, and a good sound belief in hell, like we used to have
it preached to us."

The Republican Party, the Grand Old Party of Blaine and McKinley, is the
agent of the Lord and of the Baptist Church in temporal affairs.

All socialists ought to be hanged.

"Harold Bell Wright is a lovely writer, and he teaches such good morals
in his novels, and folks say he's made prett' near a million dollars out
of 'em."

People who make more than ten thousand a year or less than eight hundred
are wicked.

Europeans are still wickeder.

It doesn't hurt any to drink a glass of beer on a warm day, but anybody
who touches wine is headed straight for hell.

Virgins are not so virginal as they used to be.

Nobody needs drug-store ice cream; pie is good enough for anybody.

The farmers want too much for their wheat.

The owners of the elevator-company expect too much for the salaries they
pay.

There would be no more trouble or discontent in the world if everybody
worked as hard as Pa did when he cleared our first farm.

IV

Carol's hero-worship dwindled to polite nodding, and the nodding
dwindled to a desire to escape, and she went home with a headache.

Next day she saw Miles Bjornstam on the street.

"Just back from Montana. Great summer. Pumped my lungs chuck-full of
Rocky Mountain air. Now for another whirl at sassing the bosses of
Gopher Prairie." She smiled at him, and the Perrys faded, the pioneers
faded, till