hing to keep up your spirits and make you glad to be alive.
And so, at last, in the early part of the afternoon, when I caught sight
of a human creature, I felt a most grateful uplift. This person was a
man about forty-five years old, and he was standing at the gate of one
of those cozy little rose-clad cottages of the sort already referred to.
However, this one hadn't a deserted look; it had the look of being lived
in and petted and cared for and looked after; and so had its front yard,
which was a garden of flowers, abundant, gay, and flourishing. I was
invited in, of course, and required to make myself at home--it was the
custom of the country.

It was delightful to be in such a place, after long weeks of daily and
nightly familiarity with miners' cabins--with all which this implies of
dirt floor, never-made beds, tin plates and cups, bacon and beans and
black coffee, and nothing of ornament but war pictures from the
Eastern illustrated papers tacked to the log walls. That was all hard,
cheerless, materialistic desolation, but here was a nest which had
aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something in one's nature
which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted by the
belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be, that it has
unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment. I could not
have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so, and so content me;
or that there could be such solace to the soul in wall-paper and framed
lithographs, and bright-colored tidies and lamp-mats, and Windsor
chairs, and varnished what-nots, with sea-shells and books and china
vases on them, and the score of little unclassifiable tricks and touches
that a woman's hand distributes about a home, which one sees without
knowing he sees them, yet would miss in a moment if they were taken
away. The delight that was in my heart showed in my face, and the man
saw it and was pleased; saw it so plainly that he answered it as if it
had been spoken.

"All her work," he said, caressingly; "she did it all herself--every
bit," and he took the room in with a glance which was full of
affectionate worship. One of those soft Japanese fabrics with which
women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a picture-frame
was out of adjustment. He noticed it, and rearranged it with cautious
pains, stepping back several times to gauge the effect before he got it
to suit him. Then he gave it a light finishing pat or t