e essence of the thing escapes. People
rejoice in sweethearts because all humanity craves love, and they thrive in
country villages because they crave human life. Now the living spirit of
neither of these things can be caught in a net of words. All the foolish,
fond doings of lovers may be set down on paper by whatever eavesdropper
cares to take the trouble, but no one can realize from that record
anything of the glory in the hearts of the unconscious two. All the queer
grammar and insignificant surface eccentricities of village character may
be ruthlessly reproduced in every variety of dialect, but no one can guess
from that record the abounding flood of richly human life which pours along
the village street.

This tormenting inequality between the thing felt and the impression
conveyed had vexed us unceasingly until one day Simple Martin, the town
fool, who always says our wise things, said one of his wisest. He was
lounging by the watering-trough one sunny day in June, when a carriage-load
of "summer folk" from Windfield over the mountain stopped to water their
horses. They asked him, as they always, always ask all of us, "For mercy's
sake, what do you people _do_ all the time, away off here, so far from
everything."

Simple Martin was not irritated, or perplexed, or rendered helplessly
inarticulate by this question, as the rest of us had always been. He
looked around him at the lovely, sloping lines of Hemlock Mountain, at the
Necronett River singing in the sunlight, at the familiar, friendly faces
of the people in the street, and he answered in astonishment at the
ignorance of his questioners, "_Do_? Why, we jes' _live_!"

We felt that he had explained us once and for all. We had known that, of
course, but we hadn't before, in our own phrase, "sensed it." We just
live. And sometimes it seems to us that we are the only people in America
engaged in that most wonderful occupation. We know, of course, that we
must be wrong in thinking this, and that there must be countless other
Hillsboros scattered everywhere, rejoicing as we do in an existence which
does not necessarily make us care-free or happy, which does not in the
least absolve us from the necessity of working hard (for Hillsboro is
unbelievably poor in money), but which does keep us alive in every fiber
of our sympathy and thrilling with the consciousness of the life of others.

A common and picturesque expression for a common experience runs, "It's so
noisy