for most of us, if we could but see it so, life is not a matter of
colorless and naked straight lines but is a rich mosaic made up of a
thousand seemingly unimportant items.

CHAPTER II

HOPES DEFERRED

Although John Moore never became reconciled to the failure of his
factory, still he was not really unhappy on the farm. There is something
too normal, something too entirely natural about a return to the soil
after middle age, to permit a man broken and worn, as was Roger's
father, really to be discontented when working in his own fields.

The farm never paid very well. After the first year or so they were
obliged to mortgage it, and sometimes the interest was hard to meet. But
after the stormy factory years, these anxieties seemed innocuous enough
and Roger and his mother, anyway, were deeply happy.

Roger made an old corn crib over into a laboratory. During his High
School period, with his faithful henchman, Ernest, he spent all his free
moments on various and mysterious experiments in the patched-up little
shack. Many were the vile smells and the outrageous noises that floated
out over the farm, but nobody complained, except Roger's mother, and she
only mildly. No startling results were forthcoming from these
experiments, but John Moore encouraged the boys in their attempts.

"Chemistry was my weak point," he would say. "Get all you can of it,
Rog. Perhaps you'll succeed where I failed."

"All the chemistry in the world couldn't have run Ole Oleson for you,"
Roger would reply.

"No, but it would have made a real engineer of me," his father would say
thoughtfully.

When Roger was a freshman and sophomore in college, he suffered a
complete relapse from his interest in experimental work, and his father
was very much depressed, but both his mother and Dean Erskine laughed at
Mr. Moore's fuming.

"Let the poor child have his play time," said Alice Moore. "Between the
farm work and that nasty laboratory the boy hasn't known anything but
work since we came out here. If you'd had more chance to play, John
dear, your nerves would be in better shape now. I'm glad he's learned to
dance, bless him."

"Give him his fling, Moore," said the Dean. "He was getting one sided,
and he's way ahead of his class now, as a result of all his corn crib
grinding. Football and girls won't hurt him at all for a year or so.
I'll see to it that he doesn't neglect his work. If I'm any judge of men
at all, that boy of yours is