mell of lush, wet, growing things, was impressing itself on Eugene as
one might impress wet clay with a notable design. Eugene's mood was soft
toward the little houses with their glowing windows, the occasional
pedestrians with their "howdy Jakes" and "evenin' Henrys." He was
touched by the noise of the crickets, the chirp of the tree toads, the
hang of the lucent suns and planets above the tree tops. The whole night
was quick with the richness of fertility, stirring subtly about some
work which concerned man very little or not at all, yet of which he was
at least a part, till his eyelids drooped after a time and he went to
bed to sleep deeply and dreamlessly.

Next morning he was up early, eager for the hour to arrive when he might
start. He did not think it advisable to leave before nine o'clock, and
attracted considerable attention by strolling about, his tall, spare,
graceful figure and forceful profile being an unusual sight to the
natives. At nine o'clock a respectable carryall was placed at his
disposal and he was driven out over a long yellow road, damp with the
rain of the night before and shaded in places by overhanging trees.
There were so many lovely wild flowers growing in the angles of the rail
fences--wild yellow and pink roses, elder flower, Queen Anne's lace,
dozens of beautiful blooms, that Eugene was lost in admiration. His
heart sang over the beauty of yellowing wheatfields, the young corn,
already three feet high, the vistas of hay and clover, with patches of
woods enclosing them, and over all, house martens and swallows scudding
after insects and high up in the air his boyhood dream of beauty, a
soaring buzzard.

As he rode the moods of his boyhood days came back to him--his love of
winging butterflies and birds; his passion for the voice of the
wood-dove (there was one crying in the still distance now)--his
adoration for the virile strength of the men of the countryside. He
thought as he rode that he would like to paint a series of country
scenes that would be as simple as those cottage dooryards that they now
and then passed; this little stream that cut the road at right angles
and made a drinking place for the horses; this skeleton of an old
abandoned home, doorless and windowless, where the roof sagged and
hollyhocks and morning glories grew high under the eaves. "We city
dwellers do not know," he sighed, as though he had not taken the country
in his heart and carried it to town as had every o