aples above.

"I want to go so far back from the worries of city life that the crowing
of the cock and the cackle of the hen will tell me it is morning,
instead of the clanging of bells and blowing of whistles. I want to go
back yonder where the setting sun, instead of the city lights, will tell
me it is night. I want to hear the cricket and whip-poor-will as we
heard them in the evenings long ago, as we listened with bated breath to
the jack o'-lantern legends that stirred our childish fancy until the
croaking of the frogs sent us to bed to dream of uncanny things.

"I want to live in the happiness of an autumn when the frost was on the
pumpkin and the fodder in the shock; when the hickory nuts falling on
the ground called the squirrels; when the stars gleamed bright enough to
afford you light to bring a 'possum out of a tree with the old flintlock
musket--how you cherished that gun. And when the snow hid the roads and
paths like the white coverlet on the big bed in the spare room and the
big backlog crackled and burned on the hearth, and the red apples
glistened in the firelight, and the popcorn imitation of a snowstorm was
more realistic than any artificial one that you have since witnessed.

"How you shivered as you undressed in the room above going to bed, but
how soundly you slept after you got warm. I want to go back to one of
those hallowed Sunday mornings in summer when the hush of heaven seemed
to fall on earth; when the quiet that spread over hill and vale seemed
to announce the Spirit of God in some unusual sense; when the peace of
heaven seemed so near you felt its happiness.

"While living the old days over--the days way back yonder--I want to
live in the love of my friends of today. Whilst I cherish only a memory
of the friends of the old days, I hold, after my family, the love and
esteem of my friends of today above all things in this life.

"Gentlemen, come down to the farm. Visit with me and endeavor to live
the life of a boy again, if only for a day."

[Illustration: Bill Brown as a Farmer]

Alfred's response was not what the assemblage expected. Congratulations
were showered upon him. The speech was reproduced in newspapers all over
the country. Printed copies of it were circulated. The sentiment
expressed therein seemed to have struck a responsive chord in the hearts
of all men who love to live close to Nature. It does not seem possible
that any one would have the hardihood to endeavor to cont