they would plant a new one.

But they don't know enough to make things beautiful. The Moses of this
community will be some man who shall find new methods of farming, new
crops for this soil, who will show the people how to live.

And now I come to a strange fairy-tale sort of experience--an
experience with the children who have lived always among these charred
pines.

All that evening as I talked, their eyes were upon me, like the eyes of
little wild creatures of the wood--a blank gaze which seemed to
question. The next day when I walked, they went with me, and for some
distance I carried the baby, to rest the arms of the big girl, who is
always burdened.

It was in the afternoon that we drifted to a little grove of young
pines, the one bit of pure green against the white and gray and black
of that landscape. The sky was of sapphire, with a buzzard or two
blotted against the blue.

Here with a circle of the trees surrounding us, the children sat down
with me. They were not a talkative group, and I was overcome by a
sense of the impossibility of meeting them on any common ground of
conversation. But they seemed to expect something--they were like a
flock of little hungry birds waiting to be fed--and what do you think I
gave them? Guess. But I know you have it wrong.

I recited "Flos Mercatorum," my Whittington poem!

It was done on an impulse, to find if there was anything in them which
would respond to such rhyme and rapture of words.

I gave it in my best manner, standing in the center of the circle. I
did not expect applause. But I got more than applause. I am not going
to try to describe the look that came into the eyes of the oldest
boy--the nearest that I can come to it is to say that it was the look
of a child waked from a deep sleep, and gazing wide-eyed upon a new
world.

He came straight toward me. "Where--did you--git--them words?" he
asked in a breathless sort of way.

"A man wrote them--a man named Noyes."

"Are they true?"

"Yes."

"Say them again."

It was not a request. It was a command. And I did say them, and saw a
soul's awakening.

Oh, there are people who won't believe that it can be done like
that--in a moment. But that boy was ready. He had dreamed and until
now no one had ever put the dreams into words for him. He cannot read,
has probably never heard a fairy tale--the lore of this region is
gruesome and ghostly, rather than lovely and poetic.

Perhaps, 'way