limented the cleanness
of the one with which Mr. March followed suit.

A traveling man's life, he further said, was a rough one and got a
fellow into bad ways. There wasn't a blank bit of real good excuse for
it, but it was so.

No, there wasn't! responded his fellow-craftsman. For his part he liked
to go to church once in a while and wasn't ashamed to say so. His mother
was a good Baptist. Some men objected to the renting of pews, but, in
church or out of it, he didn't see why a rich man shouldn't have what he
was willing to pay for, as well as a poor man. Whereupon a smoker,
hitherto silent, said, with an oratorical gesture,

"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, the rich and the poor meet together,
yet the Lord is the maker of them all!"

March left them deep in theology. He found Mr. and Mrs. Fair half hid in
newspapers, and Miss Garnet with a volume of poems.

"How beautiful the country is," she said as she made room for him at her
side. "I can neither write my diary nor read my book."

"Do you notice," replied he, "that the spring here is away behind ours?"

"Yes, sir. By night, I suppose, we'll be where it's hardly spring at all
yet."

"We'll be out of Dixie," said John, looking far away.

"Now, Mr. March," responded Barbara, with a smile of sweetest
resentment, "you're ag-grav-a-ting my nos-tal-gia!"

To the younger commercial traveler her accents sounded like the wavelets
on a beach!

"Why, I declare, Miss Garnet, I don't want to do that. If you'll help me
cure mine I'll do all you'll let me do to cure yours."

Barbara was pensive. "I think mine must be worse than yours; I don't
want it cu-ured."

"Well, I didn't mean cured, either; I only meant solaced."

"But, Mr. March, I--why, my home-sickness is for all Dixie. I always
knew I loved it, but I never knew how much till now."

"Miss Garnet!" softly exclaimed John with such a serious brightness of
pure fellowship that Barbara dropped her gaze to her book.

"Isn't it right?" she asked, playfully.

"Right? If it isn't then I'm wrong from centre to circumference!"

"Why, I'm glad it's so com-pre-hen-sive-ly cor-rect."

The commercial traveler hid his smile.

"It's about all I learned at Montrose," she continued. "But, Mr. March,
what is it in the South we Southerners love so? Mr. Fair asked me this
morning and when I couldn't explain he laughed. Of course I didn't
confess my hu-mil-i-a-tion; I intimated that it was simply something a
North-ern-