upon me with incredible longing.

"I must go home; I must go home!" I caught myself saying aloud.

I remember how glad I was when I found that my friend Bill Hahn and
other leaders of the strike were to be engaged in conferences during
the forenoon, for I wanted to be alone, to try to get a few things
straightened out in my mind.

But I soon found that a city is a poor place for reflection or
contemplation. It bombards one with an infinite variety of new
impressions and new adventures; and I could not escape the impression
made by crowded houses, and ill-smelling streets, and dirty sidewalks,
and swarming human beings. For a time the burden of these things rested
upon my breast like a leaden weight; they all seemed so utterly wrong to
me, so unnecessary; so unjust! I sometimes think of religion as only a
high sense of good order; and it seemed to me that morning as though
the very existence of this disorderly mill district was a challenge to
religion, and an offence to the Orderer of an Orderly Universe. I don't
now how such conditions may affect other people, but for a time I felt a
sharp sense of impatience--yes, anger--with it all. I had an impulse to
take off my coat then and there and go at the job of setting things to
rights. Oh, I never was more serious in my life: I was quite prepared
to change the entire scheme of things to my way of thinking whether
the people who lived there liked it or not. It seemed to me for a few
glorious moments that I had only to tell them of the wonders in our
country, the pleasant, quiet roads, the comfortable farmhouses, the
fertile fields, and the wooded hills--and, poof! all this crowded
poverty would dissolve and disappear, and they would all come to the
country and be as happy as I was.

I remember how, once in my life, I wasted untold energy trying to make
over my dearest friends. There was Harriet, for example, dear, serious,
practical Harriet. I used to be fretted by the way she was forever
trying to clip my wing feathers--I suppose to keep me close to the quiet
and friendly and unadventurous roost! We come by such a long, long road,
sometimes, to the acceptance of our nearest friends for exactly what
they are. Because we are so fond of them we try to make them over to
suit some curious ideal of perfection of our own--until one day we
suddenly laugh aloud at our own absurdity (knowing that they are
probably trying as hard to reconstruct us as we are to reconstruct them)
a