gave me (considering me, I suppose an unsophisticated
person) that I couldn't help laughing outright.

"I assure you--" he began, apparently much offended.

But I interrupted him.

"I'm sorry I laughed," I said, "but as you were talking about Bill Hahn,
I couldn't help thinking of him as I first saw him." And I gave Mr.
Vedder as lively a description as I could of the little man with his
bulging coat tails, his furry ears, his odd round spectacles. He was
greatly interested in what I said and began to ask many questions. I
told him with all the earnestness I could command of Bill's history and
of his conversion to his present beliefs. I found that Mr. Vedder had
known Robert Winter very well indeed, and was amazed at the incident
which I narrated of Bill Hahn's attempt upon his life.

I have always believed that if men could be made to understand one
another they would necessarily be friendly, so I did my best to explain
Bill Hahn to Mr. Vedder.

"I'm tremendously interested in what you say," he said, "and we must
have more talk about it."

He told me that he had now to put in an appearance at his office, and
wanted me to go with him; but upon my objection he pressed me to take
luncheon with him a little later, an invitation which I accepted with
real pleasure.

"We haven't had a word about gardens," he said, "and there are no end
of things that Mrs. Vedder and I found that we wanted to talk with you
about after you had left us."

"Well!" I said, much delighted, "let's have a regular old-fashioned
country talk."

So we parted for the time being, and I set off in the highest spirits to
see something more of Kilburn.

A city, after all, is a very wonderful place. One thing, I recall,
impressed me powerfully that morning--the way in which every one was
working, apparently without any common agreement or any common purpose,
and yet with a high sort of understanding. The first hearing of a
difficult piece of music (to an uncultivated ear like mine) often yields
nothing but a confused sense of unrelated motives, but later and deeper
hearings reveal the harmony which ran so clear in the master's soul.

Something of this sort happened to me in looking out upon the life of
that great city of Kilburn. All about on the streets, in the buildings,
under ground and above ground, men were walking, running, creeping,
crawling, climbing, lifting, digging, driving, buying, selling,
sweating, swearing, praying, loving, hatin