s imagination, for I had been
thinking that in a week it would be the Fourth of July and I was far from
home--in a land where firecrackers are unknown.

Coming to a little rise of ground, I could see, lying calm and quiet amid
the world of rich, growing grain, the town of Montargis. Across on the
blue hillside was Montargis Castle, framed in a mass of foliage. I stopped
to view the scene, and the echo of vesper-bells came pealing gently over
the miles, as the nodding poppies at my feet bowed reverently in the
breeze.

Villages in France viewed from a distance seem so restful and idyllic.
There is no sound of strife, no trace of rivalry, no vain pride; only
white houses--the homes of good men and gentle women, and cherub children;
and all the church-steeples truly point to God. Yet on closer view--but
what of that!

When I reached the town, the church whose spire I had seen from the
distance beckoned me first. I turned off from the wide thoroughfare,
intending just to get a glance at the outside of the building as I passed.
But the great iron gates thrown invitingly open, and a rusty, dusty dog
of Flanders lying in the entry waiting for his master, told me that there
was service within. So I entered, passing through the noiseless, swinging
door, and into the dim twilight of the house of prayer. A score of people
were there, and standing in the aisle was a white-robed priest. He was
speaking, and his voice came so gently, so sure withal, so exquisitely
modulated, that I paused and, leaning against a pillar, listened. I think
it was the first time I ever heard a preacher speaking in a large church
who did not speak so loud that an echo chased his sentences round and
round the vaulted dome and strangled the sense. The tone was
conversational and the manner so free from canting conventionality that I
moved up closer to get a view of the face.

It was too dark to see well, but I came under the spell of the man's
earnest eloquence. The sacred stillness, the falling night, the odor from
incense and banks of flowers piled about the feet of an image of the Holy
Virgin--evidently brought by the peasantry, having nothing else to
give--made a combination of melting conditions that would have subdued a
heart of stone.

The preacher ceased to speak, and as he raised his hands in benediction,
I, involuntarily, with the other worshipers, knelt on the stone floor and
bowed my head in silent reverie.

Suddenly, I was aroused by a c