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It is in large part a mental trouble, a feeling of deep resentment, such as in a very much smaller way came to me as a little boy, for you will see how real and true are the ideals of childhood. The great aim of all education should be to find some way of putting poetry and imagination into the hearts of the men and women who are now on the frosty side of the barn. There is more in this than any mere increase of food production, or increase of land values. A great industrial revolution is facing this nation. Such things have come before again and again. They were always threatening, and every time they appeared strong men and women feared for the future of their country. Yet in times past these dark storms have always broken themselves against a solid wall of contented and prosperous freeholders. They always disappear and turn into a gentle, reviving rain when they strike the sunny side of the barn. That is where the errors and mistakes of society are taken apart and remade, better than ever before, by skilled and happy workmen. It is on the frosty side of the barn, in the unhappy shadows, where men tear down and destroy without attempting to rebuild, for there can be no human progress except that which is finally built upon contentment and faith. Men and women must be brought to the sunny side of the barn if this nation is to remain the land of opportunity, and such men and women as we have here must do the work.

And the distribution of the rewards received in exchange for that combination was still more typical. Now and then the woman would think the woodshed was not filling very fast, so that some form of bribery to labor was necessary. She would then come out with half a pie, or a few cookies, to stimulate the work. Strange to say, the distribution of this prize was always given to the girl. She was doing that absolutely useless work of piling the wood, and yet the pie and the cookies were handed to her for distribution. For a great many centuries, it must be said that the farmer never had much of a chance with the town man when it came to receiving favors from the ladies, and in the distribution of that pie John and Mary usually ate about seven-eighths of it, and handed the balance to Bert, for even then those city children had formed the idea that a silent, unresisting farm boy was made to be the beast of burden, fit for the frosty side of the barn.

And just as happens in other and larger forms of business, there were, in that toy performance of a great drama, forms of legislative bribery for middlemen and farmers. Those children were told that if they would hurry and get the woodshed filled up, they would receive pleasure and a present. John and Mary, as middlemen, might go to the circus, while the boy on the saw would receive a fine present. This would be a book which told how a splendid little boy sawed 15 cords of wood in two weeks, and then asked his mother if he couldn't please go down the road and saw five cords more for a poor widow woman during his play time. Ever since the world began, that seems to have been the idea of agricultural legislation. The real direct pleasure and profit have gone to John and Mary, while to Bert has gone the promise of an education which will teach him how to work a little harder. Looking back over the world's history, the most astonishing thing to me is that society has failed to see that the best investment of public money and power is that made closest up to the ground, the great mother of us all. Other interests have received it, largely because they have been able to organize and make a stronger appeal to the imagination.

Of course in every drama of human life there has to be a crisis where the actors come to blows, and it happened so in this case. There came one day particularly cold, and with a special run of hard and knotty wood to be sawed. That gave John and Mary more time for play, and put an extra job on Bert. I cannot tell just how the battle started; it may have been caused by Mary, for a thousand times in the history of the world the relations between two boys and a girl have upset all calculations and changed the course of history. Or it may be that the spirit of injustice boiled up in the heart of that boy on the saw, and swept away his peaceful disposition. At any rate, when John found fault because he did not work faster, Bert dropped his saw and tackled the tormentor. If I am to tell the truth, I am forced to admit that there was no science at all about the battle which that boy put up for the rights of farm labor. He should, I suppose, have imitated some of the old heroes described by Homer and Virgil, but as the rage of battle came over him, the most effective fighter he could think of was the old ram, and I regret to say that he lowered his head, and, without regard for science, butted John in the stomach and knocked him down. Then he sat on his enemy, took hold of his hair with both hands, and proceeded to pound his head on the frosty ground, while Mary danced about, not caring to interfere, but evidently waiting to bestow her favors upon the victor. And just as John was getting ready to call "enough" the kitchen door opened and out came the woman of the house with the old minister.

She certainly looked like a very stern picture of justice as she peered over her spectacles at the boys on the ground, and the three children were arraigned before her. "What shall I do with these children? I shall never get this job done. I have spent nearly five pies on these children already, and see how little they have piled, and here they are fighting over it. I think the best thing I can do is to whip that lazy boy at the saw."

I wish you could have seen the face of the old minister as he rolled up his wrinkles and prepared to answer. It was worth a good deal to see how he looked out of the corner of his eye at the boy on the saw.

Now tell me, you scientists and you wise men, if that does not tell the whole story. It is the pie of life, or the fair distribution of that pie, which leads men and women to the sunny side of the barn. What we need most of all in this country is some power like that of the old minister, who can drive that thought home to human society, and it will not be driven home until our leaders and our teachers have in their hearts more of the poetry and the imagination which lead men and women to attempt the impossible and work it out. You will not agree with me when I say that in a majority of the farm homes today there is greater need of the gentle, humanizing influence of poetry and vision than of the harder and sterner influence of science and sharp business practice. As the years go on you will come to see that I am right.

I know that is one of the hardest things on earth for some of us to understand, for modern education has led us away from the thought. In our grasp for knowledge we have tried to substitute science entirely for sentiment, forgetting that the really essential things of life cannot stand close analysis, because they are held together by faith. In reaching out after power we have tried too hard to imitate the shrewd scheming of the politician and the big interests. We have failed thus far because we have neglected too many of our natural weapons. Over 200 years ago Andrew Fletcher wrote:

"I knew a very wise man who believed that if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation."

Andrew Fletcher's wise man knew what he was talking about. Very likely some of you older people can remember the famous Hutchinson family in the days before the Civil War. I have seen the New Hampshire farmhouse where they were raised. It was just a group of plain farmers who traveled about the country singing simple little songs about freedom. That plain farm family did more to make the American people see the sin of slavery than all the statesmen New England could muster or all the laws she could make. There was little science and less art about their singing, but it was in the language of the common people and they understood it.

"The ox bit his master; How came that to pass? The ox heard his master say 'All flesh is grass!'"

There came a crisis in the Civil War when soldier and statesman stood still wondering what to do next, for they were powerless without the spirit of the people. Then William Cullen Bryant wrote the great song in which he poured out the burning thought of the people:

"We're coming, Father Abraham, Three hundred thousand more, From Mississippi's winding stream And from New England's shore. We leave our plows and workshops, Our wives and children dear, With hearts too full for utterance, But with a silent tear.

"We're coming, we're coming, the Union to restore; We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!"

Had it not been for such songs and the spirit they aroused the Civil War never could have been won. We now understand that during the great war the French army was at the point of mutiny, and was saved not by stern discipline but by a renewal of its spiritual power. I think it will be as hard as for a man to try and lift himself by his boot straps to try to put farming into its proper place through science and material prosperity alone. We need poets to give us songs and playwrights to put our story in such pictures that the world must listen to it and understand. The one great thing which impels us to work on and fight is the hope that the property which we may leave behind us will be safe and put to reasonable use. Some of us may leave cash and lands; others can give the world only a family of children, but at heart our struggle is to see that this heritage may be made safe.

For most of us make a great mistake in locating a storage place for the heritage which we hope to leave to the future. We work and we toil; we struggle to improve conditions; we strive to capitalize our worry and our work into money and into land in order that our children may carry on our work. Have you ever stopped to think who holds the future of all this? Many of you no doubt will say that the future of this great nation lies in the banks and vaults of the cities where money is piled up mountains high. We have all acted upon that principle too long, digging wealth from the soil and then sending it into the town for investment, until we have come to think that our future lies there. We are wrong; it is a mistake. The future of this land, and all it means to us, lies in the hands of little children, who are playing on the city streets or in the open fields of the country, and it is not so much in their hands as in the pictures which are being printed on their little minds and souls. And this future will be safer with poetry and imagination than with the multiplication table alone.

I know about this from my own start in life. I was expected to be satisfied with work until I was 21, and then have a suit of clothes and a yoke of oxen. One trouble with the farmers of New England was that they thought this a sufficient outfit for their boys. I think I might have fallen in with that plan and contented my life with it had it not been for a crude picture which hung in the shop where we pegged shoes. It was a poor color scheme, a perfect daub of art, in which some amateur artist had tried to express a thought which was too large for his soul. A bare oak tree, with most of its branches gone, was framed against the Winter sky. It was evening; a few stars had appeared, and the sky was full of color. The artist had tried to arrange the stars and the sky colors so that they represented a crude American flag, with the oak tree serving as the staff. His great unexpressed thought was that at the close of the Civil War God had painted His promise of freedom on the sky in the coloring of that flag. As a child, that crude picture became a part of my life. I have never been able to forget the glory of it, as I have forgotten the meanness, the poverty, the narrow blindness of our daily lives, so that all through the long and stormy years, wherever I have walked, I have seen that flag upon the sky, and I have waited hopefully for the coming of the sunrise of that day when, through the work of real education, when with the help of such men and such women as are here today, every hopeless man, every lonely woman, every melancholy child upon a sad and desolate hill farm, may feel the thrill of opportunity, and the joy and the glory of living upon the sunny side of the barn.

A HOPE FARM SERMON

No use talking, the best part of a vacation is getting home. We were all sorry to leave Cape Cod. To tell you the truth duty seemed to be stuck full of thorns a foot long as we looked back at it from the easy bed of a loafer on his vacation. No wonder the poor little Bud cried when our good host kissed her good-bye. We looked at her with much the same expression as that on the face of the woman who missed an important train by half a minute and listened to the forcible remark of a man who was also left! We got over that, however. The harness was put on our shoulders so gently that we hardly felt it, and here we are again with a soft pad of gentle and happy memories to put where the rub comes hardest. Everything was all O. K. at home. Grandmother was in good spirits, the Chunk reported good sales, and the weather had been fair for farm work. The boys had the corn all cleaned up and the weeds mostly cut. The strawberries have been transplanted; the alfalfa clipped off; the squashes have grown into a perfect tangle of vines, the sweet potatoes look well, and there is no blight in the late white ones! The children found nine new little pigs and 30 new chickens waiting them. Yes! Yes! It was a happy homecoming. I climbed the hill on Sunday and looked off over the old familiar valley. There were the same glorious old hills with the shadows chasing along them, the little streams stealing down through their fringes of grass and bushes, the cultivated fields, and the homes of neighbors peeping out through the orchards! Surely home is a goodly place after all. Other places are good to come away from, but home is the place to go to!

Now, I know that many of my readers are in trouble. I am, and every mail brings news from people who are carrying crosses and facing hard duties with more or less bravery. There are women left alone on the farm, striving to drag a heavy heart through life. Men have seen wife and child pass away. Others have seen hopes and ambitions crushed out. This season has been hard for many. I will quote from a letter just at hand from central New York, where flood and storm have scarred the hillsides and ruined crops:

"One neighbor hung himself; one says he shall have an auction and go to the old ladies' home; another had the blues until he cried."

Now, in spite of all the talk we have of the Nation's great prosperity, I know that there are thousands of sad hearts in country homes, sad because they have seen the cherished things of life and the work of self-denying years swept out of their grasp by a power which they could neither master nor comprehend. The picture of a strong man dropping his head upon the table and crying like a child is the saddest vision that can rise before our eyes. Farm life has its tragic side, and the sadness of it would crush us down at times if we would permit it to do so. No wonder men and women grow despondent when with each year comes a little more of the living blight which slowly destroys hope and faith in one's physical ability to master the secret of happiness. I do not blame men and women who give way to despondency under pressure of griefs which have staggered me. I only regret that they cannot realize that for most of the afflicted of middle years the only true help is a moral one.

"The noblest dealing with misfortune is in manly silence to bear it; the next to the meanest is in feebleness to weep over it; the wholly unpardonable is to ask others to weep also."

"Soon or late to all our dwellings come the specters of the mind; Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined. Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain, And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain. In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly. But the heavenly help we pray for, comes to faith and not to sight, And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night."

GRANDMOTHER

The last celebration of Thanksgiving was about the most startling that any of the Hope Farmers remember. I have passed this holiday under quite varied conditions. "Boy" on a New England farm and in a boarding-house, cattle herder on a Colorado ranch, sawyer in a lumber camp, teacher in a country school district, hired man and book agent on a Michigan farm, "elocutionist" in a dramatic company, "professor of modern languages" in a young ladies' seminary, printer's devil in a Southern newspaper office, ditcher in a swamp, and other capacities too numerous to mention. A man may perhaps lay claim to a bit of helpful philosophy if he can find some fun in all such days and carry along in his mental pocket "much to be thankful for." He is sure to come to a time in life when these "treasures of memory" will be very useful. I would not refer to family matters that might well be marked "private" and locked away with the skeleton in the closet if I did not know that the plain, simple matters of family record are things that all the world have in common.

A pirate or a man trying to hide himself might have seen virtues in the dull, misty fog that settled upon the city the night before Thanksgiving. Grandmother had been slowly failing through the day. The night brought her greater pain than ever. All through these long months we had been able to keep from her the real nature of her disease. I took it upon myself to keep the children happy. If we grown-ups found it hard to be thankful we would see that the little folks put out enough thanks for the whole family. I took them down to the market to pick out a turkey! We had a great time, and finally found a turkey fat enough. The market man gave each of the children a handful of nuts--and they now want Mother to give him all her trade. They went home fairly radiant with happiness. Was it not better for them to go to sleep with the pleasant side of the day in their hearts rather than the shadow which the rest of us could feel near us?

The morning came dark and dismal. It didn't seem like Thanksgiving as the Bud and I went after the doctor. The clerks and professional people seemed to be taking a holiday, but the drivers, the diggers and heavy workmen were at their jobs as usual. The streets were filled with children dressed up in ridiculous costumes, wearing masks or with faces blackened. These urchins went about begging money from passers-by. Our little folks were rather shocked at this way of celebrating Thanksgiving. Where this ridiculous mummery came from or how it crept into a Thanksgiving celebration is more than I can say. It may be as close as a city child can come to thanking Nature for a bountiful harvest! Charlie and his family came in from the farm, and Jack came from his school. Grandmother made a desperate struggle and was finally able to sit up so that her children and grandchildren might be about her. As the children grew restless in the house I took them out and we walked along the river. My mind was busy with other matters relating to other days, but the little folks, happily, saw only the great bright side of the future. Their past was too small to cast any shadow. We went as far as Grant's Tomb and passed through the room where the great general's remains are lying. As we passed in, the Graft and Scion saw the men take off their hats and they did the same.

"Why do they make you take off your hat?" asked the Graft, when we came out.

"Well, Mother, I shall have to turn this turkey over after all."

He had not only to turn it over but scrape many of the bones clean. The farm folks finally went home and Jack too was obliged to go. Happily the little folks were tired out and they were asleep early. About two o'clock Mother woke me. She did not do it before, because it might have alarmed Grandmother, who did not, I think, clearly understand her true condition. There was apparently no pain or struggle at the end. We noticed that her face lighted up with a strange, puzzled look, of surprise and wonder--and well it might when one is called upon to lay down the troubles and toil of such a life as hers in the dim, mysterious country which one must die to enter.

Perhaps the hardest part of it all was to tell the children about it. They must have known that some strange thing was happening. They woke up early and saw the undertaker passing through the room. Then Mother got them together and told them that poor Grandmother had suffered so long that God pitied her and had taken her to Him. The little folks sat with thoughtful faces for a while and then one of them said with wide-open eyes:

And so the body of poor Grandmother passed away from us while her spirit and memory passed deeper than ever into the lives of the Hope Farm folks. Life with her had ceased to be comfortable. It was merely a steady, hopeless struggle against pain and depression. Mother was able to go through these long months calmly and hopefully because she knows that her mother had every service that love could render. It is with that thought in mind that I feel like saying a solemn word to those whom I have never met, yet who seem to be as close as personal friends can be. Do not for an instant begrudge the money, the time or toil which you may spend upon those of your loved ones who need your help. That is a part of the cross which you must carry cheerfully or reject. Do not let those whom you serve see that it is a cross, but glorify it from day to day. It is not merely a part of hard, cold duty, but the vital force in the development of character. It may be that I am now talking to someone who is putting personal comfort above the self-denial which goes with the sacred trust which God has put into our lives. Where will the flag of "comfort" lead them when the discomforting days come? A conscience is a troublesome thing at best, but one that has been gently and truly developed through self-sacrifice is a better companion than the barbed finger of trouble thrust into the very soul at last by the relentless hand of fate!

A novelist could weave a startling romance out of the plain life record of this typical American woman. She was born in Massachusetts--coming from the best stock this country has ever produced. This is not the narrow-eyed, cent-shaving Yankee, but the children from the hillside farms who went to the valleys and at the little water-powers laid the foundations of New England's manufacturing. These sturdy people saw clearly into the future, and as they harnessed and trained the power of the valley streams they cultivated and restrained their own powers until the man as well as the machine became a tremendous force. Honorable misfortune befell this manufacturing family, but could not crush it. In those days the boys, under such circumstances, dropped all their own ambitions and took the first job that presented itself, without a murmur and with joy that they could do it. The girls did the same, though there were few openings for women then outside of housework and the schoolroom. Grandmother had a taste for music, and became a music teacher. She finally secured a position as teacher in a little town in Mississippi, and in about the year that the Hope Farm man was born she went into what was then a strange country for the daughter of a Massachusetts Abolitionist! What a journey that must have been, before the Civil War, for a young woman such as Grandmother was then. The South was in a blaze of excitement, yet this quiet, gentle Northern girl won the love and respect of all. There she met the man who was to be her husband--a young lawyer, able and ambitious, but weighted down by family cares, political convictions and ill health. He was a Union man whose family had made their slaves free and who opposed secession to the last. Grandmother was married and went to the South just before the storm broke. What a life that was in the dreary little town during those years of fighting! Her husband was at one time drafted into the Confederate service and sent to the front only to have a surgeon declare him too feeble and sick for even that desperate service. He cobbled shoes, leached the soil in old smokehouses for salt, and "lived" as best he could. Once he took Grandmother through the lines with a bale of cotton which he sold to pay passage money to the North. After the war he was State Senator and Judge under the patched-up government which followed. Carpetbaggers and rascals from the North lined their pockets with gold and brought shame upon their party and torture and death to the ignorant black men who followed them. In the midst of this carnival of shame and thieving Grandmother's husband never touched a dishonest dollar and did his best to give character to a despised and degraded race. Of course he failed, for the race did not have strength enough to see that what he tried to offer them was better than the hatred of their old masters and the dollars which the carpet-baggers held out. It was not all lost, for when he was buried I am told that around his grave there was a thick fringe of white people and back--at a respectful distance--acres of black, shining faces which betrayed the crude, awkward stirring of manhood in hearts untrained yet appreciating true service to country.

I speak of these things to make my point clear that Grandmother was a woman capable of supporting her husband through these trials and still capable of holding the love of those who opposed him. In the face of an opposition so frightful that few of us can realize it this quiet, unflinching woman kept steadily on, respected and trusted by all. She took up her burdens without complaint, hid her troubles in her heart, and walked bravely on in her quiet, humble way, until at last she found a safe haven with her children. A true and sincere Christian woman she lived and acted out her faith and did her life's duty with dignity and cheerfulness. The little folks as they sit beneath the tree at Hope Farm and talk of Grandmother will have only blessed memories of her.

LAUGHTER AND RELIGION

I have learned to have deep sympathy for the man who cannot laugh. He may have great learning or power or skill or wealth, but if fate has denied him a keen sense of humor he is like a McIntosh apple with the glorious flavor left out. Most of the deaf are denied what we may call "the healing balm of tears." Unless there chance to be some volcanic eruption of the heart they must go in dry-eyed sorrow through their years. Yet, if they are able to laugh it is probable that the deaf see more of the ludicrous side of life than do those who have full hearing. It comes to be amusing to notice how men and women strive and worry over the poor non-essential things of conversation, and waste time and strength trying to make others understand simple things which the deaf man comes to know at a glance. Those who are so unfortunate that they are forced to hear all the litter and waste-basket stuff of conversation may wonder why the inability to hear may act as a torture to the tender heart. They do not know how closely sound is related to the emotions. They cannot understand without losing many of the finer things of life. Yet, as between the tearless man and the unfortunate soul who is denied the joy of laughter, the latter is more deserving of sympathy. One may be nearer insanity but the other is nearer the gallows.

One great reason why the negro race has come through its troubles with reasonable success is because fate has given the black man the blessed privilege of laughter. Many a time when other races would have gone out to rob and kill the black man has been able to sing or laugh his troubles away. So, as between the man who cannot weep or lash himself into a rage and he who cannot laugh, the latter is a far more dangerous citizen and far more to be pitied.

I suppose I ought to be an authority on this subject, as some years ago I was in the business of trying to inoculate some very serious and sad-minded people with the germ of laughter. We had some specimens so tough and so hard-boiled that it was a difficult matter to start them. I was stranded in a farm neighborhood in a Western State working as hired man through a very dull winter. Back among the hills, off the main roads when prices are low and crops are poor, you strike a gloom and social stagnation which the modern town man can hardly realize. I did my work by day and at night went about to churches and schoolhouses "speaking pieces." We called those gloomy and discouraged people together and tried to make them laugh.

I remember one such entertainment held in a country schoolhouse far back in the mud of a January thaw. The dimly lighted room was crowded with sad-faced, discouraged men and women to whom life had become a tragedy through dwelling constantly upon their own troubles. At intervals during my entertainment two sad-faced women and a couple of men who would have made a success as undertakers at any funeral sang doleful songs about beautiful women who died young or children who proved early in life that they were too good for this world. During one of these intervals a farmer led me outdoors for a conference. Your modern artist can command a salary which enables him to ignore criticism, but in that neighborhood the financial manager was the boss.

There was the hired man, a great hulk of humanity feeling that he would be a hero, the champion of the neighborhood, if he could hold humor at bay. When I went back into the schoolroom the teacher stood up by the stove and said it was the unanimous request of the audience that I should read or recite the "Raven," by Edgar Allan Poe. That was not exactly in my line, but who is large enough to resist such an appeal? Years before I had heard a great actor in Boston recite the poem, and with the noble courage of youth I started the best imitation I could muster. No one, not even the author, ever considered the "Raven" as a humorous poem, but it struck the hired man that way. I had cracked jokes in and out of dialect. I had "made faces" and played the clown generally without affecting the hired man. Yet, at the third repetition of "Quoth the Raven--Nevermore!" the hired man exploded with a roar that shook the building, and the rest of the entertainment was one long laugh for him. The rest of the audience joined with him, and long after the meeting closed and the lanterns twinkled down the dark and muddy roads, you could hear roars of laughter from the farmers, as they journeyed home. Just what there was about the "Raven" to explode that man I have never known. It changed his life. It broke a spring somewhere inside of him and his jokes and roars of laughter changed the whole social life of that neighborhood. The minister told me in the Spring that his people had received a great spiritual uplifting during the Winter. He gave no credit whatever to Poe and the hired man.

That same Winter I went to a church for another entertainment. I sat in the pulpit beside the minister and every time I stopped for breath he would lean over and whisper:

He saw that laughter was religion at such a time. It was a gloomy night. The people were sad and discouraged. Their religion was a torment to them at the time. Nothing but laughter could cure them, and I did my best with discouraging results. I will confess that I lost faith for once in my life and quit trying. There was one intelligent and prosperous farmer in the front pew. He seemed to be a leader and I directed my efforts straight to him. It came to be the one desire of my life to make that solemn-faced man laugh, and he would not do it. It seemed to me as if he sat there with his solemn face a little bent forward, like some wise old horse listening to the chatter of a young colt. I could not stir him and I confess that I quit ingloriously and "took up the collection."

But, when we all went out on the church steps while lanterns were being lighted and the boys brought up the horses I saw my solemn-faced friend talking with another farmer.

"John," said the farmer as he snapped down the globe of his lantern, "how did you like the show?"

"Well, Henry, it was good all the way through. I am so sore around my ribs that I'm going home to rub liniment on my sides."

"How's that?"

A DAY IN FLORIDA

A man told me last week that Florida was too dull for him. He would rust out. There was "more life and human nature on Broadway, New York, in 15 minutes than in a week of Florida." So I thought I would see how much "real human nature" the sun could observe as Putnam County revolved beneath his eye.

As I came outdoors the sun was bright with hardly a cloud in the sky. The mercury stood at about 65 degrees. Most of the bloom had fallen from the orange trees and the young fruit had begun to form, while the new leaves showed their light green against the darker old leaves. On the tree by the gate, there were peaches as large as walnuts. A drove of half-wild hogs from the woods went slowly along the village street, with one eye open for food and the other watching for a possible hole in a fence through which they might crawl into a grove or garden. For while no one seems to think it worth while to bolt or even shut a house door at night except for warmth, there must be barbed wire around every growing thing that a hog could fancy. Two red hens with their broods of chickens ran about under the orange trees. In front of the house I found a group of "redheads and towheads" gathered around a fisherman who carried a fertilizer sack. He had caught three young alligators and the children were buying them. They finally got the three for a dollar, and they intend taking the hideous things back to New Jersey to "raise" them. You may yet see an improved breed of Hope Farm alligator. Finally the school bell rang and the older children scattered while the little ones played on. I have said that the child crop is a vanishing product in this locality. I understand there are but four white children of school age--not enough to maintain a school! There is a broken and abandoned schoolhouse here, but it has not been occupied for some years. There is a school for colored children. Our people opened a school here, but in this locality the State actually does more for educating colored children than for whites. Think over what that means and see if Broadway can match the "human nature" which comes out of such a situation. Our own children are rosy as flowers. They ought to be, for they have played out in the sun every day since December 1. They would have gone barefoot nine days out of ten, but for sand burrs and hookworms--for that dread disease gets into the system through the feet. Florida is surely a Winter paradise for children and elderly people. As these children pen up their alligators and separate for school and play, an old man walks with firm and active steps down the shaded street to the store. He is 89 years old and is still planting a garden--very likely for the seventieth time! On the platform of the store he will meet a group of men who will sit for hours discussing the weather or looking off through the pines toward the blue lake. On Broadway, people are rushing to and fro with set, anxious faces, tearing their hearts out in the fierce struggle for food, clothing, amusement and shelter. There is quite as much "human nature" about these slow and gentle dreamers, basking in the Florida sun. In this little place where our folks have wintered there are nine different men who live alone. There are perhaps 30 voters in this district, and strange as it may seem they are about evenly divided between the two great parties. That is because a number of old soldiers have moved in here. They draw their pensions, work their gardens or groves and live in peace in this carefree land. "Human nature?" Ask these old soldiers with "warfare over," as the sun goes down and they look out over the lake, why they ever came to Florida, and if they are disappointed. If you started a contest with a prize for the man who can take the longest time to travel a mile, I could enter several citizens. Yet it was in Florida that the world's record for speed with a motor car was recently made. While some of our neighbors might consume two hours in going a mile, it was in Florida that Oldfield drove a car one mile in 27 1/3 seconds. This contest in speed is a very good illustration of the contrary character of Florida climate and conditions. Many people fail here because they try to fit Broadway "human nature" to this balmy gentle land. You cannot use the same brand!

The forenoon wore off lazily. Across the road a man was working a mule on a cultivator--tearing up the surface of an old orange grove. The only auto in the town went by over the pine-paved road, the very cough of the exhaust pipe sounding like a lung rapidly healing in the soft air. Charlie went by followed by a big colored man. They carry spades and axes for Charlie is sexton, and this is one of the rare occasions when a grave is to be dug, for some old resident is being brought home to be buried.

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