THE CELEBRITY

Not for many weeks have I had a more interesting, more illuminating, and when all is told, a more amusing experience, than I had this afternoon.  Since this afternoon the world has seemed a more satisfactory place to live in, and my own home here, the most satisfactory, the most central place in all the world.  I have come to the conclusion that anything may happen here!

We have had a celebrity in our small midst, and the hills, as the Psalmist might say, have lifted up their heads, and the trees have clapped their hands together.  He came here last Tuesday evening and spoke at the School House.  I was not there myself; if I had been, I should not, perhaps, have had the adventure which has made this day so livable, nor met the Celebrity face to face.

Let me here set down a close secret regarding celebrities: 

They cannot survive without common people like you and me.

It follows that if we do not pursue a celebrity, sooner or later he will pursue us.  He must; it is the law of his being.  So I wait here very comfortably on my farm, and as I work in my fields I glance up casually from time to time to see if any celebrities are by chance coming up the town road to seek me out.  Oh, we are crusty people, we farmers!  Sooner or later they all come this way, all the warriors and the poets, all the philosophers and the prophets and the politicians.  If they do not, indeed, get time to come before they are dead, we have full assurance that they will straggle along afterward clad neatly in sheepskin, or more gorgeously in green buckram with gilt lettering.  Whatever the airs of pompous importance they may assume as they come, back of it all we farmers can see the look of wistful eagerness in their eyes.  They know well enough that they must give us something which we in our commonness regard as valuable enough to exchange for a bushel of our potatoes, or a sack of our white onions.  No poem that we can enjoy, no speech that tickles us, no prophecy that thrills us—­neither dinner nor immortality for them!  And we are hard-headed Yankees at our bargainings; many a puffed-up celebrity loses his puffiness at our doors!

This afternoon, as I came out on my porch after dinner, feeling content with myself and all the world, I saw a man driving our way in a one-horse top-buggy.  In the country it is our custom first to identify the horse, and that gives us a sure clue to the identification of the driver.  This horse plainly did not belong in our neighbourhood and plainly as it drew nearer, it bore the unmistakable marks of the town livery.  Therefore, the driver, in all probability, was a stranger in these parts.  What strangers were in town who would wish to drive this way?  The man who occupied the buggy was large and slow-looking; he wore a black, broad-brimmed felt hat and a black coat, a man evidently of some presence.  And he drove slowly and awkwardly; not an agent plainly.  Thus the logic of the country bore fruitage.