Up the square a few paces I saw a covered wagon with a dense crowd around it.  And in front of it upon a little platform which raised the speaker high above the heads of the audience stood a woman, speaking with shrill ardour.  Most of the hearers were men; and she was telling them with logic and authority that the progress of civilization waited upon the votes of women.  The army of the world stood still until the rear rank of its women could be brought into line!  Morals languished, religion faded, industries were brutalized, home life destroyed!  If only women had their rights the world would at once become a beautiful and charming place!  Oh, she was a powerful and earnest speaker; she made me desire above everything, at the first opportunity, to use my share of the power in this Government to provide each woman with a vote.  And just as I had reached this compliant stage there came a girl smiling and passing her little basket.  The sheer art of it!  So I dropped in my coin and took the little leaflet she gave me and put it side by side with the other literature of my accumulating library.

And so I came away from those hot little groups with their perspiring orators, and felt again the charm of the tall buildings and the wide sunny square, and the park with Down-at-Heels warming his ragged shanks, and the great city clanging heedlessly by.  How serious they all were there in their eddies!  Is there no God?  Will woman suffrage or socialism cure all the evils of this mad world which, ill as it is, we would not be without?  Is a belief for forty years in the complete wisdom of the Book the final solution?  Why do not all of the seeking and suffering thousands flowing by in Twenty-third Street stop here in the eddies to seek the solution of their woes, the response to their hot desires?

So I came home to the country, thinking of what I had seen and heard, asking myself, “What is the truth, after all?  What is real?”

And I was unaccountably glad to be at home again.  As I came down the hill through the town road the valley had a quiet welcome for me, and the trees I know best, and the pleasant fields of corn and tobacco, and the meadows ripe with hay.  I know of nothing more comforting to the questioning spirit than the sight of distant hills....

I found that Bill had begun the hay cutting.  I saw him in the lower field as I came by in the road.  There he was, stationed high on the load, and John, the Pole, was pitching on.  When he saw me he lifted one arm high in the air and waved his hand—­and I in return gave him the sign of the Free Fields.

“Harriet,” I said, “it seems to me I was never so glad before to get home.”

“It’s what you always say,” she remarked placidly.

“This time it’s true!” And I put the pamphlets I had accumulated in the city eddies upon the pile of documents which I fully intend to read but rarely get to.

The heavenly comfort of an old shirt!  The joy of an old hat!