"Speaking of lunatics," said Mr. Dolan to Mr. Hendricks one June night, a few weeks after the women had persuaded Mrs. McHurdie not to drag the poet into politics,—"speaking of lunatics, you may remember that I was born in Boston, and 'twas my duty as a lad to drive the Cambridge car, and many a time I have heard Mr. Holmes the poet and Mr. Emerson the philosopher discussing how the world was made; whether it was objective or subjective,—which I take it to mean whether the world is in the universe or only in your eye. One fine winter night we were waiting on a switch for the Boston car, when Mr. Holmes said to Mr. Emerson: 'What,' says he, 'would you think if Jake Dolan driving this car should come in and say, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but the moon I see this moment is not some millions of miles away, but entirely in my own noddle?"' 'I'd think,' says the great philosopher, never blinking, 'that Mr. Dolan was drunk,' says he. And there the discussion ended, but it has been going on in my head ever since. Here I am a man climbing up my sixties, and when have I seen the moon? Once walking by this very creek here trying to get me courage up to put me arm around her that is now Mary Carnine; once with me head poked up close to the heads of Watts McHurdie, Gabe Carnine, and Philemon Ward, serenading the girls under the Thayer House window the night before we left for the army. And again to-night, sitting here on the dam, listening to the music coming down the mill-pond. Did you notice them, Robert—the young people—Phil Ward's boy, and John Barclay's girl, and Mary Carnine's oldest, and Oscar Fernald's youngest, with their guitars and mandolins, piling into the boats and rowing up stream? And now they're singing the songs we sang—to their mothers, God bless 'em—the other day before these children were born or thought of, and now I sit here an old man looking at the moon."

"But is it the moon?" he went on after a long silence, puffing at his pipe. "If the moon is off there, three or thirty or three hundred million miles away in the sky, where has it been these forty years? I've not seen it. And yet here she pops out of my memory into my eye, and if I say the moon has always been in my eye, and is still in my eye, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson says I'm drunk. But does that settle the question of who's got the moon—me or the cosmos—as the poets call it?" After that the two men smoked in silence, and as Hendricks threw away the butt of his cigar, Dolan said, "'Tis a queer, queer world, Robert—a queer, queer world."

Now do not smile at Mr. Dolan, gentle reader, for Adam must have thought the same thing, and philosophy has been able to say nothing more to the point.

It is indeed a queer, queer world, and our blindness is the queerest thing in it. Here a few weeks, later sit John and Jane Barclay on the terrace before their house one June night, listening to singing on the water. Suddenly they realize that there is youth in the world—yet there has been singing on the mill-pond ever since it was built. It has been the habitat of lovers for a quarter of a century, this mill-pond, yet Jane and John Barclay have not known it, and not until their own child's voice came up to them, singing "Juanita," did they realize that the song had not begun anew after its twenty years' silence in their own hearts, but always had been on the summer breeze. And this is strange, too, considering how rich and powerful John Barclay is and how by the scratch of his pen, he might set men working by the thousands for some righteous cause. Yet so it is; for with all the consciousness of great power, with all the feeling of unrestraint that such power gives a man, driving him to think he is a kind of god, John Barclay was only a two-legged man, with a limp in one foot, and a little mad place in his brain, wherein he kept the sense of his relation to the rest of this universe. And as he sat, blind to the moon, dreaming of a time when he would control Presidents and dominate courts if they crossed his path, out on the mill-pond under an elm tree that spread like a canopy upon the water, a boy, letting the oars hang loosely, was playing the mandolin to a girl—a pretty girl withal, blue as to eyes, fair as to hair, strong as to mouth and chin, and glorious as to forehead—who leaned back in the boat, played with the overhanging branches, and listened and looked at the moon, and let God's miracle work unhindered in her heart. And all up and down those two miles of mill-pond were other boats and other boys and other maidens, and as they chatted and sang and sat in the moonlight, there grew in their hearts, as quietly as the growing of the wheat in the fields, that strange marvel of life, that keeps the tide of humanity ceaselessly flowing onward. And it is all so simply done before our eyes, and in our ears, that we forget it is so baffling a mystery.

Now let us project our astral bodies into the living room of the Barclay home, while Mr. and Mrs. John Barclay are away in Boston, and only John Barclay's mother and his daughter are in Sycamore Ridge; and let us watch a young man of twenty-one and a young woman of eighteen dispose of a dish of fudge together. Fudge, it may be explained to the unsophisticated, is a preparation of chocolate, sugar, and cream, cooked, cooled, and cut into squares. As our fathers and mothers pulled taffy, as our grandfathers and grandmothers conjured with maple sugar, and as their parents worked the mysterious spell with some witchery of cookery to this generation unknown, so is fudge in these piping times the worker of a strange witchery. Observe: Through a large room, perhaps forty feet one way and twenty-five feet the other way, flits a young woman in the summer twilight. She goes about humming, putting a vase in place here, straightening a picture there, kicking down a flapping rug, or rearranging a chair; then she sits down and turns on an electric light and pretends to read. But she does not read; the light shows her something else in the room that needs attention, and she turns to that. Then she sits down again, and again goes humming about the room. Suddenly the young woman rises and hurries out of the room, and a footstep is heard on the porch, outside. A bell tinkles, and a maid appears, and—

"Yes," she says. "I'll see if Miss Jeanette is at home!"

And then a rustle of skirts is heard on the stairway and Miss Jeanette enters with: "Why, Neal, you are an early bird this evening—were you afraid the worm would escape? Well, it won't; it's right here on the piano."

The young man's eyes,—good, clear, well-set, dark eyes that match his brown hair; eyes that speak from the heart,—note how they dwell upon every detail of the opposing figure, caressing with their shy surreptitious glances the girl's hair, her broad forehead, her lips; observe how they flit back betimes to those ripe red lips, like bees that hover over a flower trembling in the wind; how the eyes of the young man play about the strong chin, and the bewitching curves of the neck and shoulders, and rise again to the hair, and again steal over the face, to the strong shoulders, and again hurry back to the face lest some feature fade. This is not staring—it is done so quickly, so furtively, so deftly withal as the minutes fly by, while the lips and the teeth chatter on, that the stolen honey of these glances is stored away in the heart's memory, all unknown to him who has gathered it.

An hour has passed now, while we have watched the restless eyes at their work, and what has passed with the hour? Nothing, ladies and gentlemen—nothing; gibber, chatter, giggles, and squeals—that is all. Grandma Barclay above stairs has her opinion of it, and wonders how girls can be so addle-pated. In her day—but who ever lived long enough or travelled far enough or inquired widely enough to find one single girl who was as wise, or as sedate, or as industrious, or as meek, or as gentle, or as kind as girls were in her grandmother's day? No wonder indeed that grandmothers are all married—for one could hardly imagine the young men of that day overlooking such paragons of virtue and propriety as lived in their grandmothers' days. Fancy an old maid grandmother with all those qualities of mind and heart that girls had in their grandmothers' days!

So the elder Mrs. Barclay in her room at the top of the stairs hears what "he said," "he said he said," and what "she said she said," and what "we girls did," and what "you boys ought to do," and what "would be perfectly lovely," and what "would be a lot of fun!" and so grandmother, good soul, grows drowsy, closes her door, and goes to bed. She does not know that they are about to sit down together on a sofa—not a long, straight, cold, formal affair, but a small, rather snuggly sofa, with the dish between them. No, girls never did that in their grandmothers' days, so of course who would imagine they would do so now? Who, indeed? But there they are, and there is the dish between them, and two hands reaching into the same dish, must of course collide. Collision is inevitable, and by carefully noting the repetitions of the collisions, one may logically infer that the collisions are upon the whole rather pleasurable than otherwise; and when it comes to the last piece of fudge in the dish,—the very last piece,—the astral observer will see that there is just the slightest, the very slightest, quickest, most fleeting little tussle of hands for it, and much laughter; and then the young woman rises quickly—also note the slight pink flush in her cheeks, and she goes to her chair and folds her pretty hands in her lap, and asks:—

"Well, do you like my fudge, Neal Ward? Is it as good as Belva Lockwood's? She puts nuts in hers—I've eaten it; do you like it with nuts in it?"

"Not so well as this," says the boy.

The girl slips into the dining room, for a glass of water. See the eyes of the youth following her. It is dusky in the dining room, and the youth longs for dusky places, but has not developed courage enough to follow her. But he has courage enough to steady his eyes as she comes back with the water, so that he can look into her blue eyes while you would count as much as one—two—three—slowly—four—slowly—five. A long, long time, so long indeed that she wishes he would look just a second longer.

So at the end of the evening here stand Neal, and Jeanette, even as Adam and Eve stood in the garden, talking of nothing in particular as they slowly move toward the door. "Yes, I suppose so," she says, as Eve said and as Eve's daughters have said through all the centuries, looking intently at the floor. And then Neal, suddenly finding the language of his line back to Adam, looks up to say, "Oh, yes, I forgot—but have you read 'Monsieur Beaucaire'?" Now Adam said, "Have you heard the new song that the morning stars are singing together?" and Priam asked Helen if she would like to hear that new thing of Solomon's just out, and so as the ages have rolled by, young gentlemen standing beside their adored but not declared ones have mixed literature with love, and have tied wisdom up in a package of candy or wild honey, and have taken it to the trysting place since the beginning of time. It is thus the poets thrive. And when she was asked about the new song of the morning stars, Eve, though she knew it as she knew her litany, answered no; and so did Eve's daughter, standing in the dimly lighted hallway of the Barclay home in Sycamore Ridge; and so then and there being, these two made their next meeting sure.

In those last years of the last century John Barclay became a powerful man in this world—one of the few hundred men who divided the material kingdoms of this earth among them. He was a rich man who was turning his money into great political power. Senates listened to him, many courts were his in fee simple, because he had bought and paid for the men who named the judges; Presidents were glad to know what he thought, and when he came to the White House, reporters speculated about the talk that went on behind the doors of the President's room, and the stock market fluttered. If he desired a law, he paid for it and got it—not in a coarse illegal way, to be sure, but through the regular conventional channels of politics, and if he desired to step on a law, he stepped on it, and a court came running up behind him, and legalized his transaction. He sneered at reformers, and mocked God, did John Barclay in those days. He grew arrogant and boastful, and strutted in his power like a man in liquor with the vain knowledge that he could increase the population of a state or a group of states, or he could shrivel the prosperity of a section of the country by his whim. For by changing a freight rate he could make wheat grow, where grass had nourished. By changing the rate again, he could beckon back the wilderness. And yet, how small was his power; here beside him, cherished as the apple of his eye, was his daughter, a slip of a girl, with blue eyes and fair hair, whose heart was growing toward the light, as the hearts of young things grow, and he, with all of his power, could only watch the mystery, and wonder at it. He was not displeased at what he saw. But it was one of the few things in his consciousness over which he could find no way to assume control. He stood in the presence of something that came from outside of his realm and ignored him as the sun and the rain and the simple processes of nature ignored him.

"Jane," he said one night, when he was in the Ridge for the first time in many weeks,—a night near the end of the summer when Jeanette and Neal Ward were vaguely feeling their way together, "Jane, mother says that while we've been away Neal Ward has been here pretty often. You don't suppose that—"

"Well, I've rather wondered about it myself a little," responded Jane. "Neal is such a fine handsome young fellow."

"But, Jane," exclaimed Barclay, impatiently, as he rose to walk the rug, "Jennie is only a child. Why, she's only—"

"Nineteen, John—she's a big girl now."

"I know, dear," he protested, "but that's absurdly young. Why—"

"Yes," she answered, "I was nearly twenty when I was engaged to you, and Jennie's not engaged yet, nor probably even thinking seriously of it."

"Don't you think," cried Barclay, as he limped down the diagonal of the rug, "that you should do something? Isn't it a little unusual? Why—"

"Well, John," smiled the wife, "I might do what mother did: turn the young man over to father!" Barclay laughed, and she went on patiently: "It's not at all unusual, John, even if they do—that is, if they are—you know; but they aren't, and Jennie is too much in love with her work at school to quit that. But after all it's the American way; it was the way we did, dear, and the way our mothers and fathers did, and unless you wish to change it—to Europeanize it, and pick—"

"Ah, nonsense, Jane—of course I don't want that! Only I thought some way, if it's serious she ought to—Oh, don't you know she ought to—"

Mrs. Barclay broke her smile with, "Of course she ought to, dear, and so ought I and so ought mother when she married father and so ought my grandmother when she married grandpa—but did we? Dear, don't you see the child doesn't realize it? If it is anything, it is growing in her heart, and I wouldn't smudge it for the world, by speaking to her now—unless you don't like Neal; unless you think he's too—unless you want a different boy. I mean some one of consequence?"

"Oh, no, it isn't that, Jane—it isn't that. Neal's all right; he's clean and he is honest—I asked Bob Hendricks about him to-day, when we passed the boy chasing news for the Banner, and Bob gives him a fine name." Barclay threw himself into a chair and sighed. "I suppose it's just that I feel Jeanette's kind of leaving us out of it—that is all."

Jane went to him and patted his head gently, as she spoke: "That is nature, dear—the fawn hiding in the woods; we must trust to Jennie's good sense, and the good blood in Neal. My, but his sisters are proud of him! Last week Lizzie was telling me Neal's wages had been increased to ten dollars a week—and I don't suppose their father in all of his life ever had that much of a steady income. The things the family is planning to do with that ten dollars a week brought tears of joy to my eyes. Neal's going to have his mother-in-law on his side, anyway—just as you had yours. I know now how mother felt."

But John Barclay did not know how mother felt, and he did not care. He knew how father felt—how Lycurgus Mason felt, and how the father of Mrs. Lycurgus Mason felt; he felt hurt and slighted, and he could not repress a feeling of bitterness toward the youth. All the world loves a daughter-in-law, but a father's love for a son-in-law is an acquired taste; some men never get it. And John Barclay was called away the next morning to throttle a mill in the San Joaquin Valley, and from there he went to North Dakota to stop the building of a competitive railroad that tapped his territory; so September came, and with it Jeanette Barclay went back to school. The mother wondered what the girl would do with her last night at home. She was clearly nervous and unsettled all the afternoon before, and made an errand into town and came back with a perturbed face. But after dinner the mother heard Jeanette at the telephone, and this is the one-sided dialogue the mother caught: "Yes—this is Miss Barclay." "Oh, yes, I didn't recognize your voice at first." "What meeting?" "Yes—yes." "And they are not going to have it?" "Oh, I see." "You were—oh, I don't know. Of course I should have felt—well, I—oh, it would have been all right with me. Of course." Then the voice cheered up and she said: "Why, of course—come right out. I understand." A pause and then, "Yes, I know a man has to go where he is called." "Oh, she'll understand—you know father is always on the wing." "No—why, no, of course not—mother wouldn't think that of you. I'll tell her how it was." "All right, good-by—yes, right away." And Jeanette Barclay skipped away from the telephone and ran to her mother to say, "Mother, that was Neal Ward—he wants to come out, and he was afraid you'd think it rude for him to ask that way, but you know he had a meeting to report and thought he couldn't come, and now they've postponed the meeting, and I told him to come right out—wasn't that all right?"

And so out came Neal Ward, a likely-looking young man of twenty-one or maybe twenty-two—a good six feet in height, with a straight leg, a square shoulder, and firm jaw, set like his father's, and clean brown eyes that did not blink. And as Jeanette Barclay, with her mother's height, and her father's quick keen features, and her Grandmother Barclay's eyes and dominant figure, stood beside him in the doorway, Mrs. Jane Barclay thought a good way ahead, and Jeanette would have blushed her face to a cinder if the mother had spoken her thoughts. The three, mother and daughter and handsome young man, sat for a while together in the living room, and then Jane, who knew the heart of youth, and did not fear it, said, "You children should go out on the porch—it's a beautiful night; I'm going upstairs."

And now let us once more in our astral bodies watch them there in the light of the veiled moon—for it is the last time that even we should see them alone. She is sitting on a balustrade, and he is standing beside her, and their hands are close together on the stones. "Yes," he is saying, "I shall be busy at the train to-morrow trying to catch the governor for an interview on the railroad question, and may not see you."

"I wish you would throw the governor into the deep blue sea," she says, and he responds:—

"I wish I could." There is a silence, and then he risks it—and the thing he has been trying to say comes out, "I wonder if you will do something for me, Jeanette?"

"Oh, I don't know—don't ask me anything hard—not very hard, Neal!"

The last word was all he cared for, and by what sleight of hand he slipped his fraternity pin from his vest into her hand, neither ever knew.

"Will you?" he asks. "For me?"

She pins it at her throat, and smiles. Then she says, "Is this long enough—do you want it back now?"

He shakes his head, and finally she asks, "When?" and then it comes out:—

"Never."

And her face reddens, and she does not speak. Their hands, on the wall, have met—they just touch, that is all, but they do not hasten apart. A long, long time they are silent—an eternity of a minute; and then she says, "We shall see in the morning."

And then another eternal minute rolls by, and the youth slips the rose from her hair—quickly, and without disarranging a strand.

"Oh," she cries, "Neal!" and then adds, "Let me get you a pretty one—that is faded."

But no, he will have that one, and she stands beside him and pins it on his coat—stands close beside him, and where her elbows and her arms touch him he is thrilled with delight. In the shadow of the great porch they stand a moment, and her hand goes out to his.

"Well, Jeanette," he says, and still her hand does not shrink away, "well, Jeanette—it will be lonesome when you go."

"Will it?" she asks.

"Yes—but I—I have been so happy to-night."

He presses her hand a little closer, and as she says, "I'm so glad," he says, "Good-by," and moves down the broad stone steps. She stands watching him, and at the bottom he stops and again says:—

"Well—good-by—Jeanette—I must go—I suppose." And she does not move, so again he says, "Good-by."

"Youth," said Colonel Martin Culpepper to the assembled company in the ballroom of the Barclay home as the clock struck twelve and brought in the twentieth century; "Youth," he repeated, as he tugged at the bottom of Buchanan Culpepper's white silk vest, to be sure that it met his own black trousers, and waved his free hand grandly aloft; "Youth," he reiterated, as he looked over the gay young company at the foot of the hall, while the fiddlers paused with their bows in the air, and the din of the New Year's clang was rising in the town; "Youth,—of all the things in God's good green earth,—Youth is the most beautiful." Then he signalled with some dignity to the leader of the orchestra, and the music began.

It was a memorable New Year's party that Jeanette Barclay gave at the dawn of this century. The Barclay private car had brought a dozen girls down from the state university for the Christmas holidays, and then had made a recruiting trip as far east as Cleveland and had brought back a score more of girls in their teens and early twenties—for an invitation from the Barclays, if not of much social consequence, had a power behind it that every father recognized. And what with threescore girls from the Ridge, and young men from half a dozen neighbouring states,—and young men are merely background in any social picture,—the ballroom was as pretty as a garden. It was her own idea,—with perhaps a shade of suggestion from her father,—that the old century should be danced out and the new one danced in with the pioneers of Garrison County set in quadrilles in the centre of the floor, while the young people whirled around them in the two-step then in vogue. So the Barclays asked a score or so of the old people in for dinner New Year's Eve; and they kept below stairs until midnight. Then they filed into the ballroom, with its fair fresh faces, its shrill treble note of merriment,—these old men and women, gray and faded, looking back on the old century while the others looked into the new one. There came Mr. and Mrs. Watts McHurdie in the lead, Watts in his best brown suit, and Mrs. Watts in lavender to sustain her gray hair; General Ward, in his straight black frock coat and white tie, followed with Mrs. Dorman, relict of the late William Dorman, merchant, on his arm; behind him came the Brownwells, in evening clothes, and Robert Hendricks and his sister,—all gray-haired, but straight of figure and firm of foot; Colonel Culpepper followed with Mrs. Mary Barclay; the Lycurgus Masons were next in the file, and in their evening clothes they looked withered and old, and Lycurgus was not sure upon his feet; Jacob Dolan in his faded blue uniform marched in like a drum-major with the eldest Miss Ward; and the Carnines followed, and the Fernalds followed them; and then came Judge and Mrs. Bemis—he a gaunt, sinister, parchment-skinned man, with white hair and a gray mustache, and she a crumbling ruin in shiny satin bedecked in diamonds. Down the length of the long room they walked, and executed an old-fashioned grand march, such as Watts could lead, while the orchestra played the tune that brought cheers from the company, and the little old man looked at the floor, while Mrs. McHurdie beamed and bowed and smiled. And then they took their partners to step off the quadrille—when behold, it transpired that in all the city orchestra, that had cost the Barclays a thousand dollars according to town tradition, not one man could be found who could call off a quadrille. Then up spake John Barclay, and stood him on a chair, and there, when the colonel had signalled for the music to start, the voice of John Barclay rang out above the din, as it had not sounded before in nearly thirty years. Old memories came rushing back to him of the nights when he used to ride five and ten and twenty miles and play the cabinet organ to a fiddle's lead, and call off until daybreak for two dollars. And such a quadrille as he gave them—four figures of it before he sent them to their seats. There were "cheat or swing," the "crow's nest," "skip to my Loo,"—and they all broke out singing, while the young people clapped their hands, and finally by a series of promptings he quickly called the men into one line and the women into another, and then the music suddenly changed to the Virginia reel. And so the dance closed for the old people, and they vanished from the room, looking back at the youth and the happiness and warmth of the place with wistful but not eager eyes; and as Jacob Dolan, in his faded blues and grizzled hair and beard, disappeared into the dusk of the hallway, Jeanette Barclay, looking at her new ring, patted it and said to Neal Ward: "Well, dear, the nineteenth century is gone! Now let us dance and be happy in this one."

And so she danced the new year and the new century and the new life in, as happy as a girl of twenty can be. For was she not a Junior at the state university, if you please? Was she not the heir of all the ages, and a scandalous lot of millions besides, and what is infinitely more important to a girl's happiness, was she not engaged, good and tight, and proud of it, to a youth making twelve dollars every week whether it rained or not? What more could an honest girl ask? And it was all settled, and so happily settled too, that when she had graduated with her class at the university, and had spent a year in Europe—but that was a long way ahead, and Neal had to go to the City with father and learn the business first. But business and graduation and Europe were mere details—the important thing had happened. So when it was all over that night, and the girls had giggled themselves to bed, and the house was dark, Jeanette Barclay and her mother walked up the stairs to her room together. There they sat down, and Jeanette began—

"Neal said he told you about the ring?"

"Yes," answered her mother.

"But he did not show it to you—because he wanted me to be the first to see it."

"Neal's a dear," replied her mother. "So that was why? I thought perhaps he was bashful."

"No, mother," answered the girl, "no—we're both so proud of it." She kept her hand over the ring finger, as she spoke, "You know those 'Short and Simple Annals' he's been doing for the Star—well, he got his first check the day before Christmas, and he gave half of it to his father, and took the other twenty-five dollars and bought this ring. I think it is so pretty, and we are both real proud of it." And then she took her hand from the ring, and held her finger out for her mother's eyes, and her mother kissed it. They were silent a moment; then the girl rose and stood with her hand on the doorknob and cried: "I think it is the prettiest ring in all the world, and I never want any other." Then she thought of mother, and flushed and ran away.

And we should not follow her. Rather let us climb Main Street and turn into Lincoln Avenue and enter the room where Martin Culpepper sits writing the Biography of Watts McHurdie. He is at work on his famous chapter, "Hymen's Altar," and we may look over his great shoulder and see what he has written: "The soul caged in its prison house of the flesh looks forth," he writes, "and sees other chained souls, and hails them in passing like distant ships. But soul only meets soul in some great passion of giving, whether it be man to his fellow-man, to his God, or in the love of men and women; it matters not how the ecstasy comes, its root is in sacrifice, in giving, in forgetting self and merging through abnegation into the source of life in this universe for one sublime moment. For we may not come out of our prison houses save to inhale the air of heaven once or twice, and then go scourged back to our dungeons. Great souls are they who love the most, who breathe the deepest of heaven's air, and give of themselves most freely."