HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 305 



We'll never learn the strange, wild-sweet vo- 

 cabulary, maybe ; but if we will we may under- 

 stand the spirit of it. Life's abounding good- 

 ness that's what it all means. And beyond 

 our own lay other fields of corn, stretching 

 away and away into the distances, covering the 

 land with life's eternal assurance. Among the 

 corn, embroidery of gold on the rich, deep 

 green, were fields of wheat stubble after har- 

 vest, dotted with stacked mounds of their grain 

 ready for the hands of the threshers. Here and 

 there, nestled in trees, stood the homes of the 

 farmers, gray-walled, gray-roofed, with the 

 smoke of the supper fires curling and drifting 

 from the chimney tops and melting into the 

 evening haze. Slowly, slowly, while we 

 watched, the hill-rimmed cup of the valley 

 filled with purple shadows, a flood of wondrous 

 color, rising, swelling, brimming over. Listen- 

 ing, we could hear the far, faint sounds of the 

 life of the farms the rattle of a wagon home- 

 ward bound over a country lane, the friendly- 

 sounding bark of a house-dog, the shrill whinny 

 of a hungry colt for its dam. So homely it 

 was, and so beautiful ! It gave me a little pang 

 of wistfulness. 



"I wish I were a poet," I said. "I'd like to 



