\ 



A Little Journey to the 

 Home of Elbert Hubbard 



By TERENCE V. POWDERLY 



HE conductor shouted: "All out for East 

 Aurora!' 



And he told the truth, for everybody got out 

 and the train went off in a lonesome, re- 

 gretful kind of a way. The conductor and 

 train-hands wished they could stop off, too, 

 but they were on the run and could n't. 

 I looked around for some one to tell me where to find 

 Elbert Hubbard, and a young man dressed in a little 

 brief authority and a suit of overalls, wearing a Roycroft 

 badge and a welcoming grin asked, "Goingto Roycroft?' : 

 I said <: Yes," and he separated me from my satchel and 

 umbrella, gave me a hearty hand-shake and told me to 

 walk straight ahead and I could n't miss it. 

 Were you ever in East Aurora? No, then you 've missed 

 a lot. It is not a paradise, but would make a first-class 

 vestibule for one. Trees, old trees with rugged trunks and 

 wide-spreading limbs, line the walks, and every tree nods 

 and whispers a thousand welcomes from among the 

 leaves that hide the sun of an August clay from view. 

 QThe walk from the station to the Phalansterie may be 

 a mile, a half-mile, or a quarter of a mile, more or less, 

 but you don't notice the length of it while eagerly push- 

 ing forward to see the place where the most wonderful 

 of books and the quaintest of furniture are made. You 

 meet men, women and children as you walk along, you 

 don't know them from Adam, but they all say a kind 

 word, or smile approvingly as you pass. 

 When I w r as a child I knew an old German woman who 

 lived down where the woods had been cleared away to 



