EH SUNS OF (PRE USE DEEERS 
and nourishment to the exhausted soil 
and waits for the coming of him who, 
loving her and appreciating her labors, 
repays in kind. 
Whenever I chance upon a public utter- 
ance such as that which heads this article— 
a palpable distortion of facts which in its 
very exaggeration loses the weight that 
might attach to a more moderate and dis- 
criminating judgment—my thoughts are led 
for simple refreshment and inspiration to a 
certain little hamlet nestling among New 
England hills, a portion of whose history 
will bear repeating. The waters of a gen- 
erous watercourse ramble through the valley 
and gleam between the pines and spruces 
which half conceal their wanderings, and 
white painted houses, a dozen or so in 
number, dot the terraced slopes beyond. 
The occasional whistle of a locomotive 
comes faintly through the distance, further 
to accentuate a far remove from the world, 
and quiet reigns over all. 
Fifty years ago industry throbbed in the 
little valley; the wheels of half a dozen mills 
turned under the power of the stream; a 
mechanical genius, a clockmaker, marketed 
his exquisite product in distant cities; the 
wheels of the gold seekers’ caravans, made 
here in a smithy where honesty collaborated 
with craft, rolled on into the West. From 
the little cluster of houses which still 
remain youths destined to distinction in 
commercial and intellectual life went forth 
into the world—and the little hamlet lapsed 
gradually but surely into almost primeval 
stillness. To the man with restricted vision 
—the man in the casement—the place was 
AOI 
dead, barren of all usefulness, impotent for 
all creative power in the future. 
Yet there was something in those sur- 
roundings, something in the primitive lives 
those people led, that begot character and 
high ideals, that made for valuable, vigorous 
citizenship, for usefulness on a high moral 
plane. It was independent of much that we 
count as indispensable to our modern 
civilization, and yet it did not raise a barrier 
to, but seems rather to have aided, intel- 
lectual growth. In what did it consist? 
My answer to this question would be that 
it rested in industry, in simplicity of living 
and in the unconscious but constant 
stimulus of a beautiful environment. 
A gentleman of my acquaintance retires 
to that hamlet for a considerable period of 
each year, and he has done so for the past 
forty years. He has reached his seventieth 
year in unimpaired usefulness; his step is 
still elastic, his carriage erect, his mind a 
marvel of healthy and original activity. 
Thither he brings his children and _ his 
children’s children. Others of his con- 
temporaries in the primitive life of that 
hamlet do likewise, and some of them have 
taken root in its precious soil as soldiers of 
the common good, as active exponents of 
the sanity and value of that life. 
That an ever-increasing number of the 
sons of these hardy toilers of the past are 
turning again to grasp the soul-saving 
antidote of life in an environment which has 
lost none of its rejuvenating power is not 
alone the heartening answer to a narrow and 
unworthy pessimism. It isan augury of the 
deepest import for the future of the East. 
(To be continued) 

