round and follow the road toward home, now grown desirable, poison or no poison.

The road here lay along a side-hill, and in front of me the prairie sloped up for a few rods, to the hill-top. I walked straight up the little ascent, so conscious of looks following me that I scarcely noticed what was before me until I had dipped over the crest of the hill. Then, out of sight of the wagon, and relieved of the embarrassment of watching eyes, I stopped suddenly and began to see.

For a moment I could do nothing but see. I scarcely breathed or consciously felt. I only looked. A long, long, irregular valley lay before me, with hill-slopes cutting down into it occasionally from each side. It all spread out in gentle curves, with soft risings and slow descents, and it was all, all clothed in the rare full green of the prairie-grass, which lay over the hill-tops and deepened into the valleys, and made every line and curve of the landscape soft with grace and willingly tender. The south wind came up into my face as I stood. It seemed to be at work enriching all I saw. It made the grass buoyant with windy ripples on its green surface. It bent the blades curvewise, until the sun glinted on their sides and the hills shone in places with gold in their green. Down in the hollow, where the rich slough-grass grew high, it made deep waves, with lovely shadings from pale to dark. It died away softly to a mere stirring and then back with a sudden joyful gust, and mingled rhythmic movement with the sweet quiet of all that lay before

me.

An occasional flower raised its head: not many, only enough to enliven the color of the grass. There were the red sweet-william and the prairie-pea and the wild verbena, and others whose names I did not know, and never would

know, since they went away with the prairie and never came back. Here and there the green was dotted with sturdy 'nigger-heads,' with their rich mahogany centres and faintly pink fringes.

When at last I stirred from my little trance and drew a long happy breath of absorption, my hand dropped on one of these as I stood there, and without looking at it I clasped the whole top in my small fist, squeezing the prickles of the cushiony centre hard against the sensitive place in my palm. I knew the nigger-head well. It had neither romance nor mystery, and was as unsympathetic a creation as could go by the name of flower. But now its familiarity and its uncomfortable prickliness, as I stood holding it, seemed to form a tether to all the practical familiar things outside of this green vista. And this sub-consciousness of other things made all that was before me seem the more exquisite. But soon I loosed my hold on it and moved a little farther down the slope. There again I stood to look and look, following curve after curve of the green, where it stretched off to the south, rising over a hill and dipping into a valley, and finally climbing a last slope to reach the mysterious thing that was the horizon line.

I can't tell what strangeness lay in the line of wonder where the blue of the sky met the green of the hills. It was a mystery which far transcended in remoteness and promise any pot of gold of any childish tradition. That line itself held my attention. I had never before found myself where I could follow the full sweep of it all round. Now I revolved slowly, tracing the long ellipse which inclosed the narrow valley, lifting itself over the crest of a hill or dropping into a soft curve at the head of a draw. The completeness of the line fascinated me and I followed it round twice. I had never

imagined it thus unbroken. I looked from the green to the blue and back again, and then at the fine definition of line where they met.

For once I had no wonder as to what lay beyond that line, in either the green or the blue. The completeness and simplicity of what the horizon bounded set it off into a world by itself - a whole world, but so simple. And I was the only person in it.

I had never before been alone in any such degree as this. To be sure, there had been pleasant afternoons in the orchard, and surreptitious hours in the granary or barn-loft, in company with a forbidden book. But that was not complete isolation. At any moment some one might call me, or Henry or John, or both of them, might appear. Brothers have an energetic pervasiveness which makes any retirement insecure. A possibility, if not an actuality, intruded on every such moment and interfered with absolute solitude.

But here was a real aloneness, a solitude that was almost tangible, and — I discovered an exquisite, an adoran exquisite, an adorable thing. It made everything mine, in a way I had never known before and could n't realize completely enough for my satisfaction now. Even my self seemed more mine than it ever had, at those times when some one might break in at any moment with an outside demand upon me. I dropped down into the grass, forgetting all about my intention of going home. 'A green thought'-I began to myself, for there is great pleasure in applying a bit of poetry when there is no one else round. A green thought' - But the rest of the phrase would not fit, and I had to let poetry lapse for the time and merely look and listen, allowing the prairie to define itself.

A sort of noiseless sound lived through the stillness, a sound which

had no beginning, and which could never have an ending, one would think. It was made up of everything there — the wind and the grass and the faintly sounding water in the tiny hidden creek among the slough-grass, and all the little lives among the green growth. I could almost believe, as I raised my eyes, that the softly-departing clouds had a part in it, so gentle and continuous was the sound. It seemed to be just a tender vocalization of mere living. When a bird's call dropped into it sometimes, it was only a phrase that melted into all the rest.

Listening seemed only to make looking all the more intent. This was a landscape, for this moment at least, completely satisfying. Here was no great variety to draw the eye from detail to detail in a way that interfered with mood and forbade absorption. It was a whole eye-full, of only the two elements, the green of the grass and the blue of the sky. Either would have been enough for man's desire. The two were riches beyond grasping. The sky was noble, now absolutely cloudless, a great half-globe of blue. It deepened from the lighter rim, where it seemed to come near to the horizon, to the exquisite remoteness straight above me, where the blue became bluer the longer I looked into it. Golden-blue I called it to myself, as I dwelt upon it.

I sprang to my feet and ran, my sunbonnet thrown back on my shoulders, so that I might feel the moving softness of the south wind in my face, and my arms spread wide as if to grasp all I saw. If any one had been there to see me I could not have done it. But for once a world was my own. The wind seemed to be bringing the grass toward me, in a constant motion, and I ran to meet it. I ran and ran, in a sort of ecstasy of all I realized of the place, the prairie wind in my hair, the

prairie-grass about my feet, the prairie sun in my eyes. Every minute was an adventure in life.

There is no time in a place like that. After a while I began to notice that the sunlight, sloping down the western hill, was catching the tops of the grasses instead of penetrating among them. Then there came a little indistinctness on the horizon line and a milky haziness in the farther end of the valley. But I put off thinking of the meaning of these things or deciding what I should do next. It seemed to me that if I went out of this place I could never come back. This day was different from all other days. Home and everything else were remote from this valley of grasses.

A shout two shouts broke across the continuity of sweet sound in my ears. I looked behind me and saw two figures on horseback, one on the edge of the hill-top and the smaller one nearer, moving toward me. They were my father and Henry, both standing in their stirrups and scanning the landscape. My first impulse was to keep still, and I sat unresponsive. But Henry had not helped to hunt cattle on the prairie for nothing. He turned and whistled shrilly to my father, who settled down in his saddle

and waited, while Henry came dashing up to me. Relief was plainly evident in his face, but he was not too much absorbed to put the pony through a mild imitation of bucking as he approached. Indignation succeeding to anxiety was apparent in his tone as he demanded,

'What in Sam are you doing out here?'

'I thought I would take a walk,' I answered with quiet dignity as I rose and shook out the skirt of my dress.

'Well, you'd better walk back home for a walk, and it's four miles.'

It was plainly a relief to Henry to find me on the wrong side again. I surmised that the story of the flypoison had been divulged, and found my own poise. With calm assurance I ignored him and walked straight up to where my father waited.

He said only, 'All right, daughter?' and drew me up on the horse behind him, and we cantered off home, Henry and the pony trailing along in the

rear.

I did n't look back as we went along. But I laid my cheek up against my father's shoulder, as I held fast to him, and shut my eyes. And I could still see and see and see the moving green of the prairie-grass and the golden-blue of the sky.

V

I

In the autumn of the year 1886, I left East Deerfield and entered upon my new duties in the switch-tower at West Cambridge, Massachusetts. From a position paying forty dollars a month, with a minimum working day of twelve hours, I passed into employment that paid a wage of thirteen dollars a week, with a minimum daily service of eight hours. I went to work at two o'clock in the early morning and, as a rule, I finished my labors for the day when the clock struck ten in the forenoon. The middle man followed from 10 A.M. until 6 P.M., and the third man then finished the round of the twenty-four hours. It did not seem to occur to the superintendent in those days, or to the towermen themselves, for that matter, that this division of the workingday was an unreasonable and unbusinesslike arrangement. It was certainly a hardship for the men at West Cambridge, who lived at some distance from the tower. But then, we were working for a railroad on which duty was limitless, and regulated only by the requirements of the service and the judgment of the superintendent. For several years, under this arrangement, I walked to my work, a distance of nearly two miles, between one and two o'clock in the morning.

This working arrangement at West Cambridge may be taken as a fair illus

tration of the kind of intelligence, or whatever it may be called, that was engaged in the railroad business in those days. I cannot look upon the situation as reflecting favorably on the good-will or executive ability of managers. The smallest business concern, as well as the largest, appeared to be on the same industrial and moral level in this respect. Nor can the silence or indifference of the worker at the time be judged from the standpoint of to-day, when rights and wrongs of every description are subject to constant and fearless discussion.

Nevertheless, it was certainly an injustice, as I have noted, to request a man to walk to his work at two in the morning, without some stated and clearly understood reason. The superintendent was supposed to have this reason, and there the matter ended. Later, when the intelligence of men, managers, and society broadened, a fairer division of the working day was put into effect.

As a matter of fact, however, the specific instance of inconvenience to which I have referred was only a drop in the bucket compared with the general situation of which it was a part. For various reasons, these hardships were particularly aggravated on railroads, although the employees had actually to be educated to an appreciation of this fact. For example, my shift of eight hours was liable at any time to

be extended to sixteen or twenty-four without a cent of extra remuneration. In such cases I simply said to myself, "That's just my luck'; and I was only one among thousands of employees who took matters philosophically in this way.

Recently, as I was discussing this matter with Mr. E. A. Smith, who was a train-dispatcher and assistant superintendent on the Fitchburg Railroad many years before I entered the service, he remarked, 'Why, there is Miss Carter the telegraph operator at Athol: she has filled that position faithfully and without mistake of any description for something like fortyfive years. I am well within the mark when I say that hundreds of times during that long period of service, she went to work in that office at six o'clock on Sunday morning and, relief operators failing to appear, she kept it up until midnight on Monday, without a word of protest. During this long work period she handled not only important train-orders and other railroad business, but also all the message work of the Western Union Telegraph Company. This position was worth forty dollars a month to Miss Carter. There were no extras or perquisites connected with her work, but if she happened to be sick for a day the pay for that day was deducted from her salary at the end of the month. From the business of the Western Union Telegraph Company alone the railroad probably benefited to many times the amount of the salaries paid to the operators. Over-time, in those days, was never given a thought. It had simply not been invented, for the same psychological and commercial reasons, I suppose, that the safety bicycle had not then superseded the awkward and dangerous fly-wheel.'

Of course, a situation of this kind could not continue indefinitely in any form of progressive society. Superin

tendents and others, who were called upon to mingle with the employees and to discuss these conditions, gradually awoke to the injustice of the situation, and in many directions, under pressure, I confess, were the first to initiate reforms.

I call to mind the first payment for over-time I ever received. I was the most surprised individual on the Fitchburg Railroad. The company was installing a switch-tower at Waltham, and I was requested, after my work at West Cambridge was over, to go to that place and break in two or three green men so that they might be ready for their duties on the completion of the new plant. The following week, when I counted my money at the little window in the pay-car, I was simply dumbfounded. I did n't exactly feel like walking off with something that did not rightfully belong to me, so I raised the half-guilty look with which I was surveying the wealth in my hand, to the countenance of the paymaster. Both he and his assistant were highly amused at my dilemma. Then one of them good-naturedly said to me, ‘Move on, Fagan, that's all right.' But the affair did not end there. Some one of the higher officials, I understand, caught sight of the item on the pay-roll, and called for an explanation. I have good reason for thinking that the matter was finally settled by the superintendent making good the amount out of his own pocket.

But while the industrial lot of telegraph and towermen in those days was particularly distressing, judging it from present standards of justice, the situation in the train service was very much worse. I recall a typical case at East Deerfield. One day, in mid-winter, Conductor Parks walked into my office. His daily routine was to run a freight train from East Deerfield to Ashburnham Junction and return. This was,