rospect becomes more plainly rural. The Mineola
trolley zooms along, between wide fields of tilled brown earth. There is
an occasional cow; here and there a really old barn and farmhouse
standing, incongruously, among the settlements of modern kindling-wood
cottages; and a mysterious agricultural engine at work with a spinning
fly-wheel. Against the bright horizon stand the profiles of Garden City:
the thin cathedral spire, the bulk of St. Paul's school, the white
cupola of the hotel. The tree-lined vistas of Mineola are placidly
simmering in the morning sun. A white dog with erect and curly tail
trots very purposefully round the corner of the First National Bank. We
think that we see the spreading leaves of some rhubarb plants in a
garden; and there are some of those (to us very enigmatic, as we are no
gardener) little glass window frames set in the soil, as though a whole
house, shamed by the rent the owner wanted to charge, had sunk out of
sight, leaving only a skylight.

As we leave East Williston we approach more interesting country, with a
semblance of hills, and wooded thickets still brownly tapestried with
the dry funeral of last year's leaves. On the trees the new foliage
sways in little clusters, catching the light like the wings of perching
green butterflies. Some of the buds are a coppery green, some a burning
red, but the prevailing colour is the characteristic sulphur yellow of
early spring. And now we are set down at Salamis, where the first and
most surprising impression is of the unexpected abundance of competitive
taxicabs. Having reached the terminus of our space, we can only add that
we found our estate still there--and there are a few stalks of rhubarb
surviving from an earlier plantation.

ON BEING IN A HURRY

New York is a perplexing city to loaf in. (Walt Whitman if he came back
to Mannahatta would soon get brain fever.) During the middle hours of
the day, at any rate, it is almost impossible to idle with the proper
spirit and completeness. There is a prevailing bustle and skirmish that
"exerts a compulsion," as President Wilson would say. The air is
electric and nervous. We have often tried to dawdle gently about the
neighbourhood of the City Hall in the lunch hour, to let the general
form and spirit of that clearing among the cliffs sink into our mind, so
that we could get some picture of it. We have sat under a big brown
umbrella, to have our shoes shined, when we had nothing more im