ing clergyman.

And for the fourth time he saw Gertie dance "Gather the Golden
Sheaves." She appeared, shy and serious, in bloomers and flat
dancing-shoes, which made her ample calves bulge the more; she started
at sight of the harvest moon (and well she may have been astonished,
if she did, indeed, see a harvest moon there, above the gilded buffalo
horns on the unit bookcase), rose to her toes, flapped her arms, and
began to gather the sheaves to her breast, with enough plump and
panting energy to enable her to gather at least a quarter-section of
them before the whistle blew.

It was not only esthetic, but Close to the Soil.

Then, to banjo accompaniment, the insurance adjuster sighed for his
old Kentucky home, which Carl judged to have been located in Brooklyn.
The whole crowd joined in the chorus and----

Suddenly, with a shock that made him despise himself for the cynical
superiority which he had been enjoying, Carl remembered that Forrest
Haviland, Tony Bean, Hank Odell, even surly Jack Ryan and the alien
Carmeau, had sung "My Old Kentucky Home" on their last night at the
Bagby School. He felt their beloved presences in the room. He had to
fight against tears as he too joined in the chorus.... "Then weep no
more, my lady."... He was beside a California poppy-field. The
blossoms slumbered beneath the moon, and on his shoulder was the hand
of Forrest Haviland....

He had repented. He became part of the group. He spoke kindly to
Tottykins. But presently Tottykins postponed her well-advertised
return to her husband and baby, and gave a ten-minute dramatic recital
from Byron; and the younger Johnson sang a Swiss mountaineer song with
yodels.

Gertie looked speculatively at Carl twice during this offering. He knew
that the gods were plotting an abominable thing. She was going to call upon
him for the "stunt" which had been inescapably identified with him, the
song, "I went up in a balloon so big." He met the crisis heroically. He
said loudly, as the shaky strains of the Swiss ballad died on the midnight
mountain air of 157th Street (while the older men concealed yawns and
applauded, and the family in the adjoining flat rapped on the radiator):
"I'm sorry my throat 's so sore to-night. Otherwise I'd sing a song I
learned from a fellow in California--balloon s' big."

Gertie stared at him doubtfully, but passed to a kitten-faced girl
from Minnesota, who was quite ready to give an imitation of a child
whose doll h