d go to a dance or a picnic and be as exhilarated
as she was, and would discuss the matter afterwards. He could speak
with some cogency on the shape of this and that female person, the hat
of such an one, the disagreeableness of tea at this house and the
goodness of it at the other. He could even listen to one speaking
without going to sleep at the fourth word. In all he was a decent,
quiet lad who would become a father the exact replica of his own, and
whose daughters would resemble his mother as closely as two peas
resemble their green ancestors.--So she left him the farm.

Of course, there was no attempt to turn the elder brother out. Indeed,
for some years the two men worked quietly together and prospered and
were contented; then, as was inevitable, the younger brother got
married, and the elder had to look out for a new place to live in, and
to work in--things had become difficult.

It is very easy to say that in such and such circumstances a man should
do this and that well-pondered thing, but the courts of logic have as
yet the most circumscribed jurisdiction. Just as statistics can prove
anything and be quite wrong, so reason can sit in its padded chair
issuing pronouncements which are seldom within measurable distance of
any reality. Everything is true only in relation to its centre of
thought. Some people think with their heads--their subsequent actions
are as logical and unpleasant as are those of the other sort who think
only with their blood, and this latter has its irrefutable logic also.
He thought in this subterranean fashion, and if he had thought in the
other the issue would not have been any different.

Still, it was not an easy problem for him, or for any person lacking
initiative--a sexual characteristic. He might have emigrated, but his
roots were deeply struck in his own place, so the idea never occurred
to him; furthermore, our thoughts are often no deeper than our pockets,
and one wants money to move anywhere. For any other life than that of
farming he had no training and small desire. He had no money and he
was a farmer's son. Without money he could not get a farm; being a
farmer's son he could not sink to the degradation of a day labourer;
logically he could sink, actually he could not without endangering his
own centres and verities--so he also got married.

He married a farm of about ten acres, and the sun began to shine on him
once more; but only for a few days. Suddenly the sun went awa