have got them to
invest money. That has been a godsend, because it has kept a large
number of them busy and happy trying to save the said money. But where
we have saved one retired farmer, the automobile has saved ten. Whenever
one of our unemployed comes out with a machine, we sigh with relief and
stop worrying about him. It's just the same as if he had been given
wings and a world to explore. In summer, our retired farmers who have
autos loaf around the country from Indiana to Idaho and talk crops in
the garages of a thousand towns. And in winter they rebuild their cars,
and talk good roads. Twenty years ago you could talk good roads to a
farmer or bang him with a club, with the same result. But last year our
retired farmers organized a good roads association, and to amuse
themselves they have dragged the roads for miles around and have built a
mile of rock road leading south to the cemetery--where in the old April
days, as Henry Snyder says, the deceased was buried once, but the
mourners got buried twice--going out and coming back.

We have a real leisure class in Homeburg, however, outside of the
retired farmers, who really can't help themselves. Our genuine
metropolitan leisure class consists of DeLancey Payley and Gibb Ogle.
They are, as far as I know, the only two people in Homeburg who loaf
from choice year in and year out in perfect content. We have done our
best with both of them, but we have given up. Leisure is what they were
created for. It is a talent with them, and their only talent. They have
developed it to the best of their ability.

DeLancey's is the saddest case, because so much money was wasted on him.
Wert Payley is the richest man in our part of the country. He owns a
bank and one or two counties out West. He sent DeLancey East to school,
where he was educated regardless of expense or anything else and was
returned a few years ago a finished product, sublime, though a little
terrifying to look at, and reeking with knowledge of one kind or
another. I have heard it said that DeLancey can tell offhand what has
been the correct thing in dress for each of the last thirty-five years,
and that he can handle as many as fifteen articles of cutlery and
forkery at a dinner table with absolute accuracy.

DeLancey has been at home almost ten years now, and his chief mission
has been to ornament Homeburg and add to its elegance on state
occasions. His father had designed him for a captain of finance, and
wh