es
not take sides. He accepts everything, refuses nothing; or, if you like,
he refuses everything, accepts nothing.

He once owned the house where he now lives, with the great barns behind
it and the fertile acres spreading far on every hand. From his chair he
can look out through a small window, and see the sun on the quiet
fields. He once went out swiftly and strongly, he worked hotly, he came
in wearied to sleep.

Now he lives in a small room--and that is more than is really
necessary--and when he walks out he does not inquire who owns the land
where he treads. He lets the hot world go by, and waits with patience
the logic of events.

Often as I have passed him in the road, I have wondered, as I have been
wondering to-day, how he must look out upon us all, upon our excited
comings and goings, our immense concern over the immeasurably trivial. I
have wondered, not without a pang, and a resolution, whether I shall
ever reach the point where I can let this eager and fascinating world go
by without taking toll of it!

XII

THE CELEBRITY

Not for many weeks have I had a more interesting, more illuminating, and
when all is told, a more amusing experience, than I had this afternoon.
Since this afternoon the world has seemed a more satisfactory place to
live in, and my own home here, the most satisfactory, the most central
place in all the world. I have come to the conclusion that anything may
happen here!

We have had a celebrity in our small midst, and the hills, as the
Psalmist might say, have lifted up their heads, and the trees have
clapped their hands together. He came here last Tuesday evening and
spoke at the School House. I was not there myself; if I had been, I
should not, perhaps, have had the adventure which has made this day so
livable, nor met the Celebrity face to face.

Let me here set down a close secret regarding celebrities:

_They cannot survive without common people like you and me_.

It follows that if we do not pursue a celebrity, sooner or later he will
pursue us. He must; it is the law of his being. So I wait here very
comfortably on my farm, and as I work in my fields I glance up casually
from time to time to see if any celebrities are by chance coming up the
town road to seek me out. Oh, we are crusty people, we farmers! Sooner
or later they all come this way, all the warriors and the poets, all the
philosophers and the prophets and the politicians. If they do not,
indeed, get t