could not help thinking of the
Masons, the Oddfellows and the Elks--and curiously not without a sense
of depression. I wondered if my friend of the corn-planters had found
the pearl of great price that I have been looking for so long. For is
not friendliness the thing of all things that is most pleasant in this
world? Sometimes it has seemed to me that the faculty of reaching out
and touching one's neighbour where he really lives is the greatest of
human achievements. And it was with an indescribable depression that I
wondered if these Masons and Oddfellows and Elks had in reality caught
the Elusive Secret and confined it within the insurmountable and
impenetrable walls of their mysteries, secrets, grips, passes, benefits.

"It must, indeed," I said to myself, "be a precious sort of fraternity
that they choose to protect so sedulously."

I felt as though life contained something that I was not permitted to
live. I recalled how my friend of the corn-planters had wished to give
me the grip of the fellowship--only he could not. I was not entitled to
it. I knew no grips or passes. I wore no uniform.

"It is a complicated matter, this fellowship," I said to myself.

So I jogged along feeling rather blue, marveling that those things which
often seem so simple should be in reality so difficult.

But on such an afternoon as this no man could possibly remain long
depressed. The moment I passed the straggling outskirts of the town and
came to the open road, the light and glow of the countryside came in
upon me with a newness and sweetness impossible to describe. Looking out
across the wide fields I could see the vivid green of the young wheat
upon the brown soil; in a distant high pasture the cows had been turned
out to the freshening grass; a late pool glistened in the afternoon
sunshine. And the crows were calling, and the robins had begun to come:
and oh, the moist, cool freshness of the air! In the highest heaven
(never so high as at this time of the year) floated a few gauzy clouds:
the whole world was busy with spring!

I straightened up in my buggy and drew in a good breath. The mare, half
startled, pricked up her ears and began to trot. She, too, felt the
spring.

"Here," I said aloud, "is where I belong. I am native to this place; of
all these things I am a part."

But presently--how one's mind courses back, like some keen-scented
hound, for lost trails--I began to think again of my friend's lodges.
And do you k