u who have returned here today, to take contact with this little place
for a brief hour, have come only on a pious pilgrimage, and will go back
presently to busy cities and lives full of larger duties. But that is
not the only way of coming back to North Dormer. Some of us, who went
out from here in our youth... went out, like you, to busy cities and
larger duties... have come back in another way--come back for good. I am
one of those, as many of you know...." He paused, and there was a sense
of suspense in the listening hall. "My history is without interest, but
it has its lesson: not so much for those of you who have already
made your lives in other places, as for the young men who are perhaps
planning even now to leave these quiet hills and go down into the
struggle. Things they cannot foresee may send some of those young men
back some day to the little township and the old homestead: they may
come back for good...." He looked about him, and repeated gravely: "For
GOOD. There's the point I want to make... North Dormer is a poor little
place, almost lost in a mighty landscape: perhaps, by this time, it
might have been a bigger place, and more in scale with the landscape,
if those who had to come back had come with that feeling in their
minds--that they wanted to come back for GOOD... and not for bad... or
just for indifference....

"Gentlemen, let us look at things as they are. Some of us have come back
to our native town because we'd failed to get on elsewhere. One way or
other, things had gone wrong with us... what we'd dreamed of hadn't come
true. But the fact that we had failed elsewhere is no reason why we
should fail here. Our very experiments in larger places, even if they
were unsuccessful, ought to have helped us to make North Dormer a larger
place... and you young men who are preparing even now to follow the call
of ambition, and turn your back on the old homes--well, let me say this
to you, that if ever you do come back to them it's worth while to come
back to them for their good.... And to do that, you must keep on loving
them while you're away from them; and even if you come back against your
will--and thinking it's all a bitter mistake of Fate or Providence--you
must try to make the best of it, and to make the best of your old town;
and after a while--well, ladies and gentlemen, I give you my recipe for
what it's worth; after a while, I believe you'll be able to say, as I
can say today: 'I'm glad I'm here