s its victims in some
Southern communities--we grew listless, dull, flaccid.

The influence was baneful, subtle. None of us ever confessed to being
affected. It rather emphasized our idealism.

"In the future," said one comrade as he laid the axe down after his
second stick, "wood will be cut by machinery!" We looked interested.
"Yes," he said as he rolled a cigarette, "there will be a machine that
will cut a cord a second!"

"Why don't you invent one?" we asked.

"How can one invent anything in this slave age?" he asked, as he
glared at us between the curling puffs of smoke.

"That's true," we said, and piped down.

He went over to the well to get a drink. The housekeeper called for
firewood. He smiled--he was a jolly good-natured chap.

"Keep cool, comrades," he said gently, "it'll be all the same in a
thousand years!" The axe was blunt. He took it to the grindstone--a
new patent, with a bicycle seat on it, and there he sat puffing and
grinding until a neighbour's cow broke into our corn. He dropped the
axe and went after the cow.

The housekeeper kept calling for wood. Another comrade was pressed
into the killing ether and he smashed and hacked for five minutes;
then he straightened himself up and, said, with a look of disgust on
his face, "That's a mucker's job!"

"Who will be the muckers under Socialism?" I asked mildly.

"The dull, brainless clods who can do nothing else!" he said.

Just then our neighbour's hired man, a Russian muzik, passed with his
ox-team. He wore a smock of his own making and a pair of shoes he had
made of hickory bark.

"That," said the comrade at the block in a stage whisper, "is the type
that will do the rough work. You couldn't wake that thing up with a
plug of dynamite!"

We watched Michael and his ox-team as they lumbered lazily along the
lane.

[Illustration: "Happy Hollow" in the Winter, Looking From the House]

We had one poet in our midst--just one. He had lately completed a poem
on the glories of our valley. Two men stooped to pick up the axe.
Gaston and Alphonse like, they stooped together. As they did so the
poet came along with a beaming face. "Stop!" he said; "listen, boys,
listen."

We all straightened up, and stood at attention. He read:

"Not far from turmoil, strife, the mountain-vying waves
Of life's antagonisms that delude the world--
Amidst elysian valleys, slopes, majestic hills and caves
That mark the path where ages wrought t