led _Color in the Wheat_
which I also read to her.

She received this in the same manner as before, from which it appeared
that nothing I wrote could surprise her. Her belief in my powers was
quite boundless. Father was inclined to ask, "What's the good of it?"

Of course all of my visit was not entirely made up of hard labor in the
field. There were Sundays when we could rest or entertain the neighbors,
and sometimes a shower gave us a few hours' respite, but for the most
part the weeks which I spent at home were weeks of stern service in the
ranks of the toilers.

There was a very good reason for my close application to the
fork-handle. Father paid me an extra price as "boss stacker," and I
could not afford to let a day pass without taking the fullest advantage
of it. At the same time, I was careful not to convey to my pupils and
friends from Boston the disgraceful fact that I was still dependent upon
my skill with a pitch-fork to earn a living. I was not quite sure of
their approval of the case.

At last there came the time when I must set my face toward the east.

It seemed a treachery to say good-bye to my aging parents, leaving them
and my untrained sister to this barren, empty, laborious life on the
plain, whilst I returned to the music, the drama, the inspiration, the
glory of Boston. Opposite poles of the world could not be farther apart.
Acute self-accusation took out of my return all of the exaltation and
much of the pleasure which I had expected to experience as I dropped my
harvester's fork and gloves and put on the garments of civilization once
more.

With heart sore with grief and rebellion at "the inexorable trend of
things," I entered the car, and when from its window I looked back upon
my grieving mother, my throat filled with a suffocating sense of guilt.
I was deserting her, recreant to my blood!--That I was re-enacting the
most characteristic of all American dramas in thus pursuing an ambitious
career in a far-off city I most poignantly realized and yet--I went! It
seemed to me at the time that my duty lay in the way of giving up all my
selfish plans in order that I might comfort my mother in her growing
infirmity, and counsel and defend my sister--but I did not. I went away
borne on a stream of purpose so strong that I seemed but a leak in its
resistless flood.

This feeling of bitterness, of rebellion, of dissatisfaction with
myself, wore gradually away, and by the time I reached Chicago I