ll, I've had enough." He
too, began to long for the repose of the country, the solace of familiar
scenes. In truth they were both surfeited with the alien, sick of the
picturesque. Their ears suffered from the clamor of strange sounds as
their eyes ached with the clash of unaccustomed color. My insistent
haste, my desire to make up in a few hours for all their past
deprivations seemed at the moment to have been a mistake.

Seeing this, knowing that all the splendors of the Orient could not
compensate them for another sleepless night, I decided to cut their
visit short and hurry them back to quietude. Early on the fourth morning
we started for the LaCrosse Valley by way of Madison--they with a sense
of relief, I with a feeling of disappointment. "The feast was too rich,
too highly spiced for their simple tastes," I now admitted.

However, a certain amount of comfort came to me as I observed that the
farther they got from the Fair the keener their enjoyment of it
became!--With bodies at ease and minds untroubled, they now relived in
pleasant retrospect all the excitement and bustle of the crowds, all the
bewildering sights and sounds of the Midway. Scenes which had worried as
well as amazed them were now recalled with growing enthusiasm, as our
train, filled with other returning sightseers of like condition, rushed
steadily northward into the green abundance of the land they knew so
well, and when at six o'clock of a lovely afternoon, they stepped down
upon the platform of the weather-beaten little station at West Salem,
both were restored to their serene and buoyant selves. The leafy
village, so green, so muddy, so lush with grass, seemed the perfection
of restful security. The chuckle of robins on the lawns, the songs of
cat-birds in the plum trees and the whistle of larks in the pasture
appealed to them as parts of a familiar sweet and homely hymn.

* * * * *

Just in the edge of the village, on a four-acre plot of rich level
ground, stood an old two-story frame cottage on which I had fixed my
interest. It was not beautiful, not in the least like the ideal New
England homestead my brother and I had so long discussed, but it was
sheltered on the south by three enormous maples and its gate fronted
upon a double row of New England elms whose branches almost arched the
wide street. Its gardens, rich in grape vines, asparagus beds, plums,
raspberries and other fruiting shrubs, appealed with