d hot sun. It seems a hopeless sort of
life, doesn't it?"

"Oh, but this is the most beautiful part of the year," said Radbourn.
"Think of them in the mud, in the sleet; think of them husking corn in
the snow, a bitter wind blowing; think of them a month later in the
harvest; think of them imprisoned here in winter!"

"Yes, it's dreadful! But I never felt it so keenly before. You have
opened my eyes to it."

"Writers and orators have lied so long about 'the idyllic' in farm
life, and said so much about the 'independent American farmer' that he
himself has remained blind to the fact that he's one of the
hardest-working and poorest-paid men in America. See the houses they
live in,--hovels."

"Yes, yes, I know," said Lily; a look of deeper pain swept over her
face. "And the fate of the poor women, oh, the fate of the women!"

"Yes, it's a matter of statistics," went on Radbourn, pitilessly,
"that the wives of the American farmers fill our insane asylums. See
what a life they lead, most of them; no music, no books. Seventeen
hours a day in a couple of small rooms--dens. Now there's Sim Burns!
what a travesty of a home! Yet there are a dozen just as bad in sight.
He works like a fiend,--so does his wife,--and what is their reward?
Simply a hole to hibernate in and to sleep and eat in in summer. A
dreary present and a well-nigh hopeless future. No, they have a
future, if they knew it, and we must tell them."

"I know Mrs. Burns; she sends several children to my school. Poor,
pathetic little things, half-clad and wistful-eyed. They make my heart
ache; they are so hungry for love, and so quick to learn."

As they passed the Burns farm, they looked for the wife but she was
not to be seen. The children had evidently gone up to the little white
schoolhouse at the head of the lane. Radbourn let the reins fall slack
as he talked on. He did not look at the girl, his eyebrows were drawn
into a look of gloomy pain.

"It aint so much the grime that I abhor, nor the labor that crooks
their backs and makes their hands bludgeons. It's the horrible waste
of life involved in it all. I don't believe God intended a man to be
bent to plow-handles like that, but that aint the worst of it. The
worst of it is, these people live lives approaching automata. They
become machines to serve others more lucky or more unscrupulous than
themselves. What is the world of art, of music, of literature, to
these poor devils--to Sim Burns and his wife