soon
you'll come to a smooth easy place, and then won't you be glad that you
didn't give up to lie down by the roadside, weary of your hurts?"

Oh, it would never do. Never. And yet no charm possessed by the people I
know and like can compare with the fascination of those People I'd Like
to Know, and Know I Would Like.

Here at home with Norah there are no faces in the crowds. There are no
crowds. When you turn the corner at Main street you are quite sure that
you will see the same people in the same places. You know that Mamie
Hayes will be flapping her duster just outside the door of the jewelry
store where she clerks. She gazes up and down Main street as she flaps
the cloth, her bright eyes keeping a sharp watch for stray traveling
men that may chance to be passing. You know that there will be the same
lounging group of white-faced, vacant-eyed youths outside the pool-room.
Dr. Briggs's patient runabout will be standing at his office doorway.
Outside his butcher shop Assemblyman Schenck will be holding forth on
the subject of county politics to a group of red-faced, badly dressed,
prosperous looking farmers and townsmen, and as he talks the circle
of brown tobacco juice which surrounds the group closes in upon them,
nearer and nearer. And there, in a roomy chair in a corner of the public
library reference room, facing the big front window, you will see Old
Man Randall. His white hair forms a halo above his pitiful drink-marred
face. He was to have been a great lawyer, was Old Man Randall. But on
the road to fame he met Drink, and she grasped his arm, and led him down
by-ways, and into crooked lanes, and finally into ditches, and he never
arrived at his goal. There in that library window nook it is cool in
summer, and warm in winter. So he sits and dreams, holding an open
volume, unread, on his knees. Some times he writes, hunched up in his
corner, feverishly scribbling at ridiculous plays, short stories, and
novels which later he will insist on reading to the tittering schoolboys
and girls who come into the library to do their courting and reference
work. Presently, when it grows dusk, Old Man Randall will put away his
book, throw his coat over his shoulders, sleeves dangling, flowing white
locks sweeping the frayed velvet collar. He will march out with his
soldierly tread, humming a bit of a tune, down the street and into
Vandermeister's saloon, where he will beg a drink and a lunch, and some
man will give it to h