oratorically, "this is a very interesting and
amusing world we live in, and it is fortunate that we do not all believe
everything we see or hear--at any rate, I'd like to meet the man who
wrote that paragraph. I feel certain that he is one of the everlasting
rocks of New England."

It was this amusing little incident, rather than the really serious
purpose that lay back of it, that sent me at last to Hempfield. I kept
thinking about the man of the paragraph as I went about my work,
chuckling in the cow stable or pausing when I was putting down the hay.
I imagined him an old fellow with gray chin whiskers, a pair of
spectacles set low on his nose, and a frown between his eyes.

"How he does despise Democrats!" I said to myself.

And yet--our instinct for the compensatory view being irresistible--a
pretty good old chap! I thought I should like him, somehow.

One early morning in May, the spring having opened with rare splendour,
I hitched up the mare and drove to town. Ostensibly I was going for a
few ears of seed corn, a new tooth for my cultivator, and a ham for
Harriet--so is the spirit bound down to the mundane--but in reality I
was looking for the man who could say "Fudge" with such bluff assurance.

It was a wonderful spring morning, and I did not in the least know as I
drove the old mare in the town road, with all the familiar hills and
trees about me, that I was going into a new country, fairer by far than
ours, where the clouds are higher than they are here, and the grass is
greener, where all the men grow taller and the women more beautiful.

I asked Nort once, long afterward, if he could remember the first
impression he had when he came to Hempfield and saw the printing-office.
Nort frowned, as though thinking hard, and made a characteristic reply:

"I don't rightly remember," said he, "of having any first impression,
until I saw Anthy."

But I will not be hurried even to my meeting with Anthy; for I have a
very vivid first impression of the printing-office as it sat like a
contemplative old gentleman in its ancient and shabby garden.

First we see things with our eyes, see them flat like pictures in a
book, and that isn't really sight at all. Then some day we see them with
the heart, or the soul, or the spirit-- I'm not certain just what it is
that really sees, but it is something warm and strong and light inside
of us--and that is the true sight.

I had driven the streets of Hempfield for years, an