aloons, which resounds with the thunders of
pulpit and press against the iniquity of drink, and where, if there are
three or four places where the monster may be quietly devoured, no one
is supposed to know anything about them.

I do not enlarge upon this picture of Nort with any delight, and yet I
have always thought that it was a great help to Nort that he should have
appeared in Hempfield in the guise of a vagabond.

If we had known then that he had the right kind of a father, had come
from the right kind of a college, and had already spent a good deal of
money that he had not earned, I fear he would have been seriously
handicapped. We should probably have looked the other way while he was
bowing to the church--and considered that he was going without a hat for
his health. As for putting him in the _Star_, we should never have
dreamed of it!

I love to think of Nort, coming down our street for the first time--the
green common with its wonderful tall elms on one side and the row of
neat stores and offices on the other. It must be a real adventure to see
Hempfield on a sunny morning with a new eye, to pass Henderson's
drygoods store and catch the ginghamy whiff from the open doorway, or go
by Mr. Tole's drug store and breathe in the aromatic odour of strange
things that should be stoppered in glass bottles and aren't. And then
the cool smell of newly watered sidewalks, and the good look of the
tomatoes in their baskets, and the moist onions, and spinach, and
radishes, and rhubarb in front of the shady market, and the sparrows
fighting in the street--and everything quiet, and still, and home-like!

[Illustration: _John Bass's blacksmith shop_]

And think of coming unexpectedly (how I wish I could do it myself some
day and wake up afterward to enjoy it) upon the wide doorway of John
Bass's blacksmith shop, and see John himself standing there at his anvil
with a hot horseshoe in his tongs. John never sings when his iron is in
the fire, but the moment he gets his hand on his hammer and the iron on
the horn of the anvil, then all the Baptist in him seems suddenly to
effervesce, and he lifts his high and squeaky voice:

"Jeru (whack) salem (whack) the gold (whack) en (whack, whack),

"With milk (whack) and hon (whack) ey blest (whack, whack, whack)."

And what wouldn't I give to clap my eyes newly on old Mr. Kenton,
standing there in front of his office, his florid face shaded by the
porch roof, but the rotundity of