worth more than
he paid? Well--you shall, when you bring home a Dustless-Duster.

And who has not brought it home! Or who is not about to bring it home!
Not all the years that I have searched, not all the loads that I have
collected, count against the conviction that at last I have it--the
perfect thing--until I _reach_ home. But with several of my
perfections I have never yet reached home, or I am waiting an opportune
season to give them to my wife. I have been disappointed; but let no
one try to tell me that there is no such thing as Perfection. Is not
the desire for it the breath of my being? Is not the search for it the
end of my existence? Is not the belief that at last I possess it--in
myself, my children, my breed of hens, my religious creed, my political
party--is not this conviction, I say, all there is of existence?

It is very easy to see that perfection is not in any of the other
political parties. During a political campaign, not long since, I
wrote to a friend in New Jersey,--

"Now, whatever your particular, personal brand of political faith, it
is clearly your moral duty to vote this time the Democratic ticket."

Whereupon (and he is a thoughtful, God-fearing man, too) he wrote
back,--

"As I belong to the only party of real reform, I shall stick to it this
year, as I always have, and vote the straight ticket."

Is there a serener faith than this human faith in perfection? A surer,
more unshakable belief than this human belief in the present possession
of it?

There is only one thing deeper in the heart of man than his desire for
completeness, and that is his conviction of being about to attain unto
it. He dreams of completeness by night; works for completeness by day;
buys it of every agent who comes along; votes for it at every election;
accepts it with every sermon; and finds it--momentarily--every time he
finds himself. The desire for it is the sweet spring of all his
satisfactions; the possession of it the bitter fountain of many of his
woes.

Apply the conviction anywhere, to anything--creeds, wives, hens--and
see how it works out.

As to _hens_:--

There are many breeds of fairly good hens, and I have tried as many
breeds as I have had years of keeping hens, but not until the poultry
show, last winter, did I come upon the perfect hen. I had been working
toward her through the Bantams, Brahmas, and Leghorns, to the Plymouth
Rocks. I had tried the White and the Barred Plymo