farms.
Patches of green meadowland were interspersed with the broad, red fields
in which as yet nothing had begun to grow. Had it not been Sunday the
farmers would have been at work, plowing, sowing, harrowing. As it was,
the landscape enjoyed a rich Sabbath peace, broken only by the swooping
of birds, out of the invisible, across the line of sight, and on into
the invisible again. It was all beauty and promise of beauty, wealth and
promise of wealth. The cherry-trees were in bloom; the pear and the
apple and the quince would follow soon. Above the farm-houses tall elms
rose, fan-shaped and garlanded.

The very charm of the prospect called up those questions he had been
trying for a minute to shelve. How was it that in a land of milk and
honey men were finding it so hard to live? How was it that with
conditions in which every man might have enough and to spare, making it
his aim to see that his fellow had the same, there could be greed and
ingenious oppression and social crime, with the menace of things graver
still? What's the matter with us? he asked, helplessly. Was it something
wrong with the American people? or was it something wrong with the whole
human race? or was it a condition of permanent strife that the human
race could never escape from? Was man a being capable of high spiritual
attainment, as he had heard in the church that morning? or was he no
better than the ruthless creatures of the woodland, where the weasel
preyed on the chipmunk, and the owl on the mouse, and the fox on the
rabbit, and the shrike on the ph[oe]be, and the ph[oe]be on the insect,
in an endless round of ferocity? Had man emerged above this estate? or
was it as foolish to expect him to spare his brother-man as to ask a
hawk to spare a hen?

These questions bore on Thor's immediate thoughts and conduct. They bore
on his relations with his father and Claude and Lois. Through the social
web in which he found himself involved they bore on Rosie Fay; and from
the social web they worked out to the great national ideals in which he
longed to see his native land a sanctuary for mankind. But could man
build a sanctuary? Would he know how to make use of one? Or was he, Thor
Masterman, but repeating the error of that great-grandfather who had
turned to America for the salvation of the race, and died broken-hearted
because its people were only looking out for number one?

Because he couldn't find answers to these questions for himself, he
tried