ngs straight. They are more particular as
to contents than containers, for they are nearly all prohibitionists or
very high license advocates. When they are "dry," they drink equally
well from a spring-hole, a spigot, a dipper or a pail.

"Rather generous with the water at these dinners, Reuben," I said,
addressing him across the table, as he covered his mouth with his napkin
preparatory to resuming his composure.

"These fashionable glasses always cut my mouth," he replied, wrinkling
his brow to emphasize his dislike for the fads of the aristocracy.

But when an out-and-out city man goes to the country, he can't see
anything; it's all just like Central Park, in that there are no houses
to be seen, only it's not laid out so well nor raked so clean. I have
often seen these chaps when they came up to our place. The city man is
as blind as a cave fish, and all he wants to know is when do they eat
and are there any mosquitoes and poison ivy. The air suits him, only
it's a little too strong; and the dirt is satisfactory--all else is away
below par, and if it weren't for the air and the dirt, which the
country-bred city doctor has told him the kids need, he'd like to be
home, where he can be sociable in his sub-stratum of atmospheric poison,
amid the clatter that consumes his vital forces and keeps him pleasantly
anaemic and tolerably dead.

Did you ever go through the woods with a native New Yorker? There has
been an incessant stream of startling things running before his eyes
since his birth, with plenty of noise, dust and expense, so that when he
is thrown out into the fields or the woods he finds he can't be one of
Nature's Quakers and hold communion with the silent worshippers through
whom the Spirit speaks. His outdoor religion is in the Salvation Army
class, and he can't warm up enough to admire a potted geranium unless he
hears a bass drum or a hand organ to distract him on the side. If the
sweet air and comforting silence of the country were to fall upon New
York, the town would probably drop to even lower levels from the shock.
The country boy, who has been used to concentrating on the wood-pile,
runs the country; or, if it happens to be a city boy who runs it, he is
a fellow who had the wood-pile grafted onto him in time to save his
career. Gabrielle Tescheron, the woman in a new field, saw the world
aright; there was no mystery for her at any time. Her intuitions guided
her unerringly while we who reasoned beca