Strangers were in all of the other houses along the way--we found but two of our former neighbors at home, and the farther we drove the more melancholy we both became. One of the places which I wished especially to revisit was the school-house at Burr Oak, the room which had been our social center in the early eighties. In it we had listened to church service in summer, and there in winter our Grange Suppers and Friday Lyceums had been held. It was there, too, that I had worshiped at the shrine of Hattie's girlish beauty, when as a shock-haired lad I forgot, for a day, the loneliness of my prairie home. Alas! the tall oaks which in those days had given dignity and charm to the yard had all been cut down, and the building, once glorified by the waving shadows of the leaves, now stood bare as a bone beside the road. An alien lived where Betty once reigned, and the white cottage from which Agnes was wont to issue in her exquisite Sunday frock, was untenanted and falling into decay. How lovely those girls had seemed to me as I watched them approach, walking so daintily the path beside the fence! What rich, alluring color flamed in Bettie's cheek, what fire flashed in Aggie's dark and roguish eyes! To a stranger, Burr Oak--my Burr Oak--even in Seventy-two was only a pleasant meeting place of prairie lanes on the margin of a forest, but to me it had been a temple of magic. I had but to shut my eyes to desolating changes, turning my vision inward, in order to see myself (a stocky awkward boy in a Sunday suit with a torturing collar) standing on the porch waiting to see those white-clad maidens pass into the vestibule. Too shy in those days to meet their eyes, too worshipful to ever hope for word or smile, I remained their silent adorer. Here and now I set down the tribute which I could not then express: O maids to whom I never spoke, to whom My dreaming ran in lonely field, Because of you I saw the bloom Of Maytime more abundantly revealed. From you each bud new magic caught. When you were near, my skies Were brighter, for your beauty brought A poet's rapture to my eyes. Men tell me you are bent and gray, And worn with toil and pain; And so I pray the Wheel of Chance May never set us face to face again. Better that I should think of you As you then were, strong and sweet, Walking your joyous sunlit way Between the wheat and roses of the lane-- _Pass on, O weary women of today--_ _Remain forever 'mid the roses and the wheat,_ _O girls with laughing lips and dancing feet!_