"Primarily, the object of the grange has been the education of the farmers. It has been a great social educator, and I am glad, my friends and neighbors, when I can look out upon such an assembly as this. I see in it the rise of the idea of union, and intelligent union; but principally I see in it the meeting together of the farmers who live too much apart from the rest of the world. "I believe," she cried with lifted hand, "I believe this is the greatest movement of the farmer in the history of the world. It is a movement against unjust discrimination, no doubt, but it has another side to me, a poetic side, I call it. The farmer is a free citizen of a great republic, it is true; but he is a _Solitary_ free citizen. He lives alone too much. He meets his fellow-men too little. His dull life, his hard work, make it almost impossible to keep his better nature uppermost. The work of the grange is a social work." She was supported by generous applause. "It is not to antagonize town and country. The work of the grange to me is not political. Keep politics out of it, or it will destroy you. Use it to bring yourselves together. Let it furnish you with pleasant hours. Establish your agencies, if you can, but I care more for meetings like this. I care more for the poetry there is in having Flora, and Ceres, and Pomona brought into the farmer's home." Her great brown eyes glowed as she spoke and her lifted head thrilled those who sat near enough to see the emotion that was in the lines of her face. The sun struck through the trees, that swayed in masses overhead, dappling the upturned faces with light and shade. The leaves under the tread of the wind rustled softly, and the soaring hawk looked down curiously as he drifted above the grove, like a fleck of cloud. On Bradley, standing there alone, there fell something mysterious, like a light. Something whiter and more penetrating than the sunlight. As he listened, something stirred within him, a vast longing, a hopeless ambition, nameless as it was strange. His bronzed face paled and he breathed heavily. His eyes absorbed every detail of the girl's face and figure. There was wonder in his eyes at her girlish face, and something like awe at her powerful diction and her impersonal emotion. She stood there like an incarnation of the great dream-world that lay beyond his horizon, the world of poets and singers in the far realms of light and luxury.