"He's come here in the year," she explained--and, save about the obvious import of old Cary's maudlin song, she maintained that fine, tribal reticence of hers. "Except for the drinking," she even said, "he seems to be a quiet, nice man. But it's a shame--for Peter's sake. Peter Cary," she added, like a challenge, "is the brainiest young man in _this_ town, say what you want." On which she told me something of this young superintendent of the canning factory who has "tried it in Nebraska," and could not bear to leave his father here, "this way," and has just returned. "He works hard, and plays the violin, and is making a man of himself generally," she told me; "Don't miss him." And I have promised that I will try not to miss Peter Cary. "They live out towards the cemetery way," she added, "him and his father, all alone. Peter'll be along by here in a minute on his way to work--it's most quarter to. I set my husband down to his breakfast and got up his lunch before I come out--I don't have my breakfast till the men folks get out of the way." I never cease to marvel at these splendid capabilities which prepare breakfasts, put up lunches, turn the attention to the garden, and all, so to speak, with the left hand; ready at any moment to enter upon the real business of life--to minister to the sick or bury the dead, or conduct a town meeting or a church supper or a birth. They have a kind of goddess-like competence, these women. At any of these offices they arrive, lacking the cloud, it is true, but magnificently equipped to settle the occasion. In crises of, say, deafness, they will clap a hot pancake on a friend's ear with an Æsculapian _savoir faire_, for their efficiencies combine those of lost generations with all that they hear of in this, in an open-minded eclecticism. With Puritans and foresters and courtiers in our blood, who knows but that we have, too, the lingering ichor of gods and goddesses? Oh--"_don't you wish you had_?" What a charming peculiarity it would be to be descended from a state of immortality as well as to be preparing for it, nay, even now to be entered upon it!