"Showers--kitchen showers and linen showers, and silver showers for little Anne--little Anne with the wide, serious eyes, 'the home of silent prayer';--well, say, do you know who said that? It was Tennyson. Nice, tasty piece of goods--that man Tennyson. I've handled him in padded leather covers; fancy gilt cloth, plain boards, deckle-edges, wide margins, hand-made paper, and in thirty-nine cent paper--and he is a neat, nifty piece of goods in all of them--always easy to move and no come backs." After this pean to the poet, Mr. Brotherton turned again to his meditations, "Little Anne--Why, it's just last week or such a matter I wrapped up Mother Goose for her--just the other day she came in when they sent her off to school, and I gave her a diary--and now it's showers--" He shook his great head, "Well, say--I'm getting on." And while Mr. Brotherton mused the fire burned--the fire of youth that glowed in the heart of Nathan Perry. When he wandered back from college no one in particular had noticed him. But Anne Sands was no one in particular. And as no one in particular was looking after Anne and her affairs, as a girl in her teens she had focused her heart upon the gangling youth, and there grew into life one of those matter-of-fact, unromantic love affairs that encompass the whole heart. For they are as commonplace as light and air and are equally vital. Because their course is smooth, such affairs seem shallow. But let unhappy circumstance break the even surface, and behold, from their depths comes all the beauty of a great force diverted, all the anguish of a great passion curbed and thwarted. In this democratic age, when deep emotional experiences are not the privilege of the few, but the lot of many, heart break is almost commonplace. We do not notice it as it may have been noted in those chivalric days when only the few had the finer sensibilities that may make great mental suffering possible. So here in the commonplace town of Harvey, in their commonplace homes, amid their commonplace friends and relatives, two commonplace hearts were aching all unsuspected by a commonplace world. And it happened thus: Anne Sands had opinions about the renomination and reelection of Judge Van Dorn. For Judge Van Dorn's divorce and remarriage had offended Anne Sands.