When we had repaired to the living room, Mrs. Patton suggested music, and upon my delighted acquiescence, John set the Victrola to playing. Then for the first time I recognised one cause of my persistent heart-hunger. My soul was starving for music. Thrills of ecstasy agitated me almost to tears as the passionate strains of Tschaikowsky’s “Melodie” flooded the room with pulsating harmonies. Raff’s “Cavatina” seemed the divine expression of universal longing for home and love—_heimweh_ incarnate. Once, when we had first moved into Chicago’s slums, I took my guitar and sang. Simple songs came to my lips, lullabies, songs of the South, the old, old songs that caress the heart strings. A noise at the door startled me. I swung it open and started back in surprise. Porch, stairway and area below were packed with children all absorbed in my poor performance. Many times thereafter I sat at the narrow entrance and sang while children and adults crowded about, always asking for more. But at last the increasing pinch of hunger goaded me into carrying the precious guitar, relic of girlhood days, to the pawnbroker, there to bid it good-bye forever. Millions of acres of land lying barren in the hands of speculators, hordes of idle men roaming the country in search of employment, tons of delicious fruit rotting on the ground in California, hungry women, billionaires, destitute children, great masses of wealth producers starving mentally and physically while the fruits of their labor are denied them. Would to God that the people of this nation could learn to think! Dan’s efforts to find work in Omaha were unavailing, so after another day’s rest we struck out on the military road leading away from the city. Two days’ travel convinced us that we were hopelessly wrong. I now look upon myself as something of an expert in mud, and I can truthfully recommend the Nebraska article to be superior in cohesion, adhesion, weight and quantity to any known combination of earth and water. After a few hundred yards of travel, the wheels and skirt guard would completely disappear in great masses of reddish adobe, while our feet assumed elephantine proportions. Standing first on one foot, then on the other, we would rid ourselves of a few pounds of mother earth and scrape the wheel as free as possible from its accumulations. A struggle onward of a quarter of a mile forced us to repeat the process. A day passed—and another. Food ran out and farmers refused to sell; there were no stores, and the situation grew desperate. We approached a school house one evening and stopped under a horse shed for the night. The teacher was passing and stopped to chat. Later she returned with a bottle of malted milk tablets, which constituted our evening meal.