The iron bones of the ponderable earth shook mightily when Pennsylvania was born. No light day’s business, the bringing forth of this empire! Mountains to rear and valleys to cut; broad rivers to set flowing in generous channels; forests to marshal and meadows to unroll, fair and open and glad with green things growing. Winter, running before the hounds of spring, hides snow like a miser in a myriad pockets of the hills and flies northward across the blue lakes to escape the gleeful laughter of freed springs and singing brooks. Scratch the crust and you may kindle the world’s hearth; scatter seed and fields were never so green. A fair prospect for the eye, but greater the hope in the heart of man. Fortunate nation this, to have so secure a keystone in the arch of states! The spirits of the pioneers, haunting the hilltops, gaze down in pride upon the teeming valleys. You, sober ones of the broad brims, the axe has gone deep into the forests you came to people; and you in whose blood the Scottish pipes skirl and in whose heads flash the wit of Irish mothers, no land ever received sounder or saner or nobler pilgrims. And you, too, plodding Dutchmen, far-flung drift of the Rhenish Palatinate, you were not so slow and dull after all, but wise in your sowing and reaping. And call the roll of names dear to the Welsh hills and mark the lusty response. The soundest race-stocks in the world are grafted here. Let us be wary of these tales of plunder and corruption. The soil that knew Franklin is not so lightly to be yielded to perdition. Let us have patience, sneering ones; the last lumbering Conestoga has hardly faded into the west, and the making of states is rather more than a day’s pastime! Verily, you paid dearly for this house of your law-makers--marble and bronze and lapis lazuli forsooth! But have a care that Wisdom and Honour are enthroned in those splendid halls--and with no pockets in their togas! Then let him that defileth the temple perish by the sword! * * * * * Wayne and Joe sat on a bench in the capitol grounds and fed the squirrels. They had inspected the building with care and Joe pronounced it good. The mood of depression with which Wayne had left home clung to him, but Joe, watching him narrowly, felt that the cloud was less dark to-day. “This is nice grass,” Joe observed. “I wonder why town grass is always nicer than country grass?” Wayne smiled, and Joe was encouraged. “You rankest of cockneys! There was good grass in the world before the day of lawn mowers. What do you think we’re going to do now?”