Our greatest gain is in leisure and the opportunity to ponder and brood. In all these thousands of country towns live alert and shrewd students of affairs. Where your New Yorker scans headlines as he “commutes” homeward, the villager reaches his own fireside without being shot through a tube, and sits down and reads his newspaper thoroughly. When he repairs to the drug-store to abuse or praise the powers that be, his wife reads the paper, too. A United States Senator from a Middle Western State, making a campaign for renomination preliminary to the primaries, warned the people in rural communities against the newspaper and periodical press with its scandals and heresies. “Wait quietly by your firesides, undisturbed by these false teachings,” he said in effect; “then go to your primaries and vote as you have always voted.” His opponent won by thirty thousand,--the amiable answer of the little red school-house. V A few days ago I visited again my native town. On the slope where I played as a child I listened in vain for the mourning bugle; but on the college campus a bronze tablet commemorative of those sons of Wabash who had fought in the mighty war quickened the old impressions. The college buildings wear a look of age in the gathering dusk. “Coldly, sadly descends The autumn evening. The field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of withered leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace, Silent; hardly a shout From a few boys late at their play!” Brave airs of cityhood are apparent in the town, with its paved streets, fine hall and library; and everywhere are wholesome life, comfort, and peace. The train is soon hurrying through gray fields and dark woodlands. Farmhouses are disclosed by glowing panes; lanterns flash fitfully where farmers are making all fast for the night. The city is reached as great factories are discharging their laborers, and I pass from the station into a hurrying throng homeward bound. Against the sky looms the dome of the capitol; the tall shaft of the soldiers’ monument rises ahead of me down the long street and vanishes starward. Here where forests stood seventy-five years ago, in a State that has not yet attained its centenary, is realized much that man has sought through all the ages,--order, justice, and mercy, kindliness and good cheer. What we lack we seek, and what we strive for we shall gain. And of such is the kingdom of democracy. Edward Eggleston Edward Eggleston