I have been retouching here and there this paper as it was written ten years ago. In the intervening decade the population of Indianapolis has increased 38.1 per cent, jumping from 169,161 to 233,650, and passing both Providence and Louisville. Something of the Southern languor that once seemed so charming--something of what the plodding citizens of the mule-car days liked to call “atmosphere”--has passed. And yet the changes are, after all, chiefly such as address the eye rather than the spirit. There are more people, but there are more good people! The coming of the army post has widened our political and social horizons. The building of the Homeric speedway that has caused us to be written large on the world’s pink sporting pages, and the invasion of foreigners, have not seriously disturbed the old neighborliness, kindliness, and homely cheer. Elsewhere in these pages I mention the passing of the church as the bulwark behind which this community had entrenched itself; and yet much the same spirituality that was once observable endures, though known by new names. The old virtues must still be dominant, for visitors sensitive to such impressions seem to be conscious of their existence. Only to-day Mr. Arnold Bennett, discoursing of America in “Harper’s Magazine,” finds here exactly the things whose passing it is the local fashion to deplore. In our maple-lined streets he was struck by the number of detached houses, each with its own garden. He found in these homes “the expression of a race incapable of looking foolish, of being giddy, of running to extremes.” And I am cheered by his declaration of a belief that in some of the comfortable parlors of our quiet thoroughfares there are “minor millionaires who wonder whether, outsoaring the ambition of a bit of property, they would be justified in creeping downtown and buying a cheap automobile!” And I had been afraid that every man among us with anything tangible enough to mortgage had undertaken the task of advertising one of our chief industries by modernizing Ezekiel’s vision of the wheels! It is cheering to know that this pilgrim from the Five Towns thought us worthy of a place in his odyssey, and that his snapshots reveal so much of what my accustomed eyes sometimes fail to see. I am glad to be reëstablished by so penetrating an observer in my old faith that there are planted here on the West Fork of White River some of the roots of “essential America.” If we are not typical Americans we offer the nearest approach to it that I, in my incurable provincialism, know where to lay hands on. Experience and the Calendar Experience and the Calendar “USELESS, quite useless, young man,” said the doctor, pursing his lips; and as he has a nice feeling for climax, he slapped the reins on Dobbin’s broad back and placidly drove away.