"John, Wednesday I am seventy-two years old. And it's more'n fifty years sense you and me went walkin' down the lane together first. And you're here now beside me. You can always find some one to share your money and your joys, but you can't ask everybody to share your sorrows and your troubles; and it makes me feel a sort of peace and quiet to know that you'll always be near me, and if things that I've planned don't come out right, that I kin come to you and talk it over and you'll understand. Lots of people when they hear what I'm goin' to do will say that I'm an old fool, that I'm impractical, and lots of things that'd maybe hurt, if I didn't have some one to go to and talk it over with who I know won't be critical but will see down beneath it all what I'm try in' to do, and who'll understand. That's what love is, John, for people who grow old--just a great, great friendship, and--an _understandin'."_ CHAPTER XVII "Come right on to the stoop, Dr. Eaton, and let's set down and cool off. I'm real het up." Drusilla settled down in a big porch rocker and fanned herself with the paper in her hand. "Now let's talk, and you tell me all about it. What did you say that last club was we was to? You been a-takin' me to so many places lately that I fergit their names." "That was the big Socialists Club." "Socialists--yes, that's what you called it. Ain't them got something to do with dynamite bombs and blowin' up people and things?" Dr. Eaton laughed. "No; you are thinking of Nihilists or Anarchists. These people are very mild; they only have ideas how to run the old world in a new way, and they are especially interested in the question of labor and capital." "Well, they've idees enough, if that's all they need. But it seems to me, Dr. Eaton, that these people are all going at it wrong-end-to. Instid of workin' with people in bunches, they want to take 'em man by man and git a little of the old-fashioned religion into each one singly. There's two commandments give us to live by. One is, we should love God; the other is to love our neighbor as ourself. Now, if each one got that second command planted deep in his heart, the hired man'd do his work as it ought to be done, and the man who hires him'd pay him right--so there wouldn't be no need of Socialists or Unions or dynamite bombs. No, you can't make people do the right thing by laws, and you can't put love in their hearts by meetings and committees and talk. Each man must git it for himself and then he'll do the square thing because he wants to, not 'cause he's forced to. You can make laws against thievin' and build prisons to put men in who steal, but if you don't change a man's heart, if he _wants_ to be a thief he'll find some way o' doin' it--prisons or no prisons." She was silent a few moments; then she chuckled softly to herself.