people in all the world, so diverse, so unfathomably human as those who
meet us in the little post-office on the night of our return to Hillsboro.

Like any other of those gifts of life which gratify insatiable cravings of
humanity, living in a country village conveys a satisfaction which is
incommunicable. A great many authors have written about it, just as a great
many authors have written about the satisfaction of being in love, but in
the one, as in the other case, the essence of the thing escapes. People
rejoice in sweethearts because all humanity craves love, and they thrive in
country villages because they crave human life. Now the living spirit of
neither of these things can be caught in a net of words. All the foolish,
fond doings of lovers may be set down on paper by whatever eavesdropper
cares to take the trouble, but no one can realize from that record
anything of the glory in the hearts of the unconscious two. All the queer
grammar and insignificant surface eccentricities of village character may
be ruthlessly reproduced in every variety of dialect, but no one can guess
from that record the abounding flood of richly human life which pours along
the village street.

This tormenting inequality between the thing felt and the impression
conveyed had vexed us unceasingly until one day Simple Martin, the town
fool, who always says our wise things, said one of his wisest. He was
lounging by the watering-trough one sunny day in June, when a carriage-load
of "summer folk" from Windfield over the mountain stopped to water their
horses. They asked him, as they always, always ask all of us, "For mercy's
sake, what do you people _do_ all the time, away off here, so far from
everything."

Simple Martin was not irritated, or perplexed, or rendered helplessly
inarticulate by this question, as the rest of us had always been. He