only a bald-headed old fool over forty selling books on a country
road, he can make an ideal of it. Good old Parnassus! It's a great
game.... I think I'll have to give her up soon, though: I must get
that book of mine written. But Parnassus has been a true glass of
blessings to me.


There was much more in the notebook; indeed it was half full of
jotted paragraphs, memoranda, and scraps of writing--poems I believe
some of them were--but I had seen enough. It seemed as if I had
stumbled unawares on the pathetic, brave, and lonely heart of the
little man. I'm a commonplace creature, I'm afraid, insensible to
many of the deeper things in life, but every now and then, like all
of us, I come face to face with something that thrills me. I saw how
this little, red-bearded pedlar was like a cake of yeast in the big,
heavy dough of humanity: how he travelled about trying to fulfil in
his own way his ideals of beauty. I felt almost motherly toward him:
I wanted to tell him that I understood him. And in a way I felt
ashamed of having run away from my own homely tasks, my kitchen and
my hen yard and dear old, hot-tempered, absent-minded Andrew. I
fell into a sober mood. As soon as I was alone, I thought, I would
sell Parnassus and hurry back to the farm. That was my job, that
was my glass of blessings. What was I doing--a fat, middle-aged
woman--trapesing along the roads with a cartload of books I didn't
understand?

I slipped the little notebook back into its hiding-place. I would
have died rather than let the Professor know I had seen it.