October Vagabonds

ng barns lit up my ceiling for a moment, a rough country voice hailed another rough country voice somewhere outside, and the day slowly coughed

dily from France. Stepping out to say good-morning to some young pigs that were sociably grunting in a neighbouring sty, we beheld the vast landscape of our preceding day stretched out beneath us, mistily emerging into the widening sunrise. With pride our eyes traced the steep white road we had so arduously travelled, and, for remembrance, Colin made a swift sketch of Dutch H

like singing

"That's the way to begin the day

e sing in Sheldon fro

e to know," I said. "I will make

care to know of a place where the days go so blithely that men actually sing from morning till night

morning till night-what was th

, they suggested our giving a look in at them on our way. This we promised to do, for a merrier, better-hearted lot of fellows it would be hard to find. To meet them was to feel a warm glow of

, engaged in renovating

rown with weeds and bushes, but now they were trimming it up in fine style. They were cemetery experts from Batavia way,

e portion of the work already accomplished, serried rows of spick-and-span headstones, all "plumb," as they explained, and freshly scraped-not a sign of caressing moss or a tendril of vine to be seen. A neat job, if there ever was one. We should have seen the yard before they had taken it in hand! There wasn't a stone that was straight, and the weeds and the brambles-well, look at it now. We looked. Could anything be more refined or in more perfect taste? The churchyard was as smooth and correc

our four friends ought to know. No doubt the Sheldon Center dead would have the same tastes as the Sheldon Center living; for, after all, we forget

hat bleak upland, he seemed a pathetic, symbolic figure, lonely standard-bearer of the spirit in one of the dreary colonies of that indomitable church that carries her mystic sacraments even into the waste places and borders of the world. Th

tual needs of this handful of lonely houses should demand so ambitious a structure. But the symbols of the soul can never be to

hey sing from morning ti