"Compared with these, Italian trills are tame;
The tickl'd ear no heart-felt raptures raise."

I suppose I showed my feeling in my voice. As I glanced up from time to
time I saw the agent's face change, and his look deepen and the lips,
usually so energetically tense, loosen with emotion. Surely no poem in
all the language conveys so perfectly the simple love of the home, the
quiet joys, hopes, pathos of those who live close to the soil.

When I had finished--I stopped with the stanza beginning:

"Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way";

the agent turned away his head trying to brave out his emotion. Most of
us, Anglo-Saxons, tremble before a tear when we might fearlessly beard a
tiger.

I moved up nearer to the agent and put my hand on his knee; then I read
two or three of the other things I found in his wonderful book. And once
I had him laughing and once again I had the tears in his eyes. Oh, a
simple young man, a little crusty without, but soft inside--like the
rest of us.

Well, it was amazing once we began talking not of books but of life, how
really eloquent and human he became. From being a distant and
uncomfortable person, he became at once like a near neighbour and
friend. It was strange to me--as I have thought since--how he conveyed
to us in few words the essential emotional note of his life. It was no
violin tone, beautifully complex with harmonics, but the clear simple