swing-doors of the bar, and hear the click of balls from the poolroom
advertising the second of the town's distractions. He could smell the
composite odor of varnish, stale air, and boots, which made the
overheated station waiting-room hideous. Heavy farmers in ear-mitts,
peaked caps, and fur collars spat upon the hissing stove round which
their great hide boots sprawled. They were his last memory of his fellow
citizens.

Looking farther back Stefan saw the town in summer. There were trees in
the street where he lived, but they were all upon the sidewalk-public
property. In their yards (the word garden, he recalled, was never used)
the neighbors kept, with unanimity, in the back, washing, and in the
front, a porch. Over these porches parched vines crept--the town's
enthusiasm for horticulture went as far as that--and upon them
concentrated the feminine social life of the place. Of this intercourse
the high tones seemed to be giggles, and the bass the wooden thuds of
rockers. Street after street he could recall, from the square about the
"depot" to the outskirts, and through them all the dusty heat, the
rockers, gigglers, the rustle of a shirt-sleeved father's newspaper, and
the shrill coo-ees of the younger children. Finally, the piano--for he
looked back farther than the all-conquering phonograph. He heard "Nita,
Juanita;" he heard "Sweet Genevieve."

Beyond the village lay the open country, level, blindingly hot, half-
cultivated, with the scorched foliage of young trees showing in the ruins
of what had been forest land. Across it the roads ran straight as rulers.
In the winter wolves were not unknown there; in the summer there were
tramps of many strange nationalities, farm hands and men bound for the
copper mines. For the most part they walked the railroad ties, or rode
the freight cars; winter or summer, the roads were never wholly safe, and