"But I don't see why a Republican—if he can fly——"
"Harriet," I began rather oratorically, "this is a very interesting and amusing world we live in, and it is fortunate that we do not all believe everything we see or hear—at any rate, I'd like to meet the man who wrote that paragraph. I feel certain that he is one of the everlasting rocks of New England."
It was this amusing little incident, rather than the really serious purpose that lay back of it, that sent me at last to Hempfield. I kept thinking about the man of the paragraph as I went about my work, chuckling in the cow stable or pausing when I was putting down the hay. I imagined him an old fellow with gray chin whiskers, a pair of spectacles set low on his nose, and a frown between his eyes.
"How he does despise Democrats!" I said to myself.
And yet—our instinct for the compensatory view being irresistible—a pretty good old chap! I thought I should like him, somehow.
One early morning in May, the spring having opened with rare splendour, I hitched up the mare and drove to town. Ostensibly I was going for a few ears of seed corn, a new tooth for my cultivator, and a ham for Harriet—so is the spirit bound down to the mundane—but in reality I was looking for the man who could say "Fudge" with such bluff assurance.
It was a wonderful spring morning, and I did not in the least know as I drove the old mare in the town road, with all the familiar hills and trees about me, that I was going into a new country, fairer by far than ours, where the clouds are higher than they are here, and the grass is greener, where all the men grow taller and the women more beautiful.
I asked Nort once, long afterward, if he could remember the first impression he had when he came to Hempfield and saw the printing-office. Nort frowned, as though thinking hard, and made a characteristic reply:
"I don't rightly remember," said he, "of having any first impression, until I saw Anthy."