“I am expressing myself. I am finding my own soul,” she told herself. She smiled at her own egotism, as she added, “What, if like Columbus, I should find a great undiscovered country?”
She laid the stories away. What simple little things they were! The story of an ambitious little seed which was unhappy because it had been tied up in a paper all winter and then hidden in the ground. It wanted to do something great. It did not wish to hide from life and light. But as the days passed, it crept up from the earth into a life of whose beauty it had no conception. It cast shade and perfume on all about it. It burst in a hundred glorious flowers. Then it learned that its own way would have made it a failure, that there is something in one which must suffer and die before one can be a power.
The following afternoon she wrote again. There was little chance of interruption, for neighbors were at a distance, and the people of Shintown did not give themselves to bodily exertion.
One evening she handed them to the tramp when he came for his evening supply of milk and eggs.
“Quite a package,” he said. “Is this all you can think of, or have you more in that head of yours?”
“More! My head has turned into a veritable widow’s cruse. The instant I take out one story, another one slips in to take its place. I do not know where they come from. I am sure I do not try to think of them. They just pop in.”
“Let them pop, and keep on writing,” replied the man. “I came across several books I think you’d like, and a magazine article on the possibilities of the so-called worked out farm.”
He laid them on the table, took up his milk-pail and went his way down the slope. His voice rang out clear and strong:
“Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I’ll not ask for wine.”
“I wonder where he found all his songs. Hundreds of them I think I’ve heard him sing this winter.”