A waggoner taking fowls and dairy produce to sell at restaurants and quick-lunch shops took me into Elkhart next morning. Elkhart is a large city, with many car factories and buggy factories, and by comparison with the country round is very foreign, full of Italians, Poles, and Jews. It is a well-built, handsome city, with much promise for the future.
As I stepped out on the Shipshewaka Road I saw by a notice that a prize was being offered for the most popular woman and the homeliest man. What a contrast this implies to the life of the East. Here is a land where women are public, and where nobility in a man is best expressed by being handy about the house.
I tramped along the north side of St. Joseph's River, through beautiful country under delightful conditions. The cornfields had turned red-gold, the grass was all in flower, and little brown fluffy bees considered it the best time of summer. What a sun there was, what a breeze! I found the "Bachelor's Retreat" on the St. Joseph's River, two boat-houses, a stairway through the forest banks, and a little wooden pier stretching out into the pleasant water—a good place for a swim!
Just before Mishewaka I met old Samuel Judie, seventy-six years of age, lying on a bank with a stick in his hand, tending the cows of his own farm and philosophising on life.
"It's a marvellous thing that the sun stands still and the earth goes round it," said he. "A marvellous thing that there are stars. They find out how to make automobiles, and they find out lots of things about the stars, but the human race won't ever know out the facts."
To most of the remarks I made Mr. Judie answered "Shah."
"England has fifty million people."
"Oh, shah!"
"London is twenty miles broad and twenty miles long."
"Oh, shah!"