time to be detectives, wanted. There did not seem to be anyone very actively supplying the demand. A big market, a small supply, and almost no competition. Non stepped in and proposed to represent a man's interest who is build5 ing a house as literally as the man would represent himself, if he knew all about houses. Everything has followed from this. What Non's business is now, when a man is building a house, is to step quietly into the man's shoes, let him put on another pair, and go quietly about his business. It 10 is not necessary to go into the details. Any reader who has ever built a house knows the details. Just take them and turn them around.

What those of us who know Non best liked about him is that he is a plain business man, and that he has acted 15 in this particular matter without any fine moral frills or remarks. He has done the thing because he liked it and believed in it.

But the most efficient thing to me about Non is not the way he is making money out of saving money for other 20 people, but the way the fact that he can do it makes people feel about the world. Whenever I have a little space of discouragement or of impatience about the world because it does not hurry more, I fall to thinking of Non. "Perhaps next week”—I say to myself cheerfully-“I can go 25 down to New York and slip into Non's office and get the latest news as to how religion is getting on. Or he will take me out to lunch, and I will stop scolding or idealizing, and we will get down to business, and I will take a good look into that steady-lighted, unsentimental face of his while 30 he tells me across the little corner table at Delmonico's for three hours how shrewd the Golden Rule is, and how it works. Sometime when I have just been in New York, and have come home and am sitting in my still study, with 32-219, 12: b, i, h.

13-17: 1.

the big idle mountain just outside, and the great meadow and all the world, like some great, calm, gentle spirit or picture of itself, lying out there about me, and I fall to thinking of Non, and of how he is working in wood and stone inside of people's houses, and inside their lives day 5 after day, and of how he is touching people at a thousand points all the weeks, being a writer, making lights and shadows and little visions of words fall together just so, seems, suddenly a very trivial occupation-like amusing one's self with a pretty little safe kaleidoscope, holding it 10 up, aiming it, and shaking softly one's colored bits of phrases at a world! Of course it need not be so. But there are moments when I think of Non when it seems so. In our regular Sunday religion we do not seem to be quite at our best just now.

At least (perhaps I should speak for one) I know I am not.

15

Being a saint of late is getting to be a kind of homely, modest, informal, almost menial everyday thing. It makes one more hopeful about religion. Perhaps people who once 20 get the habit, and who are being good all the week, can even be good on Sunday.

There are many ways of resting or leaning back upon one's instincts and getting over to one's religion or perspective about the world. Mount Tom (which is my front 25 yard, in Massachusetts) helps sometimes-with a single look.

When I go down to New York, I look at the Metropolitan Tower, the Pennsylvania Station, the McAdoo Tunnels, and at Non.

If I wanted to make anybody religious, I would try to get him to work in Non's office, or work with anybody who ever worked with him, or who ever saw him; or I 12, 13: b. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18-22, 23-27, 28-30: b.

30

would have him live in a house built by him, or pay a bill made out by him.

It has seemed to me that his succeeding and making himself succeed in this way is a great spiritual adventure, 5 a pure religion, a difficult, fresh, and stupendous religion.

Now these many days have I watched him going up and down through all the empty reputations, the unmeaning noises of the world, living his life like some low, oldfashioned, modest Hymn Tune he keeps whistling and I 10 have seen him in fear, and in danger, and in gladness being shrewder and shrewder for God, now grimly, now radiantly, hour by hour, day by day getting rich with the Holy Ghost!

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1, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12.

ÉMILE VERHAEREN
1855-

THE LITTLE VILLAGES OF FLANDERS 1

ENGLAND is a vast meadow, sprinkled here and there with spaces of tillage. Flanders is like a chess-board, the various squares of which are covered with rye, wheat, oats, flax, and clover. From scattered farms, little red-roofed, whitegabled buildings, with their green doors and shutters, their 5 clean, warm stables, comes the cheerful noise of flails threshing the wheat, of wheels ginning the flax.

Life is a simple and peaceful thing in these villages. The church is, as it were, the palace of God. Many colored statues of the saints, gold, silken banners, are lavished on 10 its beautifying. The organ plays daily for those who wish to hear. On great festivals the altars are loaded with silver candlesticks, the finest vestments adorn the shoulders of the priests, the best voices of the district thunder the Christmas hymn or the Easter Alleluia. A quiet reverence rules 15 over all. Every ceremony has its beauty, and their joyful dignity affects the life of the tiniest hamlet.

The beauty of Flanders is the mellow beauty of many centuries. Everywhere may be found firmly established traditions or historical masterpieces. In every little church 20 a picture, either Gothic or Renaissance, recalls the age of Van Eyck or of Rubens. The subject may be the coronation of a fair virgin, or the ascent to heaven, surrounded 1 Copyright, 1915, by the Boston Transcript.

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by angels, of a splendid Christ. The saints are represented, garlanded with roses. The holy families are Flemish families, living quietly prosperous lives in cool, white rooms, with their bird in its cage or their parrot on its perch.

Such is the decorative side of the Flemish village. In actual plan it consists probably of a single principal street, in which live the lawyer, the doctor, and the brewer; and a few smaller roads which branch off from the main street as from the trunk of a tree. Wherever such a side-road 10 joins the main street, a statue of the Virgin Mother of Jesus stands in a niche of the wall, and it is the constant care of the ladies of the village, the wives of the lawyer, the doctor, and the brewer, to keep each shrine in spring well adorned with fresh flowers.

15

Once a week the market is held in the square or round about the church. The farmers come to sell their milk and butter; their boys bring in young pigs, and sometimes sheep; the vendors of cloth display their little stocks. The business done is small enough, no doubt, and its basis nar20 row, but the markets at least create a certain weekly excitement and keenness of rivalry.

But at the Kermesses this excitement and keenness becomes a kind of madness. In every cabaret is the sound of music. Dancing halls open on every side. Harsh and 25 violent orchestras-a cornet, a violin, a clarinet, a trumpet -flog into swirling motion a hundred sturdy couples. Quadrilles follow polkas or waltzes, and the dancers stamp with their heels so violently that often the tiles of the floor are split in two. Drunkenness and anger play their part at 30 these times of wild pleasure. Knives flash out in quarrel, and often bloody work is done. The farm-lads fighting for wenches' favors; the lovers quarreling, the old men, fever5-14 d. 15-21: d, c. 22-29: c, e. 29-223, 2: c, n.