read, much less digest or understand. The people beat him and the leaders flogged him. They shut the door against his face until He had no place to go except a farm Among the stony hills, and there he went. And thither we were going to see the knight, And call him from his solitude to the fight Against injustice, greed. So we got off The train at Alden, just a little village Of fifty houses lying beneath the sprawl Of hills and hills. And here there was a stillness Made lonelier by an anvil ringing, by A plow-man's voice at intervals. Here Hosea Engaged a horse and buggy, and we drove And wound about a crooked road between Great hills that stood together like the backs Of elephants in a herd, where boulders lay As thick as hail in places. Ruined pines Stood like burnt matches. There was one which stuck Against a single cloud so white it seemed A bursted bale of cotton. We reached the summit And drove along past orchards, past a field Level and green, kept like a garden, rich Against the coming harvest. Here we met A scarecrow man, driving a scarecrow horse Hitched to a wobbly wagon. And we stopped, The scarecrow stopped. The scarecrow and Hosea Talked much of people and of farming—I Sat listening, and I gathered from the talk, And what Hosea told me as we drove, That once this field so level and so green The scarecrow owned. He had cleaned out the stumps, And tried to farm it, failed, and lost the field, But raged to lose it, thought he might succeed In further time. Now having lost the field So many years ago, could be a scarecrow, And drive a scarecrow horse, yet laugh again And have no care, the sorrow healed. It seemed The clearing of the stumps was scarce a starter Toward a field of profit. For in truth, The soil possessed a secret which the scarecrow Never went deep enough to learn about. His problem was all stumps. Not solving that, He sold it to a farmer who out-slaved The busiest bee, but only half succeeded. He tried to raise potatoes, made a failure. He planted it in beans, had half a crop. He sowed wheat once and reaped a stack of straw. The secret of the soil eluded him. And here Hosea laughed: "This fellow's failure Was just the thing that gave another man The secret of the soil. For he had studied The properties of soils and fertilizers. And when he heard the field had failed to raise Potatoes, beans and wheat, he simply said:      

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