Every county has its Theocritus who sings the nearest creek, the bloom of the may-apple, the squirrel on the stake-and-rider fence, the rabbit in the corn, the paw-paw thicket where fruit for the gods lures farm boys on frosty mornings in golden autumn.
In olden times the French _voyageur_, paddling his canoe from Montreal to New Orleans, sang cheerily through the Hoosier wilderness, little knowing that one day men should stand all night before bulletin boards in New York and Boston awaiting the judgment of citizens of the Wabash country upon the issues of national campaigns.

The Hoosier, pondering all things himself, cares little what Ohio or Illinois may think or do.
He ventures eastward to Broadway only to deepen his satisfaction in the lights of Washington or Main Street at home.

He is satisfied to live upon a soil more truly blessed than any that lies beyond the borders of his own commonwealth.

No wonder Ben Parker, of Henry County, born in a log cabin, attuned his lyre to the note of the first blue-bird and sang,-- 'Tis morning and the days are long.
It is always morning and all the days are long in Indiana.
Sylvia was three years old when she came to her grandfather's.

This she knew from the old servant; but where her earlier years had been spent or why or with whom she did not know; and when her grandfather was so kind, and her studies so absorbing, it did not seem worth while to trouble about any state of existence antedating her first clear recollections--which were of days punctuated and governed by the college bell, and of people who either taught or studied, with glimpses now and then of the women and children of the professors' households.