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The day that Martha had left for New York, the Poor Boy, standing very lonely on the top of the cliff and looking out over the valley, had been struck with a whimsical thought.

“If I had the power,” he thought, “I’d settle this region with innocent people who have been accused of crimes.”

At this suggestion the component parts of his nature began a discussion.

Reason: How would you know they were innocent?

Truthfulness: They’d tell me. And I’d know.

Snobbishness: Very few people in your station of life are accused of crime.

Cynicism: And very few of them are innocent.

Snobbishness: You wouldn’t care to associate with people of lower station than yourself.

Affection: I love Martha better than anybody in the world.

Reason: Think of something more sensible.

Love of Detail: I wonder how we could dispose of sewage without polluting lakes and streams? I must send for books on the disposal of sewage.

Love of the Beautiful: I should like to settle the whole valley without changing the look of it–from here.

Eyes (roving from one group of screening trees to the next): It can be done. Put your village on the east side of the big lake, back of the hardwood ridge. Do you remember Placid Brook? That will flow through the main street. It will be kept clean and well stocked with trout, so that the old men can fish from the bridges. Above the village there shall be a path along the brook, all in the shade. Can’t you see the girls and boys walking, two and two?

Love of Detail: All the houses in the village must be white. Who is going to make the laws?

Ego: I am. Because I own the valley. And put up the money.

Modesty: But there will be lots of men wiser than I am. And they will help.

Sudden Impulse: The women shall have votes.

Childishness: The men shan’t.

Reason: Now I wonder. It’s never been tried, and maybe it’s what the world is waiting for and striving for.

Touch of Genius and Prophecy: It shall be tried. It is what the world needs. No votes for men. No men on juries….

Memory: (Things too recent and poignant for utterance.)

Vague Idea Gathered at School: Am I going to stand for being taxed without representation?

Sense of Justice: No.

Self-confidence: But if I can’t influence some woman’s vote I may as well drown myself.

Reason: Some men have no influence over anybody. They won’t stand for taxation without representation.

The Poor Boy (as a whole) gives up with reluctance the idea of a government of the ladies, by the ladies, and for the ladies.

Wish to Do the Next Best Thing: Let it be a government by commission–a commission of three. A man and a woman–and–

Touch of Genius: The children must be represented. They shall elect a child.

Sense of the Ridiculous: Upon a platform of “Baseball in the streets–longer vacations, and more of them.”

Reason: The child must not be related to the other members of the commission. We are against affairs of state being influenced by a slipper.

Sense of Decency, Good Form, Breeding, etc.: Candidates shall not vote for themselves; nor stump the valley proclaiming at the top of their lungs that they alone can keep the country from going to the dogs.

Fondness for an Occasional Glass of Champagne: How about liquor?

Self-control: If everybody else will do without it, I will.

Human Nature: We must encourage early marriages.

Ego: Of course, you exempt yourself.

Whole System of Nerves and Circulation: I do not!

Fastidiousness: She must be so and so and so (but he only succeeded in conjuring up a vague shadow of a girl).

Beginning like this (or something like it), deliberately, and thinking up things as he went along, the Poor Boy’s imagination suddenly stepped in and took such a terrific grip of the situation that little by little the idea of a model settlement became as real as the most vivid and logical dream.

The valley was under three feet of snow. There was four feet of snow upon the surrounding hills and mountains, but already the engineers, headed by the Poor Boy, had been at work, and the masons and the carpenters. And many miles of ditches had been dug, and dams built, and a powerhouse, and roads (always among trees–so that the natural beauty of the valley was not so much as scratched), and already the village was complete, with its white houses and white school (with its longer holidays and more of them), its white library with the long lovely colonnade, commission house facing it, gardens in front of every dwelling, and pairs of lovers strolling by Placid Brook.