"Cephas! here is a letter for you, and it is from Shady Dale! I know you will be happy now."For several years Sophia had listened calmly to my glowing descriptions of Shady Dale and the people there. She was patient, but I could see by the way she sometimes raised her eyebrows that she was a trifle suspicious of my judgment, and that she thought my opinions were unduly coloured by my feelings. Once she went so far as to suggest that I was all the time looking at the home people through the eyes of boyhood—eyes that do not always see accurately. She had said, moreover, that if I were to return to Shady Dale, I would find that the friends of my boyhood were in no way different from the people I meet every day. This was absurd, of course—or, rather, it would have been absurd for any one else to make the suggestion; for at that particular time, Sophia was a trifle jealous of Shady Dale and its people. Nevertheless, she was really patient. You know how exasperating a man can be when he has a hobby. Well, my hobby was Shady Dale, and I was not ashamed of it. The man or woman who cannot display as much of the homing instinct as a cat or a pigeon is a creature to be pitied or despised. Sophia herself was a tramp, as she often said. She was born in a little suburban town in New York State, but never lived there long enough to know what home was. She went to Albany, then to Canada, and finally to Georgia; so that the only real home she ever knew is the one she made herself—out of the raw material, as one might say.