THE BAPTISM OF DIRT 



had been woven out of drudgery into the fine 

 autumnal lines of her benign old face. 



I have to confess that in coming upon this bit of 

 picturesque slavishness I regarded it at first as an 

 artist might, thinking it good enough to paint, but 

 not good enough to emulate. It was impossible 

 for my artificial daintiness to avoid feeling for it a 

 slight pity of superiority, which was of course only 

 an evidence that I knew nothing whatever about 

 it. I had grown into that sort of hypersensitive- 

 ness which calls soil &quot; dirt,&quot; and regards physical 

 labour in the furrow as something which every self- 

 respecting American has outgrown by three gen 

 erations. I m afraid that if my conclusions at the 

 time had been brought to light, they would have 

 been found to be, that superior intellects never 

 delved, only aspired ; that American enterprise did 

 not bother about making dirt fat with an hundred 

 fold, but washed and dressed itself and stood round 

 to intercept with gloved hands some of the money 

 that passed from the consumer to the producer. 

 I dare say that, at first contact with this group, I 

 was Mohammedan enough in my sensibilities to 

 believe that a girl in a tow frock could by no pos 

 sibility become a Peri. All this is contemptibly 

 un-American by the record, and I am frankly 

 ashamed of it now. But it needed just such a 

 clod-hopping Peri to wipe the scales from my eyes 

 with the end of her tow frock. 



That she &quot; wrenched &quot; herself in a pail of spring 

 water, or had a scented bath in some upper grotto 

 of her own, I do not know, but she shed her clod- 



171 



