THE BAPTISM OF DIRT 



she said as she pointed to one, &quot; potatoes,&quot; and 

 as she pointed to the other, &quot; lima beans.&quot; There 

 was a surveyor s level in the corner of the room, 

 and seeing us regard it with surprise, she said : 

 &quot; Oh, that s Ike s he s getting the levels of the 

 south fields, so as to run the water from the cold 

 spring into the house.&quot; Ike had been to the 

 seminary at some time in his life. 



There was an hour or two of conversation on 

 the grass-plot after supper, where the old man 

 smoked his clay pipe regularly. He would no 

 more dare to smoke it in that homely dining room 

 than he would dare to go to bed with his boots on. 

 Then we were shown to a chamber, the peasant 

 girl holding the kerosene lamp for us like that 

 colossal girl in our harbour, and saying : &quot; Pleasant 

 dreams, gents. I ll rap on your door at six o clock 

 if you re not up ;&quot; and we both heard her starched 

 skirts rustle down the stairs. We went immedi 

 ately to bed between sheets that smelled of sweet 

 balsam, and if the Doctor snored I did not notice 

 it. I was awakened by the rumble of the wagon, 

 and saw in the early mists the two men going to 

 the potato-field, one of them whistling cheerily, 

 his notes coming back to me like a skylark s, long 

 after he was out of sight. 



At the breakfast table we had an opportunity 

 of conversing more leisurely with the Peri of the 

 Soil. She poured our coffee very good coffee 

 it was, with fresh cream in it and she served us 

 with fresh eggs and home-cured bacon and hot 

 corn-meal muffins, and, placing a receptacle of 



