44 THE FAT OF THE LAND 



"Those people can't be very luxurious out 

 there," said Polly, "but they can have good food 

 and clean beds. They have all out-doors to 

 breathe in, and I do not see what more one can 

 ask on a fine August evening, do you, Mr Head- 

 man ? " 



I could think of a few things, but I did not 

 mention them, for her first words recalled some 

 scenes of my early life on a backwoods farm : 

 the log cabin, with hardly ten nails in it, the 

 latch-string, the wide-mouthed stone-and-stick 

 chimney, the spring-house with its deep crocks, 

 the smoke-house made of a hollow gum-tree 

 log, the ladder to the loft where I slept, and 

 where the snows would drift on the floor through 

 the rifts in the split clapboards that roofed me 

 over. I wondered if to-day was so much better 

 than yesterday as conditions would warrant us 

 in expecting. 



