PREPARING AND ENRICHING THE SOIL. 73 



but merely drooped and cowered, as if the wolf at the door 

 and the shadow of death within it were rather more than he 

 could face at one and the same time. It soon became evi- 

 dent, however, that his wife would "pull through," as he 

 said, and then the wolf did n't trouble him a mite. He in- 

 stalled himself as cook, nurse, and house man-of-all-work, 

 finding also abundant leisure to smoke his pipe with infinite 

 content. One morning he was seen baking buckwheat 

 cakes for the children \ each one in turn received an allow- 

 ance on a tin plate, and squatted here and there on the 

 floor to devour it; and, from the master of ceremonies 

 down, there was not an indication that all was not just as it 

 should be. A few days later, I met him coming back to 

 his work with his pipe in the corner of his mouth, and the 

 old confident twinkle in his eye as he said, " Momin', Bos- 

 sie." Now, Abraham carries his peculiar characteristics 

 into grubbing. If I should set him at a hundred-acre field 

 full of stumps and stones, and tell him to clear it to the 

 depth of two feet, he would begin without any apparent mis- 

 giving, and with no more thought for the magnitude of his 

 task than he has for the tangled and stubborn mysteries of 

 life in general, or the dubious question of " what shall be on 

 the morrow " in his own experience. He would see only 

 the little strip that he proposed to clear up that day, and 

 would go to work in a way all his own. 



Although not talkative to other people, he is very social 

 with himself, and, in the early days of our acquaintance, I 

 was constantly misled into the belief that somebody was 

 with him, and that he was a man of words rather than work. 

 As soon, however, as I reached a point from which I could 

 see him, there he would be, alone, bending to his task with 

 the steady persistence that makes his labor so effective ; but, 

 at the same time, until he saw me he would continue dis- 



