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. 
