Windfalls 183 



great leveller Death. The former leaves 

 no taint of corruption behind it. These 

 dead weeds to-day are pleasant companions. 

 It is something to be surrounded by cheerful 

 corpses, seeing we have so many uncheerful, 

 living ones of our own kind to deal with 

 every day. I prefer dried weeds, broken, 

 brown and prostrate, to semi-defunft nonen- 

 tities in human shape. 



Searching the rough ground beneath several 

 trees, I found an apple at last ; a wrinkled, 

 wasp-stung, sour, tasteless apple, and its 

 general appearance, I do not know why, 

 recalled Humphrey Fagan, the gleaner. He 

 was a boy of six when the battle of Trenton 

 was fought, and knew more about it than 

 some of those that have had a good deal to 

 say of the affair ; but then, he was old Hum- 

 phrey Fagan, the gleaner, and what did he 

 know? What did he not know in certain 

 directions ? He was the only man in the 

 neighborhood to whom the term " gleaner" 

 was ever applied. This phase of peasant 

 life was never represented before nor since 

 about here. Everybody else was a farmer 

 or a farm-hand, except the few too lazy to 

 be anything. The idea of gleaning never 



