BAKER FARM. 
221 
America. An honest, hard-working, but shiftless man 
plainly was John Field; and his wife, she too was brave 
to cook so many successive dinners in the recesses of 
that lofty stove; with round greasy face and bare breast, 
still thinking to improve her condition one day; with 
the never absent mop in one hand, and yet no effects 
of it visible any where. The chickens, which had also 
taken shelter here from the rain, stalked about the room 
like members of the family, too humanized methought 
to roast well. They stood and looked in my eye or 
pecked at my shoe significantly. Meanwhile my host 
told me his story, how hard he worked “ bogging ” for a 
neighboring farmer, turning up a meadow with a spade 
or bog hoe at the rate of ten dollars an acre and the use 
of the land with manure for one year, and his little 
broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his father’s side 
the while, not knowing how poor a bargain the latter 
had made. I tried to help him with my experience, 
telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, 
and that I too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like 
a loafer, was getting my living like himself; that I lived 
in a tight, light, and clean house, which hardly cost more 
than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly 
amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might in a month 
or two build himself a palace of his own; that I did not 
use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, 
and so did not have to work to get them; again, as I 
did not work hard, I did not have to eat hard, and it cost 
me but a trifle for my food; but as he began with tea, 
and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to 
work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked 
hard he had to eat hard again to repair the waste of his 
system,—and so it was as broad as it was long, indeed 
