rolley or a local train--might on occasion be
gratefully climbed into.

Thus it was that we hesitated a moment at the offer of our friend, a
hesitancy we amused him by explaining as, presently, conscience-clear, we
rattled with him through the hills. He was an interesting talker, a
human-hearted, keen-minded man, and he had many more topics as well as
potatoes. Besides, he was not in the potato business, but, as with our
former friend, his beautiful business was apples. Still, he talked very
entertainingly about potatoes; telling us, among other things, that, so
friendly was the soil toward that particular vegetable that it yielded as
much as a hundred to a hundred and fifty bushels to the acre, and that a
fair-sized potato farm thereabouts, properly handled, would pay for
itself in a year. I transcribe this information, not merely because I
think that, among so many words, the reader is fairly entitled to expect
some little information, but chiefly for the benefit of a friend of mine,
the like of whom, no doubt, the reader counts among his acquaintances.
The friend I mean has a mind so quaintly voracious of facts that, often
when we have been dining together at one of the great hotels, he would
speculate, say, looking round the room filled with eager diners, on how
many clams are nightly consumed in New York City, or how many millions
of fresh eggs New York requires each morning for breakfast. So when next
I dine with him I will say, as he asks me about my trip:

"Do you know that in the Cohocton Valley they raise as much as one
hundred to one hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes to the acre?" And
he will say:

"You don't really mean to say so?"

I have in my private note-book much more such tabulated information which
I picked up and hoarded for his entertainment, just as whenever a letter
comes to me from abroad, I tear off the stamp and save it for a little
girl I love.

But, as I said, our friend in the buggy was by no means limited to
potatoes for his conversation. He was learned in the geography of the
valley and told us how once the Cohocton River, now merely a decorative
stream among willows, was once a serviceable waterway, how it was once
busy with mills, and how men used to raft down it as far as Elmira.

But "the springs were drying up." I liked the mysterious sound of that,
and still more his mysterious story of an undercurrent from the Great
Lakes that runs beneath the valley. I seemed to hear the