Bill Eisenkrout. Or, now, was it his brother--Baltzer
Iron-Cabbage? Seems to me now like it was Baltz. Somesing wiss a B at
the front end, anyhow."

Henry Wasserman diffidently intimated that there was a curious but
satisfactory element of safety in being last--a "fastnacht" in their
language, in fact. Those in front were the ones usually hurt in railroad
accidents, Alexander Althoff remembered.

"Safe?" cried the speaker. "Of course! But for why--say, for why?" Old
Baumgartner challenged defiantly.

No one answered and he let several impressive minutes intervene.

"You don't know! Hang you, none of yous knows! Well--because he ain't
there when anysing occurs--always a little late!"

They agreed with him by a series of sage nods.

"But, fellers, the worst is about courting. It's no way to be always
late. Everybody else gits there first, and it's nossing for the
fastnacht but weeping and wailing and gnashing of the teeth. And mebby
the other feller gits considerable happiness--and a good farm."

There was complaint in the old man's voice, and they knew that he meant
his own son Seffy. To add to their embarrassment, this same son was now
appearing over the Lustich Hill--an opportune moment for a pleasing
digression. For you must be told early concerning Old Baumgartner's
longing for certain lands, tenements and hereditaments--using his own
phrase--which were not his own, but which adjoined his. It had passed
into a proverb of the vicinage; indeed, though the property in question
belonged to one Sarah Pressel, it was known colloquially as
"Baumgartner's Yearn."

And the reason of it was this: Between his own farm and the public road
(and the railroad station when it came) lay the fairest meadow-land
farmer's eye had ever rested upon. (I am speaking again for the father
of Seffy and with his hyperbole.) Save in one particular, it was like an
enemy's beautiful territory lying between one's less beautiful own and
the open sea--keeping one a poor inlander who is mad for the seas--whose
crops must either pass across the land of his adversary and pay tithes
to him, or go by long distances around him at the cost of greater tithes
to the soulless owners of the turnpikes--who aggravatingly fix a gate
each way to make their tithes more sure. So, I say, it was like having
the territory of his enemy lying between him and the deep water--save,
as I have also said, in one particular, to wit: that the owner--the
Sarah Pressel I