"I'd take on that class," said the hired man, winking at Selma Carlson,
the maid, from somewhere below the salt. "The way I make my knife feed my
face would be a great help to the children."

"And when the food came on the table," Jim went on, with a smile at his
former fellow-laborer, who had heard most of this before as a part of the
field conversation, "just think of the things we could study while eating
it. The literary term for eating a meal is discussing it--well, the
discussion of a meal under proper guidance is much more educative than a
lecture. This breast-bone, now," said he, referring to the remains on his
plate. "That's physiology. The cranberry-sauce--that's botany, and
commerce, and soil management--do you know, Colonel, that the cranberry
must have an acid soil--which would kill alfalfa or clover?"

"Read something of it," said the colonel, "but it didn't interest me
much."

"And the difference between the types of fowl on the table--that's
breeding. And the nutmeg, pepper and cocoanut--that's geography. And
everything on the table runs back to geography, and comes to us linked to
our lives by dollars and cents--and they're mathematics."

"We must have something more than dollars and cents in life," said Jennie.
"We must have culture."

"Culture," cried Jim, "is the ability to think in terms of life--isn't
it?"

"Like Jesse James," suggested the hired man, who was a careful student of
the life of that eminent bandit.

There was a storm of laughter at this sally amidst which Jennie wished she
had thought of something like that. Jim joined in the laughter at his own
expense, but was clearly suffering from argumentative shock.

"That's the best answer I've had on that point, Pete," he said, after the
disturbance had subsided. "But if the James boys and the Youngers had had
the sort of culture I'm for, they would have been successful stock men and
farmers, instead of train-robbers. Take Raymond Simms, for instance. He
had all the qualifications of a member of the James gang when he came
here. All he needed was a few exasperated associates of his own sort, and
a convenient railway with undefended trains running over it. But after a
few weeks of real 'culture' under a mighty poor teacher, he's developing
into the most enthusiastic farmer I know. That's real culture."

"It's snowing like everything," said Jennie, who faced the window.

"Don't cut your dinner short," said the colonel to Pete, "but I