ated this
boyish affection. His eyes twinkled and the wrinkles on his
weather-beaten face ran together when I approached him in the field, or
when we talked together beside the hearth fire or under the elm tree
when the day's work was done. For some reason I cannot now fathom,
unless it were the ambitious desire to put myself on a footing with his
years and wisdom, I would assume with him an unnatural gravity. My
wisdom consisted in asking him questions, any that happened to come into
my head. I took for granted that he knew everything. Had he not been to
Boston, and more than once? Yet little would he say about that town. He
liked much better to talk of places he had never seen, especially London
and London Bridge. I only learned that people in Boston dressed every
day in the week in their best clothes; that was what made the deepest
impression upon me; for our best clothes hung in the closet until
Sunday. Uncle Lyman and I went barefooted and shirtsleeved all summer.
He never had a linen shirt or collar; but how fine he looked in a snowy
white cotton shirt and broad collar, a blue coat and tall bell-shaped
hat, a hat he had worn all his life on the Sabbath and at funerals. Nor
do I think he had, during his manhood, more than one best suit of
clothing. In winter he always wore a long woolen frock made by his wife,
and a cap of woodchuck skin. Folks said it was like to be a hard winter
when he put on his overcoat. His complexion was as dark as an Indian's;
eyes as black as night, and he had straight raven hair. He used much
tobacco, always a quid in his mouth except when it was a pipe. He mostly
refrained on the Sabbath until the evening when a long quiet smoke
compensated him for abstinence during two sermons. His voice was rich
and seemed to come from deep down in his chest. When he was a bit
puzzled, he scratched his head with one finger. He was scrupulously neat
in his person and orderly in his yard and buildings. No chips, no
broken-down carts nor tools disfigured his premises. His was almost the
only barn of a working farmer I ever saw that was kept clean and
neat--except my own. He did not belong to any church; but he had a whole
pew in the body of the meeting-house and contributed his full share to
the support of the Gospel. Moreover he gave of the produce of his farm
every year something to the minister's woodshed or cellar. I never heard
him but once make any comment on the sermons he had heard, which were
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