d, her voice strong
with encouragement. "I'll outlive the whole pack of 'em, and then mebbe
they'll let me alone. Well, I'm not goin' to stand here any longer like
a fool."

When Milford reached home he found the Professor warm in a disquisition
delivered to the hired man. He hopped up from his chair and seized
Milford by the hand. "Ha," said he, "I was just telling our friend here
that exact memory is not the vital part of true culture. It is the
absorption of the idea rather than the catching of the words."

"Sit down," said Milford. "But what does he know about it? Woman is his
culture, and he's not only caught her idea, but has learned her by
heart."

"Now you're trottin'," spoke the hired man. "If there's anything in a
woman's nature that I don't know, why, it must have come to her in the
last hour or so."

The Professor crossed his legs and slowly nodded his head. "You ask,"
said he, speaking to Milford, "what does he know about it? A man never
knows unless he learns. Even to the ignorant, wisdom may be music. The
man whose mind has been dried and hardened in the field of harsh toil,
may sip the delicious luxury, the god-flavored juice of knowledge.
Wisdom cannot be concealed. You may lock it in an iron box, but it will
seep through."

Upon entering the room Milford had seen the hired man put aside an
earthen ewer, and now he knew that cider had been brought from the
cellar.

"Nearly all utterances upon knowledge, human nature or life, are trite,"
the learned man proceeded. "And so are herbs and flowers trite, the
stars in the heavens common, but once in a while there appears from the
ground a shoot so new that botany marvels, a star in the sky so strange
that astronomers gape in the wonder of a discovery. And I, humble as the
lowly earth, may sprout a new thought."

"I was going to suggest more cider," said Milford, "but I guess you've
had enough."

"Ha! enough and not too much. To pause at the line, a virtue; to cross
but an inch, a vice. Do you know of a publication that would buy a paper
upon the decadence of the modern drama? I have one in my head, a hot and
withering blast of fierce contempt."

"The last play I saw was a hummer," said the hired man. "There was a
whole lot of dancin' and cavortin' before they got down to it, fellers
givin' each other gags, and women singin' songs. But when they got down
to her she was there--a sort of a Mormon play; and they had a bed that
reached clear across th