den Bird. "It
takes hens and women all their days to collect the money men spend on
race-horses sometimes, my son."

"Well, Mary, I reckon you aren't alluding to this pair of spanking grays
I've got; but in case you are getting personal to them, I think we had
better begin to go. Come, get in with the Whim family, Nancy, and let's be
traveling. It's near on to a mile over a mighty rough road to the house
from the gate here. Everybody come and see us." As he spoke Uncle Cradd
assisted me with ceremony into the chariot beside the Golden hero of the
hour, and started the ancient steeds into a tall old gate right opposite
the bank-store-post-office. As he drove away something like warm tears
misted across my eyes as I looked back and saw all the goodwill and
friendliness in the eye of the farmer friends who watched our departure.

"That, Ann, is the salt of the earth, and I don't see how I consumed life
so long without it," said father as he turned, and looked at me with a
sparkle in his mystic gray eyes that I had never seen there when we were
seated at table with the mighty or making our bow in broadcloth and fine
linen in some of the palaces of the world. I didn't know what it was then,
but I do now; it is a land-love that lies deep in the heart of every man
who is born out in meadows and fields. They never get over it and sometimes
transmit it even to the second generation. I felt it stir and run in my
blood as we rumbled and bumped up the long avenue of tall old elm-trees
that led through deep fields which were even then greening with blue-grass
and from which arose a rich loamy fragrance, and finally arrived at the
most wonderful old brick house that I had ever seen in all of my life; it
seemed to even my much traveled eyes in some ways the most wonderful abode
for human beings I had ever beheld. It was not the traditional
white-pillared mansion. It was more wonderful. The bricks had aged a rich,
red purple, and were rimmed and splotched with soft green and gray moss
under traceries of vines that were beginning to put out rich russet buds.
The windows were filled with tiny diamond panes of glass, which glittered
in the gables from the last rays of the sun setting over Old Harpeth, and
the broad, gray shingled roof hovered down over the wide porch which would
have sheltered fifty people safely. A flagstone walk and stone steps led up
from the drive, seemingly right into the wide front door, which had small,
diamond-pan