corn should be like. The flavor of corn begins to go the moment it
is pulled from the stalk, also the moment it leaves the pot. Cooked
instanter, buttered, with salt and pepper, eaten the moment it does not
blister your mouth, it is the pride of the garden. Cooked the next day
and eaten when it has become cool and flabby, it becomes a reproach. It
is different with beans. Beans keep, and, hot or cold or warmed over,
they are never to be despised. The heaping platters of corn and the
bowls of beans that our family could destroy after a morning of hearty
exercise were rather staggering. Then presently the cantaloups
came--fragrant, juicy ones, and all the salads, and--oh, well, never
mind the list--I have heard of living like a lord, but I can't imagine
any lord ever living as near to the sap and savor of life's luxuries as
we did.

I must not overlook our rye. By June it was a cloth of gold, and of such
elevation that I could barely see over it. There is something stately
and wonderful about standing rye, when one is close enough to see the
individual stalks. They are so tall and slim that you cannot understand
why the lightest wind does not lay them flat. Yet all day long they sway
and ripple and billow in the summer wind, and unless the heavy, driving
storm comes the ranks remain unbroken to the last and face the sickle in
golden dress parade.

Westbury came with a force of men one blazing morning, and the sound of
the cutting-machine was a music that carried me back to days when I had
followed the reaper in the Mississippi Valley, from the first ray of
sunrise to the last ray of sunset, eaten five times a day, drunk water
out of a jug under the shock, and once picked up a bundle with a snake
in it and jumped fourteen feet, more or less, straight up in the air. It
was not that I was afraid, you understand, but just surprised. Snakes
nearly always surprise me. I remember once when I was a little boy, on
the way to visit a friend about my size, I took a short cut across a
little clearing, and was hopping and singing along when I hopped onto
something firm that moved twistingly under my bare foot. I did not jump
or run that time; I merely opened out my wings and flew. Corn-rows,
brush-piles, fences, were as nothing. I sailed over them like a gnat
till I reached the big main road. I was not interested in short cuts,
after that, and I didn't cross that field again for years. I was not
afraid, but I did not wish to be surpr