und right here, as I have many times found among our
American farmers, an intelligence (a literacy growing out of what I
believe to be improper education) which was better able to discuss the
problems of rural life than to grapple with and solve them. A dull,
illiterate Polish farmer, I have found, will sometimes succeed much
better at the job of life than his American neighbour.

Talk with almost any man for half an hour, and you will find that his
conversation, like an old-fashioned song, has a regularly recurrent
chorus. I soon discovered Mr. Clark's chorus.

"Now, if only I had a little cash," he sang, or, "If I had a few
dollars, I could do so and so."

Why, he was as helplessly, dependent upon money as any soft-handed
millionairess. He considered himself poor and helpless because he lacked
dollars, whereas people are really poor and helpless only when they lack
courage and faith.

We were so much absorbed in our talk that I was greatly surprised to
hear Mrs. Clark's voice at the doorway.

"Won't you come in to supper?"

After we had eaten, there was a great demand for more of my tin whistle
(oh, I know how Caruso must feel!), and I played over every blessed tune
I knew, and some I didn't, four or five times, and after that we
told stories and cracked jokes in a way that must have been utterly
astonishing in that household. After the children had been, yes, driven
to bed, Mr. Clark seemed about to drop back into his lamentations over
his condition (which I have no doubt had come to give him a sort of
pleasure), but I turned to Mrs. Clark, whom I had come to respect very
highly, and began to talk about the little garden she had started, which
was about the most enterprising thing about the place.

"Isn't it one of the finest things in this world," said I, "to go out
into a good garden in the summer days and bring in loaded baskets filled
with beets and cabbages and potatoes, just for the gathering?"

I knew from the expression on Mrs. Clark's face that I had touched a
sounding note.

"Opening the green corn a little at the top to see if it is ready and
then stripping it off and tearing away the moist white husks--"

"And picking tomatoes?" said Mrs. Clark. "And knuckling the watermelons
to see if they are ripe? Oh, I tell you there are thousands of people in
this country who'd like to be able to pick their dinner in the garden!"

"It's fine!" said Mrs. Clark with amused enthusiasm, "but I like best
to h