low in easy hearing. She knew all, as we soon
found out.

'I dew jes love t' see young folks enjoy themselves,' said she, 'it's
entrancin'.'

Coming in at our gate I saw a man going over the wall back of the big
stables. The house was dark.

'Did you see the night man?' Elizabeth Brower whispered as I lit the
lamp. 'Went through the garden just now. I've been watching him here at
the window.'

Chapter 13

The love of labour was counted a great virtue there in Faraway. As for
myself I could never put my heart in a hoe handle or in any like tool
of toil. They made a blister upon my spirit as well as upon my hands. I
tried to find in the sweat of my brow that exalted pleasure of which Mr
Greeley had visions in his comfortable retreat on Printing House Square.
But unfortunately I had not his point of view.

Hanging in my library, where I may see it as I write, is the old sickle
of Uncle Eb. The hard hickory of its handle is worn thin by the grip of
his hand. It becomes a melancholy symbol when I remember how also the
hickory had worn him thin and bent him low, and how infinitely better
than all the harvesting of the sickle was the strength of that man,
diminishing as it wore the wood. I cannot help smiling when I look
at the sickle and thank of the soft hands and tender amplitude of Mr
Greeley.

The great editor had been a playmate of David Brower when they were
boys, and his paper was read with much reverence in our home.

'How quick ye can plough a ten-acre lot with a pen,' Uncle Eb used to
say when we had gone up to bed after father had been reading aloud from
his Tribune.

Such was the power of the press in that country one had but to say of
any doubtful thing, 'Seen it in print,' to stop all argument. If there
were any further doubt he had only to say that he had read it either
in the Tribune or the Bible, and couldn't remember which. Then it was a
mere question of veracity in the speaker. Books and other reading were
carefully put away for an improbable time of leisure.

'I might break my leg sometime,' said David Brower, 'then they'll come
handy.' But the Tribune was read carefully every week.

I have seen David Brower stop and look at me while I have been digging
potatoes, with a sober grin such as came to him always after he had
swapped 'hosses' and got the worst of it. Then he would show me again,
with a little impatience in his manner, how to hold the handle and
straddle the row. He would watch