t.
There are good and great words in a deed. One of them I brought away
with me from the conference, a very fine, big one, which I love to have
out now and again to remind me of the really serious things of life. It
gives me a peculiar dry, legal feeling. If I am about to enter upon a
serious bargain, like the sale of a cow, I am more avaricious if I work
with it under my tongue.

Hereditaments! Hereditaments!

Some words need to be fenced in, pig-tight, so that they cannot escape
us; others we prefer to have running at large, indefinite but inclusive.
I would not look up that word for anything: I might find it fenced in so
that it could not mean to me all that it does now.

Hereditaments! May there be many of them--or it!

Is it not a fine Providence that gives us different things to love? In
the purchase of my farm both Horace and I got the better of the
bargain--and yet neither was cheated. In reality a fairly strong lantern
light will shine through Horace, and I could see that he was hugging
himself with the joy of his bargain; but I was content. I had some money
left--what more does anyone want after a bargain?--and I had come into
possession of the thing I desired most of all. Looking at bargains from
a purely commercial point of view, someone is always cheated, but looked
at with the simple eye both seller and buyer always win.

We came away from the gravity of that bargaining in Horace's wagon. On
our way home Horace gave me fatherly advice about using my farm. He
spoke from the height of his knowledge to me, a humble beginner. The
conversation ran something like this:

HORACE: Thar's a clump of plum trees along the lower pasture fence.
Perhaps you saw 'm----

MYSELF: I saw them: that is one reason I bought the back pasture. In May
they will be full of blossoms.

HORACE: They're _wild_ plums: they ain't good for nothing.

MYSELF: But think how fine they will be all the year round.

HORACE: Fine! They take up a quarter-acre of good land. I've been going
to cut 'em myself this ten years.

MYSELF: I don't think I shall want them cut out.

HORACE: Humph.

After a pause:

HORACE: There's a lot of good body cord-wood in that oak on the knoll.

MYSELF: Cord-wood! Why, that oak is the treasure of the whole farm, I
have never seen a finer one. I could not think of cutting it.

HORACE: It will bring you fifteen or twenty dollars cash in hand.

MYSELF: But I rather have the oak.

HORACE: Humph.

So