our conversation continued for some time. I let Horace know that I
preferred rail fences, even old ones, to a wire fence, and that I
thought a farm should not be too large, else it might keep one away from
his friends. And what, I asked, is corn compared with a friend? Oh, I
grew really oratorical! I gave it as my opinion that there should be
vines around the house (Waste of time, said Horace), and that no farmer
should permit anyone to paint medicine advertisements on his barn
(Brings you ten dollars a year, said Horace), and that I proposed to fix
the bridge on the lower road (What's a path-master for? asked Horace). I
said that a town was a useful adjunct for a farm; but I laid it down as
a principle that no town should be too near a farm. I finally became so
enthusiastic in setting forth my conceptions of a true farm that I
reduced Horace to a series of humphs. The early humphs were incredulous,
but as I proceeded, with some joy, they became humorously contemptuous,
and finally began to voice a large, comfortable, condescending
tolerance. I could fairly feel Horace growing superior as he sat there
beside me. Oh, he had everything in his favour. He could prove what he
said: One tree + one thicket = twenty dollars. One landscape = ten cords
of wood = a quarter-acre of corn = twenty dollars. These equations prove
themselves. Moreover, was not Horace the "best off" of any farmer in the
country? Did he not have the largest barn and the best corn silo? And
are there better arguments?

Have you ever had anyone give you up as hopeless? And is it not a
pleasure? It is only after people resign you to your fate that you
really make friends of them. For how can you win the friendship of one
who is trying to convert you to his superior beliefs?

As we talked, then, Horace and I, I began to have hopes of him. There is
no joy comparable to the making of a friend, and the more resistant the
material the greater the triumph. Baxter, the carpenter, says that when
he works for enjoyment he chooses curly maple.

When Horace set me down at my gate that afternoon he gave me his hand
and told me that he would look in on me occasionally, and that if I had
any trouble to let him know.

A few days later I heard by the roundabout telegraph common in country
neighbourhoods that Horace had found a good deal of fun in reporting
what I said about farming and that he had called me by a highly humorous
but disparaging name. Horace has a vein of