t you'd make an agent! You'd hypnotise 'em."

I recognised it as the greatest compliment he could pay me: the craft
compliment.

Then he drove off, but pulled up before he had gone five yards. He
turned in his seat, one hand on the back of it, his whip raised.

"Say!" he shouted, and when I walked up he looked at me with fine
embarrassment.

"Mister, perhaps you'd accept one of these sets from Dixon free gratis,
for nothing."

"I understand," I said, "but you know I'm giving the books to you--and I
couldn't take them back again."

"Well," he said, "you're a good one, anyhow. Good-bye again," and then,
suddenly, business naturally coming uppermost, he remarked with great
enthusiasm:

"You've given me a new idea. _Say_, I'll sell 'em."

"Carry them carefully, man," I called after him; "they are precious."

So I went back to my work, thinking how many fine people there are in
this world--if you scratch 'em deep enough.

[Illustration: "Horace 'hefted' it"]

V

THE AXE-HELVE

_April the 15th._

This morning I broke my old axe handle. I went out early while the fog
still filled the valley and the air was cool and moist as it had come
fresh from the filter of the night. I drew a long breath and let my axe
fall with all the force I could give it upon a new oak log. I swung it
unnecessarily high for the joy of doing it and when it struck it
communicated a sharp yet not unpleasant sting to the palms of my hands.
The handle broke short off at the point where the helve meets the steel.
The blade was driven deep in the oak wood. I suppose I should have
regretted my foolishness, but I did not. The handle was old and somewhat
worn, and the accident gave me an indefinable satisfaction: the
culmination of use, that final destruction which is the complement of
great effort.

This feeling was also partly prompted by the thought of the new helve I
already had in store, awaiting just such a catastrophe. Having come
somewhat painfully by that helve, I really wanted to see it in use.

Last spring, walking in my fields, I looked out along the fences for a
well-fitted young hickory tree of thrifty second growth, bare of knots
at least head high, without the cracks or fissures of too rapid growth
or the doziness of early transgression. What I desired was a fine,
healthy tree fitted for a great purpose and I looked for it as I would
look for a perfect man to save a failing cause. At last I found a
sapling growing in o