“The one I have out here with me now was born in Kentucky,” he said. “I took my wife down there on a visit to my own father’s place and he was born during the visit. I thought his mother would die that time, but she didn’t--I saved her. Night and day I stayed in her sick room, nursing her.” Now he had got himself launched and I knew the farmer would have no more chance to do his own bragging. Father would invent another decayed, gentle family in Kentucky to match the one he had just so lightly brought into existence in the cold barren hills of Vermont. But I was getting deeper and deeper down into the hay now and the sounds of his voice grew faint, words could no longer be distinguished. There was only a gentle murmuring sound, far off--like a summer breeze just stirring the leaves of a forest; or, better yet, like the soft murmur of some southern sea. Already, you see, I had begun reading romances and knew, in fancy, just how the seas of the South murmured and beat upon coral islands; and then how the fearful hurricane came ramping along and swept the seas clear of ships. No one reads as a boy reads. The boy gives himself utterly to the printed page and perhaps the most blessed of all the tribe of the inkpots are those who write what we used to call “dime novels”--blessed in their audience, I mean, to be sure. So there I was, sunk far down into a mythical Southland, my own Southland, product of my own imaginings--not father’s. One could go deep down into the hay and still breathe. All sounds became faint, even the gentle sound of the snoring of the fat boy some ten feet away. One closed the eyes and stepped off into a fragrant new world. Mother was in that new world, but not father. I had left him out in the cold. I considered the matter of births--my own birth in particular. The idea of being born in Kentucky--the result of a union between two decaying, gentle families--did not strike my fancy, not much. The devil! Even then I felt myself a little the product of a new age and a new land. Could I then have had all the thoughts I am now about to attribute to myself! Probably not. But these notes make no pretense of being a record of fact. That isn’t their object. They are merely notes of impressions, a record of vagrant thoughts, hopes, ideas that have floated through the mind of one present-day American. It is likely that I have not, and will not, put into them one truth, measuring by the ordinary standards of truth. It is my aim to be true to the essence of things. That’s what I’m after.