This digression, though suggested by the recollection of my serious-faced clergyman, is not to be taken as reflecting in any wise upon him or upon his calling. He was trying to do his duty, I have no question. If he felt obliged to have a pulpit and a uniform of his own, it was not that he differed from other people, but that other people differed from him. May his work prosper, and his days be long! He was traveling in a buggy, as I have said. Had he been on foot, no doubt he might have been readier to stop a minute to chat with an inquisitive stranger,--as ready, perhaps, as a more venerable pilgrim who happened along a few minutes later, and who not only stopped, but sat down, and, so to speak, paid me a visit: a little man, bent with his seventy-three years (he told me his age almost at once), who had come ten miles on foot that morning. In one hand he carried a live turkey,--with its legs tied, of course,--and in the other a chicken. Poor things, they were making their last journey. It was a “very hot day,” the old man thought. His cotton shirt was flung wide open for coolness, and as he mopped his face, having put down his burdens and taken off his hat, he talked in a cheerful, honest voice, most agreeable to listen to. Life was still a pleasant experience to him, as it seemed. I doubt whether he had ever tired of it for a day. He would sell the turkey and the chicken, buy a little tobacco and perhaps one or two other necessaries, and then trudge the ten miles home again. It is a great thing to have a market for one’s produce, and a greater thing to be contented with one’s lot. Not far beyond this favorite resting-place--tempting even in the retrospect, as the reader perceives--is a house with a good-sized clearing, through which meanders a trout-stream, to the endless comfort of one of the younger boys of the family. I saw him angling there, one day, with shining success. What a good time he was having! He could hardly bait the hook fast enough. I leaned over the fence and watched him out of pure sympathy (he did not see me, I think, though there was nothing in the world between us--except the fish), and afterward I mentioned the circumstance to his father. “Oh, he is a great fisherman,” was the proud response. For a boy that _is_ a boy a trout-brook is better than all the toy-shops. The good man and his wife (New York State people, who had moved here twelve years before) treated me most hospitably when I came to know them, but on this first morning, having far to go, I went by without calling, pausing only to note the _chebec_ of a least flycatcher, which seemed to be at home in their orchard trees. Its name is still Number 60 in my North Carolina list.