The house was on a side hill sloping steeply to the road, and across the road was a thinly timbered twenty-acre lot. The warm milk had been poured into ten-gallon cans and carried up to the house, where stood, in a neat little milk-house, a cream separator. When all was ready, the separator began to sing, the cream came trickling out, the skim-milk poured into a ten-gallon can, as the gaunt six-foot-three, narrow-shouldered farmer turned the crank. At the first whirring tune-up of the separator, I hear a scurrying of feet in the timber lot below, and soon a regiment of hogs and pigs were at the fence, standing with hind feet in the long trough, front feet over the top rail of the fence, black heads in a row, beady little eyes peering up the hill, open mouths giving vent to a long-drawn squeal of jubilant petition. As the whir of the separator grew into a liquid hum, the squealing chorus rose to heaven, filling the valley, investing the farm, like a piece of symbolism, with the imperious demands of animals and crops upon the total energies of the family. Finally the last drop of milk went through the separator. Then the father put his hands to two handles of two ten-gallon cans of skim-milk; one son grasped the other handle of one can; another son caught hold of the handle of the second can; while each son in his remaining hand held a pail of the milk. Then they three, with two cans and two brimming pails, took up their stately march abreast down the hill to the squealing chorus at the trough. It looked for all the world like some priestly ritual. The milk was poured into the trough. The pigs ceased to chant and began to suck, guzzle, push, and grunt. So the day’s work was over, and we sought the house. Darkness fell over the hill and valley and the filled pigs lay down to sleep; while the farmer gathered his family about him, took up his Bible and read the Scriptures, even as did the cotter, whom Burns, the farmer Scot, made us know: The priest-like father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high; Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek’s ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire; Or Job’s pathetic plaint and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. Conversation in the morning brought out the fact that this hillside home was virtually the only one, in this clover community, struggling to bring up its children in the knowledge of God. No church, no Sunday-school, no parochial school, no Bible class. The gaunt father, gathering emotion as he overheard his own story, said: