"The mill-streams that turn the clappers of the world arise in solitary places." The old hill-farmers are lovers of their country. Their carefully-saved money and their patriotism sustained our great war. Whoever was a boy on a hill-farm during the war remembers the neighbors stumbling over the stony roads at twilight, when the day's work was done, to hear the daily paper read at the farmhouse on The Corners, eager to know the worst or the best every night. Hugh used to hold the candle, while Mark read in a slow, understanding voice about the marching, fighting, wavering, conquering of those days, now less remembered than the _Iliad_, when we warmed our hearts at the blaze of war. At every new local name, "Stop!" the old farmer used to say: "let's see where that is. Get the map.--Hugh, hold the light.--There 'tis, by that grease-spot--not the tallow-spot Hugh just dropped--the spot where people have put their fingers around Washington." Such a prodigious trampling of fingers on the map followed our armies to battle! What a memory it is to have in the mind! The old farmer of the hills, however frugal, fosters some luxuries: one is horses. He has plenty of them, fat and slow from careful usage, and for the most part spotless bays. Four white feet and a white nose, Skin him and give his body to the crows, says the man of the hills. Melvine, a great horse-breeder, one day took sides in a quarrel between a horse and its master, fought the man for abusing his horse--fought him hard and long: 'twas "t'other and which" with them for a while. "I wouldn't have done it," said his neighbor, Squire Greffern: "I wouldn't have fought the man. I'd have reasoned with him kindly. I'd have said, 'See here, now, this horse isn't to blame: he ain't human,' says I, 'and you ought not to abuse him,' says I. And says I, 'You ought to know better than to hurt a horse: it injures him,' says I. 'He has more sense than you have' (getting excited). 'You deserve to be licked yourself, by hoky! Why, Gosh Almighty! get out, or I'll thrash the daylights out of your darned rotten hide!'" So ended the squire's reproof. The old hill-farmer has an old dog grown from indulgence, like his horses, in the habit of going his own gait. He _will_ trot to church on Sundays, and trot, trot, down the aisle after meeting has begun, or, if he likes, up into the gallery. When two of these obstinate old dogs once met before the pulpit they indulged in a whirlwind of fight. The minister requested the sexton to put them out, but they showed him their teeth and fought until satisfied. Then the minister administered a grave rebuke to the farmers for desecrating the house of God by bringing dogs to church. Whether the dogs understood it or not, one of them never went to church again.