In the fall, at just this time of the year, farmers used to drive into town and deliver things at his father’s house. At that time everyone had great cellars under his house and in the cellars were bins that were to be filled with potatoes, apples, turnips. There was a trick man had learned. Straw was brought in from fields near the town and pumpkins, squashes, heads of cabbage, and other solid vegetables were wrapped in straw and put into a cool part of the cellar. He remembered that his mother wrapped pears in bits of paper and kept them sweet and fresh for months. As for himself, although he did not live in the country he was, at that time, aware of something quite tremendous going on. Wagons arrived at his father’s house. On Saturdays a farm woman, who drove an old gray horse, came to the front door and knocked. She was bringing the Websters their weekly supply of butter and eggs and often a chicken for the Sunday dinner. John Webster’s mother went to the door to meet her and the child ran along, clinging to his mother’s skirts. The farm woman came into the house and sat up stiffly in a chair in the parlor while her basket was being emptied and while the butter was being taken out of its stone jar. The boy stood with his back to the wall in a corner and studied her. Nothing was said. What strange hands she had, so unlike his mother’s hands, that were soft and white. The farm woman’s hands were brown and the knuckles were like the bark-covered knobs that sometimes grew on the trunks of trees. They were hands to take hold of things, to take hold of things firmly. After the men from the country had come and had put the things in the bins in the cellar it was fine to go down there in the afternoon when one had come home from school. Outside the leaves were all coming off the trees and everything looked bare. One felt a little sad and almost frightened at times and the visits to the cellar were reassuring. The rich smell of things, fragrant and strong smells! One got an apple out of one of the bins and stood eating it. In a far corner there were the dark bins where the pumpkins and squashes were buried in straw and everywhere, along the walls, were the glass jars of fruit his mother had put up. How many of them, what a plenitude of everything. One could eat and eat and still there would be plenty.