“‘I did know it,’ he growled. ‘That’s why I bought him. And mighty glad I am now I didn’t pay more.’ “‘Sartin!’ replied Uncle Gray; ‘but didn’t it occur to you ’t no honest man would want to sell an honest hoss like that for any such sum?’ “‘I didn’t know it,’ said Eli, groutily. ‘He told a pooty straight story. I got took in, that’s all.’ “‘Took in!’ repeated Uncle Gray. ‘I should say, took in! I know the rogue and I’m amazed that any man with common sense and eyes in his head shouldn’t ’a’ seen through him at once.’ “‘Maybe I ain’t got common sense, and maybe I ain’t got eyes in my head,’ said Eli, with a dull fire in the place where eyes should have been if he had had any. ‘But I didn’t expect this.’ “Kit hastened to interpose between the two men.” Always I have been sorry that the boy interposed just there. I have read the book surely seven-and-seventy times. Each time this talk over the horse comes exceeding pungent to my ears. How impossible it is to weary of Trowbridge, because there is no effort in the writing, and no effort in the reading, and because of a deep-reaching, never-failing sense of humor.---- How flat seem these words! The young-books of Trowbridge can not be set down in words. What with the simplicity, what with the quality of naturalness, what with a delicate tenderness for all human things, what with the rare, rare quality of commonness that is satisfying and quieting as the vision of a little green radish-bed, what with an inner sympathy between Trowbridge and his characters and, above all, an inner sympathy with his readers, what with Truth itself and the sweet gift of portraying the sunshiny days as they are--why talk of Trowbridge? Is it not all there written? Can one not read and rest in it? VIII “GIVE ME THREE GRAINS OF CORN, MOTHER!” “No,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “I can’t really say that I care for Trowbridge. All that you have said is true enough, but he fails to interest me.” “What do you like in literature?” I asked, regarding her with interest, for I had never heard her say. It must need be something characteristic of herself. “I like strength, and I like simplicity, and I like emotion, and I like vital things always. And I like poetry rather than prose. Just now,” said Annabel Lee, “I am thinking of an old-fashioned bit of verse that to me is all that a poem need be. To have written it is to have done enough in the way of writing, because it’s real--like your Trowbridge.” “Oh, will you repeat it for me!” I said. “It is called, ‘Give Me Three Grains of Corn, Mother.’ It is of a famine in Ireland a great many years ago--a lad and his mother starving.” And then she went on: “‘Give me three grains of corn, mother, Give me three grains of corn, ’Twill keep the little life I have Till the coming of the morn. I am dying of hunger and cold, mother, Dying of hunger and cold, And half the agony of such a death My lips have never told.