"That's one way of lookin' at it, Eavan; I expect that's your French view, likely; looks different, you see, to folks livin' where there's cold, and sim'lar things, as butterflies couldn't find not to say comfortable. Way I look at it, it always seemed to me that grain come as near it as anything, go to compare things. Livin' in a grist-mill, I presume, I git into a grainy way of lookin' at the world. Now, take wheat! It comes up pooty enough, don't it, in the fields? Show me a field o' wheat, and I'll show you as handsome a thing as is made this side of Jordan. Wal, that might be a little child, we'll say; if there's a thing handsomer than a field o' wheat, it's a little child. But bimeby comes reapin' and all, and then the trouble begins. First, it's all in the rough, ain't it, chaff and all, mixed together; and has to go through the thresher? Well, maybe that's the lickin's a boy's father gives him. He don't like 'em,--I can feel Father Belfort's lickin's yet,--but they git red of a sight o' chaff, nonsense, airs, and what not, for him. Then it comes here to the grist-mill. Well, I may be gittin' a little mixed, boys, but you can foller if you try, I expect. Say that's startin' out in life, leavin' home, or bindin' to a trade, or whatever. Well, it goes into the duster, and there it gets more chaff blowed off'n it. And from the duster it goes into the hopper, and down in betwixt the stones; and them stones grind, grind, grind, till you'd think the life was ground clear'n out of it. But 'tain't so; contrary! That's affliction; the upper and nether millstone--Scriptur! Maybe sickness, maybe losin' your folks, maybe business troubles,--whichever comes is the wust, and more than any mortal man ever had to bear before. Well, now, see! That stuff goes in there, grain; it comes out wheat flour! Then you take and wet it down and put your 'east in,--that's thought, I expect, or brains,--or might be a woman,--and you bake it in the oven,--call that--well, 'git-up-and-git' is all I can think of, but I should aim for a better word, talkin' to a foreigner." "Purpose," I suggested. "That's it! purpose! bake it in that oven, and you have a loaf of wheat bread, riz bread; and that's the best eatin' that's ben invented yet. That's food for the hungry,--which raw wheat ain't, except it's cattle. But now you hear me, boys! To git wheat bread, riz bread, you've got to have wheat to begin with. You've got to have good stuff to start with. You can't make good riz bread out o' field corn. But take good stuff and grind it in the Lord's mill, and you've got the best this world can give. That's my philos'phy!" He nodded his head to the last words, which fell slowly and weightily; and as he did so, the sparrow that had been perched on his head ran down his nose and fluttered in his face, seeming to ask how he dared make such a disturbance. "I beg your pardon, I'm sure!" said Ham. "I'd no notion I was interferin' with you. Why didn't you hit one of your size?"