And the native, coming up to him suddenly with a knife as long as your arm, said; _Yo soy mas hombre que tu_! and started a swing at him. Had he not been so quick to seize a chair and bring it down on the man's head--What would have happened? CHAPTER XIX [Illustration] Sometimes the men would come in and say there was a turkey nest down in the meadow and they'd send me to look for it. Once I fell in the mireage up to my waist. My, they was mad at me. "Can't tramp a meadow without falling in the mireage?" they said. I miss it often. At nine they let me drive the hay-hoist with one horse and later with two. One morning I had the young team out. It was Allie's team of greys, they was only just no more than colts. They shied at a piece of paper. I could hear the men up in the barn yelling. "Hey, what's the matter down there!" But it was no use. I tried to get to their heads. I wasn't afraid of them. Allie said afterward he wouldn't have been surprised to have seen me killed. One of the women stood in the road waving a broom. I can see her yet. I might have been able to manage them if it hadn't been for her but they simply jumped over a wagon and smashed the hay-fork and ran down the road two miles. Then they came back again. My but the old man was mad at me. All the black looks I got! I used to hate the Old Man. Sometimes I'd be getting wood and he'd ask me why I hadn't done something. I'd say I hadn't gotten round to it yet. Maybe he'd throw a piece of wood at me. I can remember the churning. I wouldn't exactly like to go back to it all but sometimes I miss it terribly. Sometimes it would n't take you more than five minutes to get the butter and sometimes you'd churn for 45 or two hours and sometimes it would never come. We'd get four or five pounds or more at a churning. Then it would have to be washed and salted and packed in jars in the cellar. So now that it is raining. So now that it is Amazonius--we go to buy a metal syringe at the factory because we know the men who live on our street who own the bricks that make the walls that hold the floors that hold the girls who make mistakes in the inventories: Every order that comes in is copied. You must rely on your help. As the orders come in they are handled by a girl who puts them on our own uniform order sheets. So right there it begins. You have to rely on a young flyaway who has perhaps been up dancing the night before. It's easy enough for her to write "with" for "without" and--that's the sort of thing that happens. There is a certain minimum of error that you must count on and no reputable house will fail to make good promptly. The glass blowers have never in my entire experience of 17 years suffered any harm from their trade. Why we had a boy in the old factory, a cripple, a withered leg, the weakest, scrawniest lad you ever saw. He's been blowing for us for 15 or 17 years and you should see him today. Why the fat fairly hangs down over his collar.