In all the farming region through which I have passed on my way to the Hudson, I have been much impressed by an unlooked-for quality in the intelligence of the people. The books, of which I now and then caught glimpses in their homes, were often of a surprising range. On the sitting-room table of one farm-house I noticed a Milton, and several volumes of Emerson, and a copy of Stevenson's Essays, besides much current literature. Not infrequently the conversation of these people had in it a curious suggestion of cultivation, curious only because a dainty choice of words, and the graceful turn of a phrase were accompanied by habitual inaccuracies of speech. They have, for example, their own forms of the verb "to be." "I be" and "You be" are invariable in their common usage. I wondered whether the conventional forms which they find in their reading did not strike them as oddly foreign. The prim little lady who sat near me through my dinner proved charming. She showed no curiosity about my history, nor the least anxiety to tell me hers. With an air of quiet self-possession she followed the conversation into its natural channels, and sometimes followed it far; for at one time she was describing for me, with admirable vividness, the methods of irrigation in use in Colorado. But she consistently made _done_ do duty for _did_, and she used, in some of her sentences, negatives enough to satisfy the needs of negation in the purest of Attic speech. One more incident of the tramp to the Hudson: Late on Friday afternoon I was nearing Golden's Bridge, a village on the Harlem division of the New York Central Railroad. My road lay over the hills of a rolling farm-region. The fields of corn were radiant with sunlight reflected from great drops of rain which rested on the nodding blades. In the meadows was the rich sheen of the after-growth. Golden-rod and sumach grew thick on the roadside, and half concealed the rails of the zigzag fences. From the forest there came a breath of fragrant coolness. After sundown the twilight soon faded into dark. My efforts to secure further work had been unsuccessful. Once I was nearing the ruin of a little wooden cottage, on the porch of which sat a woman enjoying the cool of the evening. Upon seeing me enter the gate she fled within, and slammed the door; and I heard the key turn in the lock. I was growing tired. The actual journey had not carried me far, but the long fast of the previous day and the toilsome walking over soft roads had resulted in exhaustion. Scarcely physical strength remained with which to move farther, and I was ready to throw myself down, with infinite relief, under any chance shelter, when I caught sight of the village lights not a quarter of a mile beyond.