A breakfast on a farm is not always the appetizing reality that the inexperienced imagination paints. The cloth, in this case, was ragged, and showed signs of long use since its last washing, and there were no napkins. The service was repulsive in its hideous tastelessness. Flies swarmed in the room, and crowded one another into our food. The men were in their working clothes, coatless, sleeves rolled up, and their begrimed shirts open at the neck. When our coffee was poured out and handed to us, each used his own spoon in dipping sugar from a bowl which was passed from hand to hand. The butter, in a half-melting condition, and dark with imprisoned flies, was within reach of us all, and each helped himself with his knife, and then used it in conveying food to his mouth. This last feat I did not try. There was in it a suggestion of necromancy, and I had doubts of my success. We ate in silence, as though the gravity of the occasion was beyond speech. The farmer did not appear until we had finished breakfast, and I waited at the kitchen-door for orders from him. He came at last, kind and cordial as ever, but quite changed in purpose regarding my going to work. He urged my confessed inexperience, and the danger of exposure to the sun. I protested my willingness to assume the risks, and begged to be allowed at least to work for what had been given me. But he would not listen, and appeared to think that he set matters right by assuring me repeatedly that to what I had received I was "perfectly welcome." His wife gave me, at parting, some tracts, and a religious newspaper, and in these I found presented, in somewhat lurid light, the evil consequences of insobriety. Knowing that I was within walking distance of Garrisons-on-Hudson, I resolved to reach that point before night. My letters had been forwarded there, and my eagerness to get them was of a kind unexperienced before. It was Saturday, and, late in the afternoon, I reached Garrisons after a hard day's march. The heat was intense, and although I walked but a little more than twenty miles, the effort of carrying my pack was thoroughly exhausting. The woman in charge at the post-office was in evident doubt about the safety of giving me so large a packet of letters, but yielded at sight of others which I showed her, and readily agreed to look after my pack until I should call for it.