All about me were the marks of thrift. The fences stood straight and stout, with an air of lasting security. On a rising ledge above the lane was the farm-house, a small, unpainted wooden cottage, bleached to the rich, deep brown of a well-colored meerschaum pipe, and as snug and tight as a pilot's schooner. Near it was a summer-kitchen that seemed fairly to glow with conscious pride in its cleanness, and the very foot-path from the gate to the cottage-door was swept like a threshing floor. On the door-step sat a girl in a calico dress of delicate pink, with a dark gingham apron concealing all its front. She was shelling peas into a milk-pan which rested on her lap, and the morning sunlight was in her flaxen hair, and showed you the delicate freshness of a pink-and-white complexion. Sober hazel eyes were fixed on me as I walked up the foot-path, and of us two I was the embarrassed one. I have not got over a certain timidity in asking for work, and each request is a sturdy effort of the will, with the rest of me in cowardly revolt, and a timid shrinking much in evidence I fear. "Is this Mr. Hill's farm?" I ask, and I know that I am blushing deeply. "Yes," says the young woman, with grave dignity and the most natural self-possession in the world. "Is he at home?" I am sweating freely now, as I stand with my hat crushed between my hands, and the pack feeling like a mountain on my back. "He is down at the pond on the edge of the farm." And her serious eyes follow the line of the long lane which sinks from the house with the downward slope of the land. With her permission I leave the pack behind, and then follow the indicated way. The barn is on my right, a large, unpainted structure, stained by weather to as dark a hue as the house, but there are no loose boards about it, nor any rifts among the shingles, and the doors hang true on their hinges, and meet in well-adjusted touch. The cowyard and the pigsty flank the lane, and the neatness of the yard and the tightness of the troughs make clear that there is no waste of fodder there. Farther down and on my left is the wagon-house, as good a building almost as the cottage, and with much the same clean, strong compactness. There are no ploughs nor other farming tools lying exposed to the weather, no signs of idle capital wasting with the wear of rust, but everywhere the active, thrifty strength of wise economy. Two men are at work at the pond, and I pick my man at once. They are plainly brothers, but the Mr. Hill of whom I am in search is the stronger-looking man, and is clearly in command of the job. I am reminded of a certain type which one comes to know on "the street," a clean-cut, vigorous man, who keeps his youth till sixty, and who, for many years, has had a masterful, compelling hand upon the conduct of affairs, has put railways through the West, and opened up mining regions, and knows the inner workings of legislatures and of much else besides.