It is a face very red with the heat and much bespattered with mud, into which my tools sink gurglingly, that I turn up to him. "How are you getting on?" "Pretty well, thank you." "You mustn't work too hard. All that I ask of a man is to work steady. Have an apple?" He is gone in a moment, and I stand in the ditch eating the apple with immense relish, and thinking what a good sort that farmer is, and how thoroughly he understands the principle of getting his best work out of a man! He has appealed to my sense of honor by intrusting the job to me, and now he has won me completely to his interests by showing concern in mine. The work is hard, and the morning hours are very long, but the labor achieves its own satisfaction as the task grows under one's self-directed effort, and there is no torture of body and soul in the surveillance of a slave-driving boss. But I am thoroughly tired and very hungry when Mr. Hill calls to me from across the pond that it is time to go to dinner. I join him in haste, and we walk up the lane together, while he drives his team before him, and points out with evident pride the young colts and other stock in the pasture. On a bench near the door of the summer-kitchen are two tin basins full of water, and there we wash ourselves, drawing by means of a gourd-dipper from a brimming bucket near by any fresh supply of water that we want. A coarse, clean towel hangs over a roller above the bench, and at this we take our turns. The dinner is a quiet meal, and tends to solemnity. Mrs. Hill and her daughter sit opposite the farmer and me. Little is said, but for me there is absorbing interest in the meal itself. It is worthy of the best traditions of country life, clean in all its appointments to a degree of spotlessness, really elegant in its quiet simplicity, and appetizing?--how was I ever to stop eating those potatoes that spread under the pressure of my fork into a mass of flaky deliciousness, or the ears of sweet-corn fresh from a late field, or the green peas that swim in a sweet stew of their own brewing, or, best of all, the little pond pickerel that are grilled to a crisp brown turn? In our more artificial forms of living we habitually eat when we are not hungry, and drink when we are not thirsty, and we know little of the sheer physical delight in meat and drink when our natures seize joyously upon the means of life, and organs work in glad adaptation to function, and the organism, in full revival, responds to its environment!