Would that I could do justice to the exquisite charm which I began to feel at once in that simple, natural home-life! The men assembled at the call to supper from different quarters of the farm. There were five of us, Mr. Barton and his son Richard, and, besides me, two other hired men, Al, an inflexible Yankee transplanted from far down East, and Harry, a stalwart young Englishman of the grown-up “butcher’s boy” variety, whose “h’s” had grown to be a source of discomfort to him. We washed on the kitchen porch, and, contrary to the usual custom on the farms, we put on our coats before entering the dining-room, which is also the family sitting-room, where I had found Mrs. Barton and her daughters at work. The table was spread with clean linen, and a napkin was at each place. Mr. Barton said grace in the midst of a reverent silence, which continued while we began upon a meal abundant enough for a hungry man and dainty enough for a lady. After supper Harry and I went to fetch the cows, which had to be driven in from a pasture beyond a little river that flows through the farm. There were thirty-seven of them in all to be milked, but Miss Emily and Miss Julia lent a hand, so that it did not take long, and when the horses had been fed and their stalls made ready for the night, we men were free. In the dark, star-lit evening, which followed almost instantly upon the setting of the sun, we walked down to the river for the regular evening bath. It is early yet for sight of the past week in true perspective, but even now its events take form in memory with a certain natural sequence. With only one exception, clear, radiant summer days have followed one another, days begun for us at five o’clock and spent in the hay-fields when the chores were done and breakfast over. Long days they were, full of hard work in the heat of the meadows, but there was the refreshing cool of the house at mid-day, and a dinner excellent in itself but to our whetted appetites a keen physical delight. And better even than dinner was supper at the end of the day’s work in the fields, a delicious supper of cold meats and potatoes and home-made bread and milk and tea, and finally cake with strawberries from the garden. If anything could have been better than that it was when Richard and we three hired men took towels down to the river in the gloom of the early evening, and under the clear summer stars from the high embankment covered with soft turf, with the glitter of fire-flies all about us and the air full of the deep croaking of frogs and the sharp reiterations of the katydids, dove headlong into the dark, cool, flowing water. We swam about for a quarter of an hour and came out with scarcely a trace left in our muscles of the ache of the day’s labor and then went to bed to eight hours of deepest sleep.