Adventures in Contentment | Page 4

intrusion upon my property. Intrusion: and the
Professor! It is now unthinkable. I often passed the Carpentry Shop on
my way to town. I saw Baxter many times at his bench. Even then
Baxter's eyes attracted me: he always glanced up at me as I passed, and
his look had in it something of a caress. So the home of Starkweather,
standing aloof among its broad lawns and tall trees, carried no meaning
for me.
Of all my neighbours, Horace is the nearest. From the back door of my
house, looking over the hill, I can see the two red chimneys of his home,
and the top of the windmill. Horace's barn and corn silo are more
pretentious by far than his house, but fortunately they stand on lower
ground, where they are not visible from my side of the hill. Five
minutes' walk in a straight line across the fields brings me to Horace's
door; by the road it takes at least ten minutes.
In the fall after my arrival I had come to love the farm and its
surroundings so much that I decided to have it for my own. I did not
look ahead to being a farmer. I did not ask Harriet's advice. I found
myself sitting one day in the justice's office. The justice was bald and

as dry as corn fodder in March. He sat with spectacled impressiveness
behind his ink-stained table. Horace hitched his heel on the round of his
chair and put his hat on his knee. He wore his best coat and his hair was
brushed in deference to the occasion. He looked uncomfortable, but
important. I sat opposite him, somewhat overwhelmed by the business
in hand. I felt like an inadequate boy measured against solemnities too
large for him. The processes seemed curiously unconvincing, like a
game in which the important part is to keep from laughing; and yet
when I thought of laughing I felt cold chills of horror. If I had laughed
at that moment I cannot think what that justice would have said! But it
was a pleasure to have the old man read the deed, looking at me over
his spectacles from time to time to make sure I was not playing truant.
There are good and great words in a deed. One of them I brought away
with me from the conference, a very fine, big one, which I love to have
out now and again to remind me of the really serious things of life. It
gives me a peculiar dry, legal feeling. If I am about to enter upon a
serious bargain, like the sale of a cow, I am more avaricious if I work
with it under my tongue.
Hereditaments! Hereditaments!
Some words need to be fenced in, pig-tight, so that they cannot escape
us; others we prefer to have running at large, indefinite but inclusive. I
would not look up that word for anything: I might find it fenced in so
that it could not mean to me all that it does now.
Hereditaments! May there be many of them--or it!
Is it not a fine Providence that gives us different things to love? In the
purchase of my farm both Horace and I got the better of the
bargain--and yet neither was cheated. In reality a fairly strong lantern
light will shine through Horace, and I could see that he was hugging
himself with the joy of his bargain; but I was content. I had some
money left--what more does anyone want after a bargain?--and I had
come into possession of the thing I desired most of all. Looking at
bargains from a purely commercial point of view, someone is always
cheated, but looked at with the simple eye both seller and buyer always
win.

We came away from the gravity of that bargaining in Horace's wagon.
On our way home Horace gave me fatherly advice about using my farm.
He spoke from the height of his knowledge to me, a humble beginner.
The conversation ran something like this:
HORACE: Thar's a clump of plum trees along the lower pasture fence.
Perhaps you saw 'm----
MYSELF: I saw them: that is one reason I bought the back pasture. In
May they will be full of blossoms.
HORACE: They're wild plums: they ain't good for nothing.
MYSELF: But think how fine they will be all the year round.
HORACE: Fine! They take up a quarter-acre of good land. I've been
going to cut 'em myself this ten years.
MYSELF: I don't think I shall want them cut out.
HORACE: Humph.
After a pause:
HORACE: There's a lot of good body cord-wood in that oak on the
knoll.
MYSELF: Cord-wood! Why, that oak is the treasure of the whole farm,
I have never seen