Adventures in Contentment | Page 5

a finer one. I could not think of cutting it.
HORACE: It will bring you fifteen or twenty dollars cash in hand.
MYSELF: But I rather have the oak.
HORACE: Humph.
So our conversation continued for some time. I let Horace know that I
preferred rail fences, even old ones, to a wire fence, and that I thought a
farm should not be too large, else it might keep one away from his

friends. And what, I asked, is corn compared with a friend? Oh, I grew
really oratorical! I gave it as my opinion that there should be vines
around the house (Waste of time, said Horace), and that no farmer
should permit anyone to paint medicine advertisements on his barn
(Brings you ten dollars a year, said Horace), and that I proposed to fix
the bridge on the lower road (What's a path-master for? asked Horace).
I said that a town was a useful adjunct for a farm; but I laid it down as a
principle that no town should be too near a farm. I finally became so
enthusiastic in setting forth my conceptions of a true farm that I
reduced Horace to a series of humphs. The early humphs were
incredulous, but as I proceeded, with some joy, they became
humorously contemptuous, and finally began to voice a large,
comfortable, condescending tolerance. I could fairly feel Horace
growing superior as he sat there beside me. Oh, he had everything in
his favour. He could prove what he said: One tree + one thicket =
twenty dollars. One landscape = ten cords of wood = a quarter-acre of
corn = twenty dollars. These equations prove themselves. Moreover,
was not Horace the "best off" of any farmer in the country? Did he not
have the largest barn and the best corn silo? And are there better
arguments?
Have you ever had anyone give you up as hopeless? And is it not a
pleasure? It is only after people resign you to your fate that you really
make friends of them. For how can you win the friendship of one who
is trying to convert you to his superior beliefs?
As we talked, then, Horace and I, I began to have hopes of him. There
is no joy comparable to the making of a friend, and the more resistant
the material the greater the triumph. Baxter, the carpenter, says that
when he works for enjoyment he chooses curly maple.
When Horace set me down at my gate that afternoon he gave me his
hand and told me that he would look in on me occasionally, and that if I
had any trouble to let him know.
A few days later I heard by the roundabout telegraph common in
country neighbourhoods that Horace had found a good deal of fun in
reporting what I said about farming and that he had called me by a

highly humorous but disparaging name. Horace has a vein of humour
all his own. I have caught him alone in his fields chuckling to himself,
and even breaking out in a loud laugh at the memory of some amusing
incident that happened ten years ago. One day, a month or more after
our bargain, Horace came down across his field and hitched his
jean-clad leg over my fence, with the intent, I am sure, of delving a
little more in the same rich mine of humour.
"Horace," I said, looking him straight in the eye, "did you call me
an--Agriculturist!"
I have rarely seen a man so pitifully confused as Horace was at that
moment. He flushed, he stammered, he coughed, the perspiration broke
out on his forehead. He tried to speak and could not. I was sorry for
him.
"Horace," I said, "you're a Farmer."
We looked at each other a moment with dreadful seriousness, and then
both of us laughed to the point of holding our sides. We slapped our
knees, we shouted, we wriggled, we almost rolled with merriment.
Horace put out his hand and we shook heartily. In five minutes I had
the whole story of his humorous reports out of him.
No real friendship is ever made without an initial clashing which
discloses the metal of each to each. Since that day Horace's jean-clad
leg has rested many a time on my fence and we have talked crops and
calves. We have been the best of friends in the way of whiffle-trees,
butter tubs and pig killings--but never once looked up together at the
sky.
The chief objection to a joke in the country is that it is so imperishable.
There is so much room for jokes and so few jokes to fill it. When I see
Horace approaching with a peculiar, friendly, reminiscent smile on his
face I hasten with all