Autumn | Page 8

tumbled-down wooden fence, and old Mr. Crabbe against the other.
"This year," said Farmer Barly, "I'm going to put up a silo in my barn. And instead of straw to cover it, I'm going to plant oats on top."
"Go along," said Mr. Crabbe.
"Well, it's a fact," said Mr. Barly. "I'm building now, back of the cows."
"Digging, you might say," corrected Mr. Crabbe.
"Building, by God," said Mr. Barly.
Mr. Crabbe tilted back his head and cast a look of wonder at the sky. "A hole is a hole," he said finally.
"So it is," agreed Mr. Barly, "so it is. It takes a Republican to find that out." And, greatly amused at his own wit, Mr. Barly, who was a Democrat, slapped his knee and burst out laughing.
"Yes, sir," said Mr. Crabbe solemnly, with pious joy, "I'm a Republican . . . a good Republican, Mr. Barly, like my father before me." He smote his fist into his open palm. "I'll vote the Democrats blue in the face. If a man can't vote for his own advantage, what's the ballot for? I say let's mind our own business. And let me get my hands on what I want."
"Get what you can," said Mr. Barly.
"And the devil take the hindmost."
"It's all the same to me," quoth Mr. Barly, "folks being mostly alike as two peas."
Mr. Crabbe spat into the stubble. "The way I look at it," he said, "it's like this: first, there's me; and then there's you. That's the way I look at it, Mr. B."
And he went home to repeat to his wife what he had said to Farmer Barly. "I gave it to him," he declared.
In another field, Abner and John Henry, who had been to war, also discussed politics. They agreed that the pay they received for their work was inadequate. It seemed to them to be the fault of the government, which was run for the benefit of others besides themselves.
That afternoon, Mr. Jeminy, with Boethius under his arm, came into Frye's General Store, to buy a box of matches for Mrs. Grumble. As he paid for them, he said to Thomas Frye, who had been his pupil in school: "These little sticks of wood need only a good scratch to confuse me, for a moment, with the God of Genesis. But they also encourage Mrs. Grumble to burn, before I come down in the morning, the bits of paper on which I like to scribble my notes."
At that moment, old Mrs. Ploughman entered the store to buy a paper of pins. "Well," she cried, "don't keep me waiting all day." But when Mr. Jeminy was gone, she said to Thomas Frye, "I guess I don't want any pins. What was it I wanted?"
Presently she went home again, without having bought anything. "It's all the fault of that old man," she said to herself; "he mixes a body up so."
On his way home Mr. Jeminy passed, at the edge of the village, the little cottage where the widow Wicket lived with her daughter. Seeing Mrs. Wicket in the garden, he stopped to wave his hand. Under her bonnet, the young woman looked up at him, her plain, thin face flushed with her efforts in the garden patch. "I've never seen such weeds," she cried. "You'd think . . . I don't know what you'd think. They grow and grow . . ."
Mr. Jeminy went up the hill toward his house, carrying the box of matches. As he walked, the little white butterflies, which danced above the road, kept him company; and all about him, in the meadows, among the daisies, the beetles, wasps, bees, and crickets, with fifes, flutes, drums, and triangles, were singing joyously together the Canticle of the Sun:
"Praised be the Lord God with all his creatures, but especially our brother, the sun . . . fair he is, and shines, with a very great splendor . . .
"Praised be the Lord for our sister, the moon, and for the stars, which he has set clear and lovely in heaven.
". . . (and) for our brother, the wind, and for air and cloud, calm and all weather . . .
". . . (and) for our mother, the earth, which does sustain us and keep us . . .
"Praised be the Lord for all those who pardon one another . . . and who endure weakness and tribulation; blessed are they who peaceably shall endure . . ."
Slowly, to the tonkle of herds in pasture, the crowing of cocks, and the thin, clear clang of the smithy, the full sun sank in the west. For a time all was quiet, as night, the shadow of the earth, crept between man and God.
After supper Thomas Frye, in his father's wagon, went to call on Anna Barly.
From her porch where she