red-headed woodpecker sounded as faint as the memory of a
sound and the bark of the squirrels was elfin-thin. A hot crowded land,
crammed with undergrowth and overgrowth wherever a woodland stood; and
around every woodland dense cornfields; or, denser still, the leagues
of swaying hemp. The smell of this now lay heavy on the air, seeming to
be dragged hither and thither like a slow scum on the breeze, like a
moss on a sluggish pond. A deep robust land; and among its growths
he--this lad, in his way a self-unconscious human weed, the seed of his
kind borne in from far some generations back, but springing out of the
soil naturally now, sap of its sap, strength of its strength.

He paused by and by and passed his forefinger across his forehead,
brushing the sweat away from above his quiet eyes. He moistened the tip
of his thumb and slid it along the blade of his hemp hook--he was using
that for lack of a scythe. Turning, he walked back to the edge of the
brier thicket, sat down in the shade of a black walnut, threw off his
tattered head-gear, and, reaching for his bucket of water covered with
poke leaves, lifted it to his lips and drank deeply, gratefully. Then
he drew a whetstone from his pocket, spat on it, and fell to sharpening
his blade.

The heat of his work, the stifling air, the many-toned woods, the sense
of the vast summering land--these things were not in his thoughts. Some
days before, despatched from homestead to homestead, rumors had reached
him away off here at work on his father's farm, of a great university
to be opened the following autumn at Lexington. The like of it with its
many colleges Kentucky, the South, the Mississippi valley had never
seen. It had been the talk among the farming people in their harvest
fields, at the cross-roads, on their porches--the one deep sensation
among them since the war.

For solemn, heart-stirring as such tidings would have been at any other
time, more so at this. Here, on the tableland of this unique border
state, Kentucky--between the halves of the nation lately at
strife--scene of their advancing and retreating armies--pit of a
frenzied commonwealth--here was to arise this calm university, pledge
of the new times, plea for the peace and amity of learning, fresh
chance for study of the revelation of the Lord of Hosts and God of
battles. The animosities were over, the humanities re-begun.

Can you remember your youth well enough to be able to recall the time
when th