as they? But I had come from another community, had crossed a state line
and the lines of several counties, and besides I took to myself the
credit of having read many a cunning book, and therefore these people
were surely more simple than I. Traveling unquestionably gathers
knowledge, but the man who reads has ever a feeling that he is the
proper critic of the man who has simply observed.

Mrs. Jucklin gave me a strong grasp of welcome, apologized for the lack
of order that I must surely find in the house and conducted me to the
sitting-room, a large apartment, with a home-woven carpet on the floor.
A turkey wing, used for a fan, hung beside the enormous fire-place, and
on the broad mantelpiece, trimmed with paper cut in scollops, an old
Yankee clock was ticking. The woman shook a cat out of a hickory rocking
chair and urged me to sit down. She knew that I must be tired after my
long ride, and she said that if I would only excuse her for a moment she
would go down to the spring-house and get me a glass of milk, to give me
strength wherewith to wait until she could stir about and get something
to eat. And above all, I must pardon Limuel's abruptness of manner. But
really he meant nothing by it, as I would find out when I should become
better acquainted with him. She was a little, black-eyed woman,
doubtless a descendant of a Dutch family that had come to the colony at
an early date, for she reminded me of my mother, and I know that
mother's grandfather was a Dutchman. I begged Mrs. Jucklin not to go
after the milk, but she ran away almost with the lightness of a girl. In
truth, to think of the milk made me shudder; I couldn't bear the thought
of it. During the hard times at the close of the war, when I was a
child, we had to drink rye coffee, and I remember that once the cows got
into the rye field and gave rye milk. The coffee and the milk together
had made me sick, and ever since then I had looked upon milk with a
reminiscent horror. But there she came with it.

"My dear madam," I pleaded, "I would much rather not drink it."

"Oh, but you must, for I know you are tired out."

"But I don't drink milk."

"And it is because you can't find any like this. Just taste it, then."

The old man came stalking into the room and I gave him an appealing
look. "I gad, Susan," said he, "let him alone. Don't you reckon he's
got sense enough to know what he wants? Take the stuff away."

With a sigh of disappointment she placed