his wood so carefully that the
neighbors passing call out and ask him if he "intends to varnish it."
He mends everything that needs it, and is glad when he finds a picket
off the fence. He tries to read the _Farmers' Advocate_. They brought
in a year's number of them that they had never got time to read on the
farm. Someway, they have lost their charm. It seems so lazy in broad
daylight for a grown man to sit down and read. He takes a walk
downtown, and meets up with some idle men like himself. They sit on
the sidewalk and settle the government and the church and various
things.

"Well, I must be gittin'!" at last he declares; then suddenly he
remembers that he has nothing to do at home--everything is done to a
finish--and a queer, detached feeling comes over him. He is no longer
needed anywhere.

Somebody is asking him to come in for a drink, and he goes! Why
shouldn't he have a drink or anything else that he wants, he asks
himself. He has worked hard. He'll take two. He'll go even further,
he'll treat the crowd. When he finally goes home and sleeps it off, he
finds he has spent $1.05, and he is repentant.

That night a young lady calls, selling tickets for a concert, and his
wife would have bought them, but he says: "Go slow, Minnie, you can't
buy everything. It's awful the way money goes in town. We'll see
about this concert--maybe we'll go, but we won't buy tickets--it might
rain!"

They do not buy the tickets--neither do they go. Minnie does not care
much about going out. She has stayed in too long. But he continues to
sit on the sidewalk, and he hears many things.

Sometimes people have attributed to women the habit of gossiping, but
the idle men, who sit on the sidewalks of the small towns or tilt back
in the yellow round-back chairs on the hotel verandas, can blacken more
characters to the hour than any other class of human beings. He hears
all the putrid stories of the little town; they are turned over and
discussed in all their obnoxious details. At first, he is repelled by
them, for he is a decent fellow, this man who put in the lilacs and the
raspberry bushes back there on the farm. He objects to the remarks
that are passed about the women who go by, and he says so, and he and
one of the other men have "words."

The bartender hears it and comes out and settles it by inviting
everyone in to have "one on the house."

That brings back good-fellowship, and everyone treats. He sees