r of the work, for in this curiously
conservative country the American improvement of the double curved
handle has not yet been adopted. Chip after chip fell in the ditch, or
went spinning out into the field. The axe rose and fell with a slow,
monotonous motion. Though there was immense strength in every blow,
there was no vigour in it. Suddenly, while it was swinging in the air
overhead, there came the faint, low echo of a distant railway whistle,
and the axe was dropped at once, without even completing the blow.
"That's the express," he muttered, and began cleaning the dirt from his
shoes. The daily whistle of the express was the signal for luncheon.
Hastily throwing on a slop hung on the bushes, and over that a coat, he
picked up a small bag, and walked slowly off down the side of the hedge
to where the highway road went by. Here he sat down, somewhat sheltered
by a hawthorn bush, in the ditch, facing the road, and drew out his
bread and cheese.

About a quarter of a loaf of bread, or nearly, and one slice of cheese
was this full-grown and powerful man's dinner that cold, raw winter's
day. His drink was a pint of cold weak tea, kept in a tin can, for these
men are moderate enough with liquor at their meals, whatever they may be
at other times. He held the bread in his left hand and the cheese was
placed on it, and kept in its place by the thumb, the grimy dirt on
which was shielded by a small piece of bread beneath it from the
precious cheese. His plate and dish was his broad palm, his only
implement a great jack-knife with a buck-horn handle. He ate slowly,
thoughtfully, deliberately; weighing each mouthful, chewing the cud as
it were. All the man's motions were heavy and slow, deadened as if
clogged with a great load. There was no "life" in him. What little
animation there was left had taken him to eat his dinner by the
roadside--the instinct of sociality--that if possible he might exchange
a word with some one passing. In factories men work in gangs, and
hundreds are often within call of each other; a rough joke or an
occasional question can be put and answered; there is a certain amount
of sympathy, a sensation of company and companionship. But alone in the
fields, the human instinct of friendship is checked, the man is driven
back upon himself and his own narrow range of thought, till the mind and
heart grow dull, and there only remains such a vague ill-defined want as
carried John Smith to the roadside that day