his way of handling a crutch, all his tricks of
speech and conduct as though he had just left the room. And I can think of
nothing more beautiful than that a useful man who has faced the world for
seventy years and has done his part, should come back in his old age to the
nursery and be the playfellow of his grandchildren.

But the best holiday was a trip to the farm.

This farm--to which in our slow trot we have been so long a time in
coming--lay for a mile on the upper land, and its grain fields and pastures
looked down into the valley. The buildings, however, were set close to the
road and fixed their interest on such occasional wagons as creaked by. A
Switzer occupied the farm, who owned, in addition to the more immediate
members of his family, a cuckoo clock whose weights hung on long cords
which by Saturday night reached almost to the floor. When I have sat at his
table, I have neglected cheese and the lesser foods, when the hour came
near, in order not to miss the cuckoo's popping out. And in the duller
spaces, when the door was shut, I have fancied it sitting in the dark and
counting the minutes to itself.

The Switzer's specialty was the making of a kind of rubber cheese which one
could learn to like in time. Of the processes of its composition, I can
remember nothing except that when it was in the great press the whey ran
from its sides, but this may be common to all cheeses. I was once given a
cup of this whey to drink and I brightened, for until it was in my mouth,
I thought it was buttermilk. Beyond was the spring-house with cans of milk
set in the cool water and with a trickling sound beneath the boards. From
the spring-house there started those mysterious cow-paths that led down
into the great gorge that cut the farm. Here were places so deep that only
a bit of the sky showed and here the stones were damp. It was a place that
seemed to lie nearer to the confusion when the world was made, and rocks
lay piled as though a first purpose had been broken off. And to follow a
cow-path, regardless of where it led, was, in those days, the essence of
hazard; though all the while from the pastures up above there came the flat
safe tinkling of the bells.

The apple orchard--where Dolly was stung by the bee--was set on a fine
breezy place at the brow of the hill with the valley in full sight. The
trees themselves were old and decayed, but they were gnarled and crotched
for easy climbing. And the apples--in particula