to whom
I discoursed loftily on the value of "bulges" and the advantages of the
stack over the rick.

No sooner was the stacking ended than the dreaded task of plowing began
for Burton and John and me. Every morning while our fathers and the
hired men shouldered their forks and went away to help some neighbor
thrash--("changing works") we drove our teams into the field, there to
plod round and round in solitary course. Here I acquired the feeling
which I afterward put into verse--

A lonely task it is to plow!
All day the black and shining soil
Rolls like a ribbon from the mold-board's
Glistening curve. All day the horses toil,
Battling with savage flies, and strain
Their creaking single-trees. All day
The crickets peer from wind-blown stacks of grain.

Franklin's job was almost as lonely. He was set to herd the cattle on
the harvested stubble and keep them out of the corn field. A little
later, in October, when I was called to take my place as corn-husker, he
was promoted to the plow. Our only respite during the months of October
and November was the occasional cold rain which permitted us to read or
play cards in the kitchen.

Cards! I never look at a certain type of playing card without
experiencing a return of the wonder and the guilty joy with which I
bought of Metellus Kirby my first "deck," and slipped it into my pocket.
There was an alluring oriental imaginative quality in the drawing on the
face cards. They brought to me vague hints of mad monarchs, desperate
stakes, and huge sudden rewards. All that I had heard or read of
Mississippi gamblers came back to make those gaudy bits of pasteboard
marvellous.

My father did not play cards, hence, although I had no reason to think
he would forbid them to me, I took a fearsome joy in assuming his bitter
opposition. For a time my brother and I played in secret, and then one
day, one cold bleak day as we were seated on the floor of the granary
playing on an upturned half-bushel measure, shivering with the chill,
our fingers numb and blue, the door opened and father looked in.

We waited, while his round, eagle-gray eyes took in the situation and it
seemed a long, terrifying interval, then at last he mildly said, "I
guess you'd better go in and play by the stove. This isn't very
comfortable."

Stunned by this unexpected concession, I gathered up the cards, and as I
took my way to the house, I thought deeply. The meaning of that quie