ost. We told him of the
mile-wide fields of the west, and enlarged upon the stoneless prairies
of Dakota. We described the broadcast seeders they used in Minnesota and
bragged of the amount of hay we could put up, and both of us professed a
contempt for two-wheeled carts. In the end we reduced our prospective
employer to humbleness. He consulted his wife a moment and then said,
"All right, boys, you may take hold."

We stayed with him two weeks and enjoyed every moment of our stay.

"Our expedition is successful," I wrote to my parents.

On Sundays we picked berries or went fishing or tumbled about the lawn.
It was all very beautiful and delightfully secure, so that when the time
came to part with our pleasant young boss and his bright and cheery
wife, we were as sorry as they.

"We must move on," I insisted. "There are other things to see."

After a short stay in Portland we took the train for Bethel, eager to
visit the town which our father had described so many times. We had
resolved to climb the hills on which he had gathered berries and sit on
the "Overset" from which he had gazed upon the landscape. We felt
indeed, a certain keen regret that he could not be with us.

At Locks Mills, we met his old playmates, Dennis and Abner Herrick, men
bent of form and dim of eye, gnarled and knotted by their battle with
the rocks and barren hillsides, and to them we, confident lads, with our
tales of smooth and level plow-lands, must have seemed like denizens
from some farmers' paradise,--or perhaps they thought us fictionists. I
certainly put a powerful emphasis on the pleasant side of western life
at that time.

Dennis especially looked upon us with amazement, almost with awe. To
think that we, unaided and alone, had wandered so far and dared so much,
while he, in all his life, had not been able to visit Boston, was
bewildering. This static condition of the population was a constant
source of wonder to us. How could people stay all their lives in one
place? Must be something the matter with them.--Their ox-teams and
tipcarts amused us, their stony fields appalled us, their restricted,
parsimonious lives saddened us, and so, not wishing to be a burden, we
decided to cut our stay short.

On the afternoon of our last day, Abner took us on a tramp over the
country, pointing out the paths "where Dick and I played," tracing the
lines of the old farm, which had long since been given over to pasture,
and so to the trout broo