aking with, for
all the hankering after knowledge they have."

"Oh!" said Jone, and that was all he did say, which was very wise in
him, for, considering my state of feelings, his case was like a
fish-hook in your finger--the more you pull and worry at it the harder
it is to get out.

That evening, when I was quite cooled down, and we was talking to Mr.
Poplington about the hay-making and the free-and-easy way in which
everybody came together, he was a good deal surprised that we should
think that there was anything uncommon in that, coming from a country
where everybody was free and equal. Jone was smoking his pipe, and when
it draws well and he's had a good dinner and I haven't anything
particular to say, he often likes to talk slow and preach little
sermons.

"Yes, sir," said he, after considering the matter a little while,
"according to the Constitution of the United States we are all free and
equal, but there's a good many things the Constitution doesn't touch
on, and one of them is the sorting out and sizing up of the population.
Now, you people over here are like the metal types that the printers
use. You've all got your letters on one end of you, and you know just
where you belong, and if you happen to be knocked into 'pi' and mixed
all up in a pile it is easy enough to pick you out and put you all in
your proper cases; but it's different with us. According to the
Constitution we're like a lot of carpet-tacks, one just the same as
another, though in fact we're not alike, and it would not be easy if we
got mixed up, say in a hayfield, to get ourselves all sorted out again
according to the breadth of our heads and the sharpness of our points,
so we don't like to do too much mixing, don't you see?" To which Mr.
Poplington said he didn't see, and then I explained to him that what
Jone meant was that though in our country we was all equally free, it
didn't do for us to be as freely equal as the people are sometimes over
here, to which Mr. Poplington said, "Really!" but he didn't seem to be
standing in the glaring sunlight of convincement. But the shade is
often pleasant to be in, and he wound up by saying, as he bid us
good-night, that he thought it would be a great deal better for us, if
we had classes at all, to have them marked out plain, and stamped so
that there could be no mistake; to which I said that if we did that the
most of the mistakes would come in the sorting, which, according to my
reading of books