he chickens? I jest know you forgot the coffee, as if
I could go all day without it. I never seed the like. Folks air gittin'
mo' an' mo' keerless every day. Of co'se you could put in the
pickels--had to do that to leave the coffee out. Now what prompted you
to do that?"

"Do what, mother?"

"Why, leave that coffee out?"

"It's in the basket."

"Then why did you tell me you didn't fetch it? What do you want to
torment a body fur? Now, Jasper, whut air you a settin' up here fur, a
shakin' like a lump o' calf-foot jelly? You give me the fidgits."

"Wall, thar won't be nobody a laughin' now putty soon," said Jasper. "I
kin see right now that these steers air goin' to run off inter the
creek."

"They ain't a goin' to do no sich of a thing, an' you know it. Miz
Mayfield, did you ever see sich carryin's-on?"

"I have never experienced a more delightful drive, Mrs. Starbuck. We
read of the beautiful past, and it seems to me that to-day I have been
permitted to live a hundred years ago. A hundred! Five hundred, and
should not be surprised to see a troop of knights come galloping down
the glen, with armor flashing and with poetic war-cries on their lips.
Were you thinking of that, Mr. Reverend?"

"No, ma'm. I was thinking of the men, clothed in skins and with
shepherd's crooks in their hands, carrying the gospel to the barbarians
of old."

"And I was thinking," said Tom, "of old Daniel Boone, with his
flint-lock rifle, going to Kentucky. And what were your thoughts, Miss
Lou?"

"I wasn't thinkin'--I was just a livin', that's all. Sometimes what a
blessin' it is jest to breathe. I reckon we are the happiest when we
don't have to think, when we jest set still and let things drift along
like the leaf that's a floatin' down the river."

"Very pretty, my dear," Mrs. Mayfield replied. "Thought is not
happiness, though bliss may not lie wholly in ignorance. I should think
that the happiness most nearly perfect is the half-unconscious rest of
a thoughtful mind--the sound sleep of the strong."

"That's all very well," said Old Jasper, waving his long lash over the
steers. "But you can't gauge happiness, and half the time you can't tell
what fetches it about. Some days you find yo'se'f miserable when thar
ain't nuthin' happened, an' the next day, when still nuthin' has tuck
place to change things, you find yo'se'f happy. If you kin do a little
suthin' to help a po' body along--an' do it, mind you, without thinkin'
that yo