"Well, I vum!" said he.

Here I have been wandering all around Horace's barn--in the
snow--getting at the story I really started to tell, which probably
supports Horace's conviction that I am an impractical and unsubstantial
person. If I had the true business spirit I should have gone by the
beaten road from my house to Horace's, borrowed the singletree I went
for, and hurried straight home. Life is so short when one is after
dollars! I should not have wallowed through the snow, nor stopped at the
top of the hill to look for a moment across the beautiful wintry
earth--gray sky and bare wild trees and frosted farmsteads with homely
smoke rising from the chimneys--I should merely have brought home a
singletree--and missed the glory of life! As I reflect upon it now, I
believe it took me no longer to go by the fields than by the road; and
I've got the singletree as securely with me as though I had not looked
upon the beauty of the eternal hills, nor reflected, as I tramped, upon
the strange ways of man.

Oh, my friend, is it the settled rule of life that we are to accept
nothing not expensive? It is not so settled for me; that which is
freest, cheapest, seems somehow more valuable than anything I pay for;
that which is given better than that which is bought; that which passes
between you and me in the glance of an eye, a touch of the hand, is
better than minted money!

I found Horace upon the March day I speak of just coming out of his new
fruit cellar. Horace is a progressive and energetic man, a leader in
this community, and the first to have a modern fruit cellar. By this
means he ministers profitably to that appetite of men which craves most
sharply that which is hardest to obtain: he supplies the world with