grass and leaves as to be invisible. We all come to be marked upon by
nature and dismissed--how carelessly!--as genera or species. And is it
not the primal struggle of man to escape classification, to form new
differentiations?

Sometimes--I confess it--when I see one passing in my road, I feel like
hailing him and saying:

"Friend, I am not all farmer. I, too, am a person; I am different and
curious. I am full of red blood, I like people, all sorts of people; if
you are not interested in me, at least I am intensely interested in you.
Come over now and let's talk!"

So we are all of us calling and calling across the incalculable gulfs
which separate us even from our nearest friends!

Once or twice this feeling has been so real to me that I've been near
to the point of hailing utter strangers--only to be instantly overcome
with a sense of the humorous absurdity of such an enterprise. So I laugh
it off and I say to myself:

"Steady now: the man is going to town to sell a pig; he is coming back
with ten pounds of sugar, five of salt pork, a can of coffee and some
new blades for his mowing machine. He hasn't time for talk"--and so I
come down with a bump to my digging, or hoeing, or chopping, or whatever
it is.

----Here I've left John Starkweather in my pasture while I remark to
the extent of a page or two that I didn't expect him to see me when he
went by.