farm of a rich farmer near by, taking his place with the negroes.

There is little art in breaking hemp. He soon had the knack of
that: his muscles were toughened already. He learned what it was
sometimes to eat his dinner in the fields, warming it, maybe, on
the coals of a stump set on fire near his brake; to bale his hemp
at nightfall and follow the slide or wagon to the barn; there to
wait with the negroes till it was weighed on the steelyards; and at
last, with muscles stiff and sore, throat husky with dust, to
stride away rapidly over the bitter darkening land to other work
awaiting him at home.

Had there been call to do this before the war, it might not have
been done. But now men young and old, who had never known what work
was, were replacing their former slaves. The preexisting order had
indeed rolled away like a scroll; and there was the strange fresh
universal stir of humanity over the land like the stir of nature in
a boundless wood under a new spring firmament He was one of a
multitude of new toilers; but the first in his neighborhood, and
alone in his grim choice of work.

So dragged that winter through. When spring returned, he did
better. With his father's approval, he put in some acres for
himself--sowed it, watched it, prayed for it; in summer cut it;
with hired help stacked it in autumn; broke it himself the winter
following; sold it the next spring; and so found in his pocket the
sorely coveted money.

This was increased that summer from the sale of cord wood, through
driblets saved by his father and mother; and when, autumn once more