the little boy, this wonderful man knew. The very language that he
used when talking about horses was a language full of strange, hard,
words, the meaning of which was hidden from the childish worshiper of
wisdom. Such words as "ringbone" and "spavin" and "heaves" and
"stringhalt" and "pastern" and "stifle" and "wethers" and "girth" and
"hock," to the boy, seemed to establish, beyond all question, the
intellectual greatness of the one who used them just as words of many
syllables sometimes fix for older children the position on the
intellectual heights of those who use them. "Chiaroscuro,"
"cheiropterous," "eschatology," and the "unearned increment"--who, in
the common, every day, grown up, world, would dare question the
artistic, scientific, religious, or political, knowledge of one who
could talk like that?

Nor did the intellectual strength of this wise one of the Yesterdays
exhaust itself with the scientific knowledge of horses. He was equally
at home in the co-ordinate sciences of cows and pigs and chickens.
Again the boy stood in the cow shed laboratory and watched, with
childish wonder, the demonstration of the master's superior wisdom as
the white streams poured into the tinkling milk pail. How did he do
it--wondered the boy--where did this wizard in overalls and hickory
shirt and tattered straw hat acquire his marvelous scientific skill?

In the garden, the orchard, or the field, it was the same. No secret
of nature was hidden from this learned one. He knew whether potatoes
should be planted in the dark or light of the moon: whether next
winter would be "close" or "open": whether the coming season would be
"early" or "late": whether next summer would be "wet" or "dry." Always
he could tell, days ahead, whether it would rain or if the weather
would be fair. With a peach tree twig he could tell where to dig for