“You’re a queer one!” he’d say, and then add sometimes, dryly, “but there’s one crop ye don’t git, David,” and he’d tap his pocket where he carries his fat, worn, leather pocket-book.  “And as fer feelin’s, it can’t be beat.”

So many people have the curious idea that the only thing the world desires enough to pay its hard money for is that which can be seen or eaten or worn.  But there never was a greater mistake.  While men will haggle to the penny over the price of hay, or fight for a cent more to the bushel of oats, they will turn out their very pockets for strange, intangible joys, hopes, thoughts, or for a moment of peace in a feverish world the unknown great possessions.

So it was that one day, some months afterward, when we had been thus bantering each other with great good humour, I said to him: 

“Horace, how much did you get for your hay this year?”

“Off that one little piece,” he replied, “I figger fifty-two dollars.”

“Well, Horace,” said I, “I have beaten you.  I got more out of it this year than you did.”

“Oh, I know what you mean——­”

“No, Horace, you don’t.  This time I mean just what you do:  money, cash, dollars.”

“How’s that, now?”

“Well, I wrote a little piece about your field, and the wind in the grass, and the hedges along the fences, and the weeds among the timothy, and the fragrance of it all in June and sold it last week——­” I leaned over toward Horace and whispered behind my hand—­in just the way he tells me the price he gets for his pigs.

“What!” he exclaimed.

Horace had long known that I was “a kind of literary feller,” but his face was now a study in astonishment.

“What?”

Horace scratched his head, as he is accustomed to do when puzzled, with one finger just under the rim of his hat.

“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!