buzzing in the sun and the chickens rubbing up and down in the dust.  First thing you know I’ll sell half a dozen books that put the love of life into them, and they don’t forget Parnassus in a hurry.  Take O. Henry, for instance—­there isn’t anybody so dog-gone sleepy that he won’t enjoy that man’s stories.  He understood life, you bet, and he could write it down with all its little twists.  I’ve spent an evening reading O. Henry and Wilkie Collins to people and had them buy out all their books I had and clamour for more.”

“What do you do in winter?” I asked—­a practical question, as most of mine are.

“That depends on where I am when bad weather sets in,” said Mr. Mifflin.  “Two winters I was down south and managed to keep Parnassus going all through the season.  Otherwise, I just lay up wherever I am.  I’ve never found it hard to get lodging for Peg and a job for myself, if I had to have them.  Last winter I worked in a bookstore in Boston.  Winter before, I was in a country drugstore down in Pennsylvania.  Winter before that, I tutored a couple of small boys in English literature.  Winter before that, I was a steward on a steamer; you see how it goes.  I’ve had a fairly miscellaneous experience.  As far as I can see, a man who’s fond of books never need starve!  But this winter I’m planing to live with my brother in Brooklyn and slog away at my book.  Lord, how I’ve pondered over that thing!  Long summer afternoons I’ve sat here, jogging along in the dust, thinking it out until it seemed as if my forehead would burst.  You see, my idea is that the common people—­in the country, that is—­never have had any chance to get hold of books, and never have had any one to explain what books can mean.  It’s all right for college presidents to draw up their five-foot shelves of great literature, and for the publishers to advertise sets of their Linoleum Classics, but what the people need is the good, homely, honest stuff—­something that’ll stick to their ribs—­make them laugh and tremble and feel sick to think of the littleness of this popcorn ball spinning in space without ever even getting a hot-box!  And something that’ll spur ’em on to keep the hearth well swept and the wood pile split into kindling and the dishes washed and dried and put away.  Any one who can get the country people to read something worth while is doing his nation a real service.  And that’s what this caravan of culture aspires to....  You must be weary of this harangue!  Does the Sage of Redfield ever run on like that?”

“Not to me,” I said.  “He’s known me so long that he thinks of me as a kind of animated bread-baking and cake-mixing machine.  I guess he doesn’t put much stock in my judgment in literary matters.  But he puts his digestion in my hands without reserve.  There’s Mason’s farm over there.  I guess we’d better sell them some books—­hadn’t we?  Just for a starter.”

We turned into the lane that runs up to the Mason farmhouse.  Bock trotted on ahead—­very stiff on his legs and his tail gently wagging—­to interview the mastiff, and Mrs. Mason who was sitting on the porch, peeling potatoes, laid down the pan.  She’s a big, buxom woman with jolly, brown eyes like a cow’s.