Adventures in Contentment

("What is a farmer doing quoting Tolstoi!" remarked his countenance--though he said not a word.) "In the kingdom of Ivan, you remember," I said, "it was the rule that whoever had hard places on his hands came to table, but whoever had not must eat what the others left." Thus I led him up to the back steps and poured him a basin of hot water--which I brought myself from the kitchen, Harriet having marvellously and completely disappeared. We both washed our hands, talking with great good humour. When we had finished I said: "Sit down, friend, if you've time, and let's talk." So he sat down on one of the logs of my woodpile: a solid sort of man, rather warm after his recent activities. He looked me over with some interest and, I thought, friendliness. "Why does a man like you," he asked finally, "waste himself on a little farm back here in the country?" For a single instant I came nearer to being angry than I have been for a long time. Waste myself! So we are judged without knowledge. I had a sudden impulse to demolish him (if I could) with the nearest sarcasms I could lay hand to. He was so sure of himself! "Oh well," I thought, with vainglorious superiority, "he doesn't know," So I said: "What would you have me be--a millionnaire?" He smiled, but with a sort of sincerity. "You might be," he said: "who can tell!" I laughed outright: the humour of it struck me as delicious. Here I had been, ever since I first heard of John Starkweather, rather gloating over him as a poor suffering millionnaire (of course millionnaires are unhappy), and there he sat, ruddy of face and hearty of body, pitying me for a poor unfortunate farmer back here in the country! Curious, this human nature of ours, isn't it? But how infinitely beguiling!