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Mr. Charles M. Crowell was counting his chickens when I arrived. He did not know whether I could stay the night or not; the old woman had the say on such subjects, and she had gone to see a sister. I said that I would go in and sit down to wait. The kitchen seemed the warm spot, and I snuggled up to the stove and was having a nice, comfortable time when my host dropped in and remarked that there was no fire in the stove. However, if I wanted one, it was no trouble, and soon there was a roaring blaze and I began to steam. When one has been sweating for hours it is a great comfort to sit close by a fire as the cool of evening comes on, although it seems quite evident that a good imagination can be a wonderful aid to comfort. As the poet has said: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Seven o’clock came and went and the better half of the Crowell family was still absent. I had in the meantime become intimate with two ginger cookies which, having been overbrowned in the making, were left on the kitchen table, but felt that a hard worker like myself could not live on ginger cookies alone, at least not on two, and made no attempt to disguise my joy when my hospitable friend supposed I would like something to eat. He made tea and gathered up various cold fragments of pie and cookies, bread and apple-sauce, and we did very well.