To me one of the finest passages in his recent book "Time and Change
" is one wherein he describes the look of repose and serenity of
his native hills, "as if the fret and fever of life were long since
passed with them." It is a passage in which he looks at his home
hills through the eye of the geologist, but with the vision of
the poet--the inner eye which assuredly yields him "the bliss
of solitude."
One evening as we sat in the kitchen at the old home, he described
the corn-shelling of the olden days: "I see the great splint basket
with the long frying-pan handle thrust through its ears across the
top, held down by two chairs on either end, and two of my brothers
sitting in the chairs and scraping the ears of corn against the
iron. I hear the kernels rattle, a shower of them falling in the
basket, with now and then one flying out in the room. With the
cobs that lie in a pile beside the basket I build houses, carrying
them up till they topple, or till one of the shelters knocks them
over. Mother is sitting by, sewing, her tallow dip hung on the
back of a chair. Winter reigns without. How it all comes up
before me!"
He remembers when four or five years old crying over a thing which
had caused him deep chagrin: A larger boy--"the meanest boy I ever
knew, and he became the meanest man," he said with spirit--"found
me sulking under a tree in the corner of the school-yard; he bribed
me with a slate pencil into confessing what I was crying about, but
as soon as I had told him, he ran away with the pencil, shouting my
secret to the other boys.
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