"But," said I, "there's another version of that farm story."
"Not in the Bible?" he asked, now beginning to edge away, for it was not often that I could get him so near to books as this. Let me talk books with Joel Moore and the talk lags. Farming and neighboring are Joel's strong points, not books. He is a general farmer and a kind of universal neighbor (that being his specialty); on neighborhood and farm topics his mind is admirably full and clear.
"That other version is in the Bible, right along with the one you've been citing—just before it in Genesis."
He faced me squarely, a light of confidence in his eye, a ring of certainty, not to say triumph, in his tones:—
"You 're sure of that, Professor?"
"Reasonably."
"Well, I 'm not a college man, but I 've read the Bible. Let's go in and take a look at Holy Writ on farmin',"—leading the way with alacrity into the house.
"My father was a great Bible man down in Maine," he went on. "Let me raise a curtain. This was his," pointing to an immense family Bible, with hand-wrought clasps, that lay beneath the plush family album, also clasped, on a frail little table in the middle of the parlor floor.
The daylight came darkly through the thick muslin draperies at the window and fell in a faint line across the floor. An oval frame of hair-flowers hung on the wall opposite me—a somber wreath of immortelles for the departed—of the departed—black, brown, auburn, and grizzled-gray, with one touch (a calla lily, I think) of the reddest hair I ever beheld. In one corner of the room stood a closed cabinet organ; behind me, a tall base-burner, polished till it seemed to light the dimmest corners of the room. There was no fire in the stove; there was no air in the room, only the mingled breath of soot and the hair-flowers and the plush album and the stuffed blue jay under the bell-jar on the mantelpiece, and the heavy brass-clasped Bible. There was no coffin in the room; but Joel took up the Bible and handed it to me as if we were having a funeral.
"Read me that other account of Adam's farm," he said; "I can't see without my specs."