Having finished his luncheon he went down to the brook and got a drink, and then sat down comfortably with his back among the ferns of the roadside, crossed his legs, and lit his pipe. There was a healthy and wholesome flush in his face, and as he blew off the first cloud of smoke he drew a sigh of complete comfort and looked around at me with a lordly air such as few monarchs, no matter how well fed, could have bettered. He had worked and sweat for what he got, and was now taking his ease in his roadside inn. I wonder sometimes if anybody in the world experiences keener joys than unwatched common people.
How we talked! From pugilists we proceeded to telephones, and from that to wages, hours, and strikes, and from that we leaped easily to Alaska and gold-mining, and touched in passing upon Theodore Roosevelt.
“I was just thinking,” I said, “that you and I can enjoy some things that were beyond the reach of the greatest kings of the world.”
“How's that?” said he.
“Why, Napoleon never saw a telephone nor talked through one.”
“That's so!” he laughed.
“And Caesar couldn't have dreamed that such a thing as you are doing now was a possibility—nor George Washington, either.”
“Say, that's so. I never thought o' that.”
“Why,” I said, “the world is only half as big as it was before you fellows came along stringing your wires! I can get to town now from my farm in two minutes, when it used to take me an hour.”
I really believe I gave him more of his own business than ever he had before, for he listened so intently that his pipe went out.