"Fire ahead!" said I. "And thank you for calling me a young man. I've been feeling a trifle old for a couple of days."
"Well, you are young compared to me," he said. "I'm eighty."
"Good Lord!" said I. "You don't look over sixty, anyhow."
"No," he smiled, "I don't—but that's Ioway. I've been farmin' out here for nigh onto seventy years, and we're all too busy to grow old. We live forever in Ioway. It's the grandest country on the footstool."
I didn't feel at all inclined to dispute him, considering his more than six feet of towering height, the fresh, healthful hardness of his weather-beaten face, the breadth of his shoulders, and depth of his chest. I contented myself with agreeing with him. And I didn't have to work hard to do that, either; for I have known magnificent Iowa as a most salubrious State for many years.
"Well, you see, sir," I said, "we can't all pick out our birthplaces. I was born in New York through no choice of my own. Some are born at birthplaces, some achieve birthplaces, and others have birthplaces thrust upon them—which last was my case."
"Same here," said he. "I was born in Ohier; but my folks moved out here when I was a babby. I've lived here ever since—and I'm glad of it. Of course I hain't had your advantages in gettin' an eddication—most o' mine's in my wife's name—but I've got some, and I've had to work so dam hard to get it that sometimes I think I appreciate it just a leetle more than you Eastern boys do who have it served to you on a silver platter. I didn't know how to read till I was twenty-five."
"I congratulate you," said I. "Considering the sort of things the greater part of our young people are reading to-day, I wish that condition might prevail a little more widely than it does."
"That's it," said he. "When a thing comes too easy we're not likely to make the best of it. When I think of how I had to sweat to learn to read you don't ketch me wastin' any o' my talents in that direction on trash."
"Then," I put in, "the chances are you've never read any of my books."