“‘Took in!’ repeated Uncle Gray. ‘I should say, took in! I know the rogue and I’m amazed that any man with common sense and eyes in his head shouldn’t ’a’ seen through him at once.’
“‘Maybe I ain’t got common sense, and maybe I ain’t got eyes in my head,’ said Eli, with a dull fire in the place where eyes should have been if he had had any. ‘But I didn’t expect this.’
“Kit hastened to interpose between the two men.”
Always I have been sorry that the boy interposed just there.
I have read the book surely seven-and-seventy times. Each time this talk over the horse comes exceeding pungent to my ears. How impossible it is to weary of Trowbridge, because there is no effort in the writing, and no effort in the reading, and because of a deep-reaching, never-failing sense of humor.——
How flat seem these words!
The young-books of Trowbridge can not be set down in words. What with the simplicity, what with the quality of naturalness, what with a delicate tenderness for all human things, what with the rare, rare quality of commonness that is satisfying and quieting as the vision of a little green radish-bed, what with an inner sympathy between Trowbridge and his characters and, above all, an inner sympathy with his readers, what with Truth itself and the sweet gift of portraying the sunshiny days as they are—why talk of Trowbridge?
Is it not all there written?
Can one not read and rest in it?