"And I was thinking," said Tom, "of old Daniel Boone, with his flint-lock rifle, going to Kentucky. And what were your thoughts, Miss Lou?"
"I wasn't thinkin'—I was just a livin', that's all. Sometimes what a blessin' it is jest to breathe. I reckon we are the happiest when we don't have to think, when we jest set still and let things drift along like the leaf that's a floatin' down the river."
"Very pretty, my dear," Mrs. Mayfield replied. "Thought is not happiness, though bliss may not lie wholly in ignorance. I should think that the happiness most nearly perfect is the half-unconscious rest of a thoughtful mind—the sound sleep of the strong."
"That's all very well," said Old Jasper, waving his long lash over the steers. "But you can't gauge happiness, and half the time you can't tell what fetches it about. Some days you find yo'se'f miserable when thar ain't nuthin' happened, an' the next day, when still nuthin' has tuck place to change things, you find yo'se'f happy. If you kin do a little suthin' to help a po' body along—an' do it, mind you, without thinkin' that you air doin' it fur a purpose, then the chances air that you'll be happy all day. But ef you help a feller with the idee of it a makin' you happy, it won't, somehow. It's like the card player a givin' a man money becaze he thinks it will fetch him good luck. I ricolleck one time I seed a big feller a bullyin' a po' little devil, an' I told him to quit an' he wouldn't, an' I whaled him. Didn't think nuthin' about it till I got nearly home an' I foun' myse'f a whistlin' like a bird, an' all that day I was as happy as a lark."
"Of co'se, ef you had a fight," Margaret spoke up. "To you it was like eatin' a piece o' June apple pie. Ah, don't I ricolleck once when we went to a political speakin'? I reckon I do. A settin' thar jest as quiet as could be, a listin' to a man that was makin' the puttiest speech, a talkin' like a preacher, an' all at once you hopped up an' made at him an' I never seed such a fight—an' you come a walkin' back to me with yo' hands full of his hair. Laws a massy, don't I ricolleck it?"
"Talkin' putty! W'y, Margaret, the feller was a tellin' of a lie. I didn't want to fight him an' break up the meetin', an' I was showin' that by settin' thar so quiet. But when he begun to lie, it was my duty to remind him of it."
"Wall," she replied, after a moment's silence, "if that preacher out thar at Dry Fork' to-day begins to say things that you think ain't true, jest set thar an' say nuthin', fur it ain't none o' yo' business."
"That's right, Margaret. I don't kere what a man says when he's a preachin', jest so he don't p'int at me. He kin say that Moses drunk up the Red Sea ef he wants to—but he mustn't p'int as if he could prove it by me."
"Oh, it would do you a world of good ef he did p'int at you. Nuthin' on the yeth would please you so much."
Down into the lowlands lying along a blue river the wagon rolled. Here the vegetation was rank, and the tops of the hickory trees were dim in the dazzling blue above. Great birds with long legs stretched out far behind, flew past, ancient war-bolts they seemed; and a flying squirrel looped his flight from one tree to another. The tall rattle weed, in bloom, nodded a yellow salute as they passed.