AN INDIANA FARM: THE WIND-WELL BEHIND IT, THE WHEATFIELD IN FRONT.
In the old colonial days there was extraordinary hospitality in America, and this still survives in the West and North and South in places out of touch with the great industrial beehive of the East and Centre. The feeling still survives in the spirit that prevents Americans printing prohibitions. You never see the notice "Trespassers will be Prosecuted," though I do not know what one is to make of the uncharitable poster that frequently met my gaze in Indiana and Illinois:
KEEP OUT!
THAT MEANS YOU.
That is brutal.
Tramping up to Williamsport from Scranton I encountered forty-eight hours' rain, and only with difficulty on the second night did I obtain shelter. After being refused three times the first rainy evening, I found an old covered well beside an empty, padlocked shed. In this I spent twenty hours, sleeping the night and waking to a day of down-pour.
It was an interesting little hermitage, the three walls were of stone but the roof and floor of wood. One side of the building was completely open to wind and weather. In a corner was a dark square of clear water—the well. Half-way up the stone wall was a narrow ledge, and there I slept. I covered the ledge with two sacks, for pillow I had a book, a duplicate pair of boots, and a silken scarf. I slept with my feet in a sack and a thick tweed coat spread over the rest of me,—slept well. By day I sat on a box and looked out at a deserted garden, and the rain pouring on the trees and rank grass. There were young pines and hemlocks and maples, and a shaggy hickory tree. Beyond them an apple orchard climbed over a very green hill, and the branches were all crooked and gnarled and pointing. The blossoms had shed their petals, and there was much young fruit.
I gathered dry wood and made a fire on the threshold, and dried wet wood and boiled a kettle, the smoke blowing in to me all the while, and the raindrops hissing and dying as they fell into the embers.
About mid-day a Dutch farmer came and stood in front of the little house, and stared for some minutes and said nought.