April Morning Read Free Page B

pleasure from it than from any other habit. “We are plain people,” he continued, “not poor—for we are blessed with more than a necessary share of the world’s goods, and we have a good house with good furniture and good food on our table, for which we thank the Lord in His mercy—but plain and thrifty people. Yet we, your mother, myself, my father, and my grandfather—we have always prided ourselves that we are in a sense the people of the Book. My brothers and I were raised, and I make every effort to raise my own children, not as blackguards and loafers, not as soldiers or tavern sots, but as thoughtful and reasoning creatures, men who honor the written word, who respect intelligent writing, and who, like the ancient philosophers, look upon argumentation and disputation as avenues toward the deepest truth. I am a farmer who tills the soil to earn his daily bread, but there are three hundred and odd books in this house, well thumbed, well read. Nor are my neighbors unlike me. This is why, Adam, we are what we are. We came to this land in the beginning because savagery and superstition were an abomination to us; and in the midst of a new savagery, we planted our own seed of culture and civilization. Do you understand me?” he finished.
    â€œWell, he may but I don’t,” Granny put in decisively, and I could see that she had decided to take the bit in her teeth. “To make a fuss like that over the foolishness of a fifteen-year-old just passes my understanding, it does. Why, believe me, I never did see a man to sit at his own supper table and be faced with the kind of food Sarah Cooper puts down in front of you, Moses Cooper, and be that ill-tempered.”
    â€œNow, please, Mother—”
    â€œDon’t stop me in the middle of a sentence, Moses Cooper.”
    â€œI didn’t stop you in the middle of a sentence.”
    â€œNot to mention pride,” Granny went on. “It goeth before a fall, or doesn’t it? And if that wasn’t the most prideful statement I ever listened to, then I don’t know what was. A spell may be un-Christian and ignorant, but let me remind you what the Testament says about pride—”
    â€œI know what the Testament says about pride, Mother.”
    We were interrupted at that point, or I don’t know where it would have gone on to. My mother was nervous and upset over the whole thing; Levi was sunk in gloom, brooding on what I might do to him later, and very disturbed that Granny had gone after Father the way she had; but I was enjoying it the way you enjoy running on the edge of a high stone cliff. It’s exhilarating while it lasts. It finished because Joseph Simmons, our neighbor and kin, came in and gave his greetings, and said that he would just sit down in the empty chair and watch us while we finished our evening bread.
    But he wouldn’t have a thing to eat. A mouthful would be too much, as he had just finished his own supper. But then he saw that we were having donkers, and he admitted that he might try one, he was so inordinately fond of them, and since it didn’t go alone, he’d have a mouthful of boiled pudding on the plate. Mother gave him hot meat from the fire, and it was a pleasure to see his face when he took the first bite. He was a big, heavy-set man, and I never saw anyone to match him for straightforward pleasure in food.
    â€œGoody Cooper,” he said to my mother, “I don’t recollect a more delicious meat than your donkers. But neither do I recollect any home but yours where they’re favored.”
    â€œThey’re not proper English food,” said Mother. “They’re Dutch food.”
    â€œNow what do you know!”
    â€œYou see, my grandfather Isaac, he was in the coasting trade.”
    â€œI’ve heard about your grandfather Isaac, indeed,” said Mr. Simmons. Unlike my father, he did not have to stop eating to talk; he did both at