A dull, illiterate Polish farmer, I have found, will sometimes succeed much better at the job of life than his American neighbour.
Talk with almost any man for half an hour, and you will find that his conversation, like an old-fashioned song, has a regularly recurrent chorus.

I soon discovered Mr.Clark's chorus.
"Now, if only I had a little cash," he sang, or, "If I had a few dollars, I could do so and so." Why, he was as helplessly, dependent upon money as any soft-handed millionairess.

He considered himself poor and helpless because he lacked dollars, whereas people are really poor and helpless only when they lack courage and faith.
We were so much absorbed in our talk that I was greatly surprised to hear Mrs.Clark's voice at the doorway.
"Won't you come in to supper ?" After we had eaten, there was a great demand for more of my tin whistle (oh, I know how Caruso must feel!), and I played over every blessed tune I knew, and some I didn't, four or five times, and after that we told stories and cracked jokes in a way that must have been utterly astonishing in that household.

After the children had been, yes, driven to bed, Mr.Clark seemed about to drop back into his lamentations over his condition (which I have no doubt had come to give him a sort of pleasure), but I turned to Mrs.Clark, whom I had come to respect very highly, and began to talk about the little garden she had started, which was about the most enterprising thing about the place.
"Isn't it one of the finest things in this world," said I, "to go out into a good garden in the summer days and bring in loaded baskets filled with beets and cabbages and potatoes, just for the gathering ?" I knew from the expression on Mrs.Clark's face that I had touched a sounding note.
"Opening the green corn a little at the top to see if it is ready and then stripping it off and tearing away the moist white husks--" "And picking tomatoes ?" said Mrs.Clark.

"And knuckling the watermelons to see if they are ripe?
Oh, I tell you there are thousands of people in this country who'd like to be able to pick their dinner in the garden!" "It's fine!" said Mrs.Clark with amused enthusiasm, "but I like best to hear the hens cackling in the barnyard in the morning after they've laid, and to go and bring in the eggs." "Just like a daily present!" I said.
"Ye-es," responded the soundly practical Mrs.Clark, thinking, no doubt, that there were other aspects of the garden and chicken problem.
"I'll tell you another thing I like about a farmer's life," said I, "that's the smell in the house in the summer when there are preserves, or sweet pickles, or jam, or whatever it is, simmering on the stove.