CHAPTER XVIII

A DITHYRAMBUS OF BUTTEEMILK


One discovery of some importance you make in walking the roads is the
comparative rarity and exceeding preciousness of buttermilk. We had, as I
said, caught up with Summer. Summer, need one say, is a thirsty
companion, and the State seemed suddenly to have gone dry. We looked in
vain for magic mirrors by the roadside, overhung with fairy grasses,
littered with Autumn leaves, and skated over by nimble water-bugs. As our
friend had said, the springs seemed to have dried up. Now and again we
would hail with a great cry a friendly pump; once we came upon a
cider-mill, but it was not working, and time and again we knocked and
asked in vain for buttermilk. Sometimes, but not often, we found it. Once
we met a genial old man just leaving his farm door, and told him that we
were literally dying for a drink of buttermilk. Our expression seemed to
tickle him.

"Well!" he said, laughing, "it shall never be said that two poor
creatures passed my door, and died for lack of a glass of buttermilk,"
and he brought out a huge jug, for which he would accept nothing but our
blessings. He seemed to take buttermilk lightly; but, one evening, we
came upon another old farmer to whom buttermilk seemed a species of the
water of life to be hoarded jealously and doled out in careful quantities
at strictly market rates.

In town one imagines that country people give their buttermilk to the