and victrola. They are still at the accordion and lumber wagon stage, where they were left by their great-grandfathers, and there is no "drive" in them to indicate that they will ever emerge from it. On the contrary, their old stock is degenerating from intermarriage and excessive childbearing and malnutrition and corn whiskey and too long and too exclusive association with "hawgs" and mules. The community as a whole is slowly falling below its own traditional folk standards—it is running to weeds.
Except in the biting monosyllabic title, this conclusion is not preached at you in any didactic fashion. It emerges with gradual cumulative force as the inner significance of a singularly intimate and vital artistic representation. Of Bill Pippinger's weedy family, one daughter, Judith, receives by the incalculable chances of heredity far more than a Pippinger's share of vital energy, mental and physical. A vivid little jet of passionate animation, she darts out early in the story to rescue a tortured cat from the neighborhood boys: "Naow, then, one of you jes dass come near here an' I'll run this knife right in yer guts! See if I don't!" As Wordsworth so sweetly sings, "the floating clouds," "the stars of midnight"—the various other aspects of holy nature not noted by the poet—"mold the maiden's form by silent sympathy." Eager, fearless, self-reliant, she finds her man when her mating season comes, and together they enjoy a brief period of lively affection and high spirits as they settle upon their farm. Then, little by little, they become serfs
