Page:American Poetry 1922.djvu/97



the mixture of peasantry makes him so slow. He waggles his head before he speaks, like a cow before she crops. He bends to the habit of dragging his feet up under him, like a measuring-worm: some of his forefathers, stooped over books, ruled short straight lines under two rows of figures to keep their thin savings from sifting to the floor. Should you strike him with a question, he will blink twice or thrice and roll his head about, like an owl in the pin-pricks of a dawn he cannot see. There is mighty little flesh about his bones, there is no gusto in his stride: he seems to wait 83