To my utter surprise he resumed his talk with me as the young man went away.

“You see all ways are north when you put this lodestone near the needle,” he went on.  “If it is to tell you the truth you must keep the lodestone away from the needle.  It’s that way, too, with the compass of your soul, partner.  There the lodestone is selfishness, and with its help you can make any direction look right to you and soon—­you’re lost.”

He put his hand on my arm and said in a low tone which made me to understand that it was for my ear only.

“What I fear is that they may try to tamper with your compass.  Look out for lodestones.”

He was near the end of a row and went on with his reaping as he said: 

“I could take my body off this row any minute, but the only way to get my mind off it is to go to its end.”

He bound the last bundle and then we walked together toward the house, the Senator carrying his sickle.

“I shall introduce you to the President,” he said as we neared our destination.  “Then perhaps you had better leave us.”

At home we had read much about the new President and regarded him with deep veneration.  In general I knew the grounds of it—­his fight against the banks for using public funds for selfish purposes and “swapping mushrats for mink” with the government, as uncle put it, by seeking to return the same in cheapened paper money; his long battle for the extension of the right of suffrage in our state; his fiery eloquence in debate.  Often I had heard Uncle Peabody say that Van Buren had made it possible for a poor man to vote in York State and hold up his head like a man.  So I was deeply moved by the prospect of seeing him.

I could not remember that I had ever been “introduced” to anybody.  I knew that people put their wits on exhibition and often flung down a “snag” by way of demonstrating their fitness for the honor, when they were introduced in books.  I remember asking rather timidly: 

“What shall I say when—­when you—­introduce me?”

“Oh, say anything that you want to say,” he answered with a look of amusement.

“I’m kind o’ scared,” I said.

“You needn’t be—­he was once a poor boy just like you.”

“Just like me!” I repeated, thoughtfully, for while I had heard a good deal of that kind of thing in our home, it had not, somehow, got under my jacket, as they used to say.

“Just like you—­cowhide and all—­the son of a small freeholder in Kinderhook on the Hudson,” he went on.  “But he was well fed in brain and body and kept his heart clean.  So, of course, he grew and is still growing.  That’s a curious thing about men and women, Bart.  If they are in good ground and properly cared for they never stop growing-never!—­and that’s a pretty full word—­isn’t it?”

I felt its fulness, but the Senator had a way of stopping just this side of the grave in all his talks with me, and so there was no sign of preaching in any of it.