"There seems to be tannic acid in this milk," he said.
At about that time uncle Solon Chase came along one afternoon, and gave
one of his harangues at our schoolhouse. I well remember the old fellow
and his high-pitched voice. Addison, I recall, refused to go to hear
him; but Willis Murch and I went. We were late and had difficulty in
squeezing inside the room. Uncle Solon, as everybody called him, stood
at the teacher's desk, and was talking in his quaint, homely way: a lean
man in farmer's garb, with a kind of Abraham Lincoln face, honest but
humorous, droll yet practical; a face afterwards well known from Maine
to Iowa.
"We farmers are bearin' the brunt of the hard times," Uncle Solon said.
"'Tain't fair. Them rich fellers in New York, and them rich railroad men
that's running things at Washington have got us down. 'Tis time we got
up and did something about it. 'Tis time them chaps down there heard the
tramp o' the farmers' cowhide boots, comin' to inquire into this. And
they'll soon hear 'em. They'll soon hear the tramp o' them old cowhides
from Maine to Texas.
"Over in our town we have got a big stone mortar. It will hold a bushel
of corn.
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