Picture the scene: I am shoveling shavings into the team wagon, stooping over in my patched overalls and faded flannel shirt to scrape the barn floor clean, now and then climbing into the wagon to tread down the mounting heap. The young man who owns the new barn, the new tractor, the new hydraulic log...

Talking recently to a Polish friend who has lived in both Canada and the United States, trying to explain the vitality of my countrymen to him, I said finally, “Unless you’re an American, you don’t know what being alive is!” To which he gloomily replied, “And no one knows what death is till he moves...