FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 353 



" 'Let us try this thing once. You pick out the steers that you think 

 are right and don't take them unless they are right.' Well, nobody 

 thought we were trying to top their steers, and so in a few days we had 

 them all bought, and when they were all bought and all gathered up it 

 was just the kind of a bunch that my grandfather used to buy up in Ten- 

 nessee and fatten for the Baltimore market over eighty years ago. 



"Steve had stacked all his hay in great big long ricks in the feed-lot 

 and built a manger around them. As soon as we had the steers bought 

 he said to me: 'Now. \ want to buy your corn,' so I had my corn shelled 

 and hauled it up and filled those big self-feeders that he had built for 

 shelled corn out in the feed-lot. Just then Steve took down sick. Well, 

 I had picked the steers for him and had sold him the corn to feed them 

 on. His wife salted them, the windmill pumped water for them and I 

 went up every two or thre days and put out hay for them. Steve did not 

 get out of bed from the day he had me open the self-feeders until the 

 day we loaded up the cattle for Chicago. His brother signed his note at 

 the bank to buy the cattle and buy the corn to feed them. When Steve 

 got back he squared the notes. Then he sold a pair of horses for one 

 hundred and thirty-five dollars — they would be worth four hundred dol- 

 lars if he had them now — then his wife chipped in some butter and egg 

 money that she had been getting ahead of their grocery bill for two or 

 three years before. He still lacked about four dollars of having enough 

 to pay for that eighty acres. He told me himself that he got that four 

 dollars by "hitting" the children's toy banks. But of the two thousand dol- 

 lars that went to pay for that eighty I made over eighteen hundred dol- 

 lars for him, so I say that I just made him a present of that extra eighty 

 he has over across the road. " 



This was some twelve years ago. At that time Tom was already one 

 step in advance of his mortgage, that dread fiend that had for years pur- 

 sued him so closely, had starved his poor dumb brutes to death and 

 deprived his family of even many of the absolute necessities of life. But 

 at that time his interest was arranged for one year in advance. The next 

 fall Tom was buying a bunch of sieer calves. Since then he has pros- 

 pered like the proverbial bay tree. At last he was able to do what only 

 a rich man can do and only a foolish man would do; he has moved to 

 town and is trying to be happy while doing nothing. His money is now 

 a main pillar to the bank where he once entered with fear and trembling. 

 In the big farm house which he built on the corner of the square his 

 daughter to learning to drum on the piano, that she may some day be able 

 to take an active part in city society. Perhaps in her dreams she may 

 aspire to have that soda fountain tender with the football hair for a 

 steady caller or of ending a long career of social successes by becoming 

 the helpmate of the local Beau Brummel. a shoe clerk, who on the 

 princely salary of twelve dollars a week is the dictator of local society. 

 So much for the tail of the steer. If last is it not yet foremost? If weak, 

 has it not power? 



23 



