26 THE FAT OF THE LAND 



The best way to get good farm hands who 

 would be happy and contented, I thought, was 

 to go to the city and find men who had shot 

 their bolts and failed of the mark ; men who 

 had come up from the farm hoping for easier or 

 more ambitious lives, but who had failed to find 

 what they sought and had experienced the unrest 

 of a hand-to-mouth struggle for a living in a 

 large city ; men who were pining for the country, 

 perhaps without knowing it, and who saw r no 

 way to get back to it. I advertised my wants 

 in a morning paper, and asked my son, who was 

 on vacation, to interview the applicants. From 

 noon until six o'clock my ante-room was invaded 

 by a motley procession delicate boys of fifteen 

 who wanted to go to the country, old men who 

 thought they could do farm work, clerks and 

 janitors out of employment, typical tramps and 

 hoboes who diffused very naughty smells, and 

 a few a very few who seemed to know 

 what they could do and what they really 

 wanted. 



Jack took the names of five promising men, 

 and asked them to come again the next day. 

 In the morning I interviewed them, dismissed 

 three, and accepted two on the condition that 

 their references proved satisfactory. As these 

 men are still at Four Oaks, after seven years of 

 steady employment, and as I hope they will stay 

 twenty years longer, I feel that the reader should 

 know them. Much of the smooth sailing at the 



