108 FLIGHT FROM THE CITY 



strated to my satisfaction by a case with which I 

 happen to be personally familiar. This family con- 

 sisted of a man, wife, and boy eight years old. The 

 man had made an indifferent living for many years as 

 a chauffeur in and around New York, and when out 

 of work came to live with his parents, who had a small 

 country home in our section. One day he came to me 

 with a project for building a road stand on a plot of 

 land belonging to me. He had, however, no capital 

 with which to buy the land and barely enough money 

 to equip a stand. He asked for a lease on the lot, with 

 the privilege of buying it if he managed to make a 

 success of his stand. I gave him the lease for which he 

 asked, and this is what happened: 



He went to a local lumber-yard and secured a large 

 quantity of building material on credit. With this he 

 first built a small stand, and equipped it to sell ice- 

 cream, drinks, and the usual line of roadside refresh- 

 ments. While his wife took care of the stand, he built 

 a four-room house on the back of the lot, though the 

 interior was unfinished at the time he came to me and 

 told me that the lumber-yard was pressing him for 

 money. I discovered that he had gone ahead and built 

 the house, expecting that the stand would earn 

 enough not only to enable him to buy the lot but to 

 pay for the materials he used in building. To 

 straighten out the tangle into which his over-optimism 

 had led him, I arranged a mortgage for him with the 

 building and loan association from the proceeds of 

 which he paid for his lot, paid for the building ma- 



