HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 11 



wasn't a sense of failure or weakness or im- 

 pending evil that set our minds toward our 

 farm. We were faring uncommonly well. If 

 we fussed a little now and then, wishing for 

 something we hadn't, the fussing wasn't seri- 

 ous. The long and short of it is that if carking 

 care had sought a roost on our roof in those 

 days she'd have been driven to startled flight 

 by the sounds of jocund well-being that over- 

 flowed the place. 



Yet with so much happiness we hadn't 

 reached the supreme content, the sense of 

 crowning completeness. It's not easy to make 

 that feeling plain. To be happily satisfied 

 with life's richness, and yet to be possessed by 

 great desire there's something of the idea. 

 We had our vision, Laura and I, and it was al- 

 ways with us. 



The vision was not of great possessions, nor 

 of great fame and high place, nor of any other 

 of the fair, false lures to disappointment. It 

 was a vision of Home. So that you may un- 

 derstand the rest of what I'm to write, I must 

 try to make you see that vision as we saw it. 



Laura and I were married in 1890. From 

 the first our ideals of home hadn't a hair's 

 breadth of difference. You might say that our 



