HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 43 



With their spreading roots, every one of them 

 took up at least a hundred square feet of 

 ground enough ground in the total to sup- 

 port four hundred hills of corn. There isn't 

 one of those stumps left to-day; we got rid of 

 the last of them two years ago, with dynamite. 

 Our tenant that year harvested his oats in part 

 with an old-fashioned hand "cradle," and in 

 part with a fussy little sickle. Stones and 

 Stumps forbade the use of any modern imple- 

 ment. We're harvesting our grain on that 

 very same land with sure-enough farm imple- 

 ments. Working between whiles, in idle times, 

 it has cost us about five dollars an acre to bring 

 that land from the old state to the new; and 

 that cost has been paid back to us, many times 

 over, in increased crop yields. 



I've halted my story to tell you this, because 

 this seemed to be as good a place as any for 

 saying it. On that May morning six years 

 ago, as we perched on the fence and watched 

 the circus our tenant was making for us, it 

 needed cheerful optimism and something of 

 clear vision to look across the time to come and 

 see a real farm where all that ugly disorder 

 lay. Laura is one of these natural-born op- 

 timists. Do you know how to recognize one 



