HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 83 



I'd been used to thinking of the farmers' 

 plaints about hired men as just one of the 

 standing jokes like the mother-in-law joke. 

 Let me tell you, it's no joke at all. The only 

 real loss we've had at Happy Hollow is repre- 

 sented by the stubs of my checks that went to 

 pay the wages of lazy dawdlers who palmed 

 themselves off on me as farm hands. Lee, my 

 Kansas brunette, had petered out so soon as 

 the real work began. After that I tried out a 

 string of others; and one after another they 

 too petered out. There was nothing in par- 

 ticular the matter with any one of them ; there 

 was just a general indisposition to work. I've 

 never been a fussy boss; and I was offering 

 better wages than any other farmer in the 

 neighborhood was paying; but I drew blank 

 after blank. The idea of putting in a full six- 

 day week at farm work, summer and winter, 

 was shockingly new. Generations of practice 

 here in the hills had bred a habit of "laying 

 by" a little jag of a crop in midsummer and 

 taking the rest of the year easy, with an odd 

 job now and then under pressure of extreme 

 need. My notions were to my "hands" only 

 vanity and vexation. They couldn't see the 

 sense of working all the time when three days' 



