102 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



And this way we keep all the profits for our- 

 selves." 



He shook his head over it. He's still shak- 

 ing his head over it. With all his business 

 training and sagacity and he's a successful 

 business man he couldn't make out that we 

 were doing anything better than silly trifling. 

 The small amount of money we had changed 

 from hand to hand, which to our understand- 

 ing was the greatest strength of our proposi- 

 tion at that stage, to his understanding stood 

 for a vital weakness, a weakness that must 

 bring us to disaster pretty soon. 



"You aren't making trade!" That's the 

 fault folks found with our scheme. Neverthe- 

 less, our system was our salvation in our first 

 years. We must have "bumped the bumps" 

 if we had taken the way our friends urged 

 upon us. That's the simple truth. 



When I say that our table living cost us 

 nothing, to be sure I haven't set a price upon 

 the time we spent on the garden and the chick- 

 ens and the rest. I don't see how that can be 

 done, in making a comparison with our town 

 conditions. We spent no more time here in 

 the new ways than we had spent in town at our 

 housekeeping and at keeping things up around 



