HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 141 



wouldn't be any sprouts left. The virtue of 

 the theory was perfectly obvious but it 

 wouldn't work. 



And then in a fateful hour we got hold of a 

 government bulletin on the Angora goat. 

 That bulletin went into my consciousness as 

 summer rain soaks into a parched soil. There 

 were pictures in the book, pictures of broad 

 fields before and after dense smudges of im- 

 penetrable tangles before, and unimaginably 

 fair, smooth expanses after. Angora goats 

 had wrought that wondrous transformation. 

 There was nothing to it: I just had to have a 

 set of Angora goats. 



Well, I got 'em. It was in the fall of 1910 

 that I met a man who owned an Angora goat 

 ranch fifty miles back in the hills, across a cou- 

 ple of counties. Why, sure, he'd let me have 

 some, if I'd go over to the ranch and drive 

 them across country. I might have twenty- 

 five or thirty more if I wanted them, for two 

 dollars and fifty cents a head. I'd have to be 

 satisfied with wethers, and I'd have to take 

 them about half-and-half grades and full- 

 bloods; but, man, dear, when I got them I'd 

 certainly have something that would eat up the 

 sprouts ! When he tried to tell me about that, 



