INTRODUCTION. 13 



and then long and careful letters telling of what he 

 was doing, of the drains that he was laying, or the 

 good corn that he grew. And the boy in his very 

 first enthusiasm for the alfalfa plant sent home a 

 package of seed by mail (that was in 1886) and 

 asked the father to give it space and soil and care. 

 And often in his daydreams he would ponder the 

 question of returning some day to the old farm. He 

 would dream idle dreams of what he might do there, 

 how he might enrich it and plant it and maybe buy 

 neighboring acres to add to it. 



Somewhat more than two years rolled away and 

 the boy took a vacation and went back to the old 

 home, to see the home folks, and a sweetheart he 

 had there. It is a very joyful and rather a wonder- 

 ful thing to come home after having been exiled to 

 a strange land. The deserts of Utah were like an- 

 other world, so that when the boy came to Ohio it 

 was as though he had come to a dream world, so 

 beautiful, and so natural and so lovely it all seemed. 

 How eagerly he explored his old haunts, one by one ! 

 What old memories were stirred into life as he saw 

 the meadows, the woodland, the hill planted to corn 

 and kept immaculately clean of weeds, the orchard, 

 the garden; the dear old father, stooped and aged 

 more than the boy remembered him, went right to 

 his heart ; the mother, silvery haired now ; the sister 

 and young brothers ! The sweetheart was of course 

 unspeakably marvelous and wonderful, and it all 

 was as though the boy had been born again into a 

 new world. Soon after his arrival, as he explored 



