164< City Homes on Country Lanes 



and if I hadn't come through at last I should have 

 been ruined. It looks easy now — and it is — but I sup- 

 pose there are not many who would have succeeded at 

 the cost of the struggle I have been through." 



After explaining all the details of the business, he 

 took us to a shed that served as his laboratory, where 

 he had bottles filled with mushroom cultures. He then 

 opened a cupboard and displayed a most interesting 

 array of little bricks. "I will tell you gentlemen where 

 the secret lies. It is all in the spawn," he said. This 

 coincided with what we had heard from those who had 

 used various kinds of spawn, some of it widely adver- 

 tised as a sure thing, and much of it disappointing in 

 results. Our host informed us that he made his own 

 spawn, and when we examined it we could see a striking 

 difference between this and the kind usually on sale. 

 It was fairly alive. It required but the slightest imagi- 

 nation to feel the pulse-beat of life in these little bricks 

 of smoky blue. 



We asked how he did it, and he smiled, but shook 

 his head. "That is my secret," he said. "It has taken 

 me a long time to perfect my methods. Out of the 

 first lot of 228 bricks I made, only two were good. 

 Now, I get nearly 100 per cent of live bricks." When 

 we inquired if he would sell them, he returned an em- 

 phatic negative, saying he could make more money by 

 raising the mushrooms. 



Leon Rouge, of Los Angeles, is one of the famous 

 growers of Southern California. He was educated in 

 the mushroom cellars of Paris and is one of the men 

 who dispelled tin- superstition that mushrooms can not 

 be made to ilourisli in the dry atmosphere of Cali- 



