THE EXPECTATION OF PLENTY 35 



rule rather than the exception in southeastern 

 Pennsylvania and to carry wind insurance. 



Twelve years later we were hit again. Although 

 the damage was not so great it was still bad enough 

 to have dismayed beginners. But twelve years had 

 made a difference in our point of view; ten min- 

 utes after the twister passed we were out clearing 

 up the wreckage, not unmindful of the damage 

 that had been done but too intent on repairing it 

 to bemoan our bad luck. We had lived long 

 enough to know that life on a farm is full of such 

 setbacks, perhaps not all but most of them se- 

 vere enough to justify Jerome K. Jerome's defini- 

 tion of farming as "suffering reduced to a science.'* 1 

 Shakespeare of course saw deeper into it, and into 

 human nature, than Jerome. It is the Porter, at 

 the opening of the second act of Macbeth who says: 



"Knock, knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name 

 of Beelzebub? Here's a farmer, that hanged himself 

 on the expectation of plenty. ..." 



What Shakespeare meant is that your typical 

 farmer so loves to dwell on his misfortunes that, 

 given a year so plentiful there was nothing to com- 

 plain of, he would hang himself for very chagrin. 

 Mind you there is always wherewithal to give 

 both Jerome's definition and the Porter's stooge 

 a specious justification. In a typical year 1936 I 

 could point out that the leek crop, which is an 



