CHAPTER XVI 



MR. JOSEPH KEELER TURNS FARMER 



Mr. Keeler was now still more enthusiastic than ever in his 

 determination to develop the farming scheme in his home coun- 

 ty, so it was not long before he was again visiting Brighton 

 with his son, Ernest, to examine closely some of the farms 

 on which his agent had obtained options. He was not long in 

 selecting an old place situated on the Lake Shore with the rail- 

 way crossing it. There was an old-time semi-colonial house, 

 built ninety years ago by the first grantee from the Crown, an 

 old ex-captain of Commander Yeo's fleet on Lake Ontario in 

 the War of 1812. Like all of his profession the old captain had 

 believed in good cheer and from cellar to attic, cupboards and 

 storerooms all told of the days when the "home-brewed" was 

 of the best and abundant. Situated west of the town, the old 

 farmhouse looked out over the waters toward Bald Bluff with 

 PresquTsle to the east and Colborne Pier to the west, and ever 

 gave to the view the wide sweep of the lake, whose roar was 

 heard from beyond the cedar grove on the shingly beach. The 

 farm had been well cared for, though never greatly developed, 

 there being still remaining a large wood-lot of a hundred acres, 

 whose first pine had been cut in the fifties, but now bore a fine 

 growing forest of second-growth pine with beech and maple, 

 birch and cedar. This, with a splendid spring creek coming from 

 the ravine in the escarpment to the north and wandering over 

 its gravel bed through the cedar bottom and pasture fields to 

 the lake, made the farm very attractive, so Mr. Keeler promptly 

 closed the offer, at what he looked upon as a very low price, from 

 the dear old lady whose whole married and widowed life of 

 nearly sixty years had been spent there, and she and her re- 

 maining daughter left it only because of their inability to manage 

 it advantageously. The pasturage in the creek bottom was 

 excellent and the soil gave promise, with its several old and 

 young orchards, of supplying the very essentials which Joseph 



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