130 FARMING IT 



tiously when he and Gramp were engaged in a 

 transaction involving these articles. 



On the other hand, Daniel was a farmer, a 

 gentleman farmer who sold the products of his 

 farm, displaying much ingenuity in obtaining, 

 as Gramp said, the highest market prices for the 

 lowest grade of goods. On one occasion Daniel 

 sold Gramp some baled hay, about three fourths 

 of which, when shaken out with the fork, refused 

 to come down, and floated round in the air in the 

 form of hayseed, chaff, and dust, leaving of each 

 bale about three pecks of tangible fodder. 



To avenge this high-handed outrage Gramp 

 traded "as nice a pair of pigs as you ever saw, 

 Daniel," with that rotund gentleman, for a kick- 

 ing gray mare with a milk-leg and the scratches ; 

 and when Daniel came for the pigs he found to 

 his horror they were guinea-pigs, and worth 

 twenty-five cents a pair, rather more, in fact, 

 than what the mare was worth, for she kicked out 

 the entire side of the barn, and cost Gramp about 

 twenty dollars in repairs. 



But Daniel and Gramp were great story-tellers, 

 each being gifted with a vivid imagination and 

 a most whimsical manner of expressing himself. 

 Daniel, although a farmer, was a confirmed 

 skeptic in such matters, and was in tastes and 

 feeling a sport. He read the "Sporting Life" 

 religiously, knew every professional baseball 



