170 FARMING IT 



"Bully," I replied in the expressive slang of 

 the period. " I think you are making a mistake, 

 but I like your grit and I am glad you are com- 

 ing; for Exeter, like all country places, needs 

 new blood and new ideas. Now what are you 

 going to do about quarters ?" 



"That 's just what I want to see you about," 

 he said. 



"And it is the most important thing of all!" 



And I rapidly gave him the names of several 

 places I thought he might get, among them an 

 attractive little house not far from mine. 



The next day I found he had engaged that 

 place, and a few days later he began to move in 

 his furniture; but I saw nothing more of the 

 young lady for a while. 



The other addition to the neighborhood came 

 rather suddenly, for one day in the early fall, on 

 returning to the office, I saw in front of a neigh- 

 boring house an immense van of household 

 goods, an excited father, a helpless mother of a 

 large family, a colored servant and six or seven 

 children, watching with devouring interest two 

 brawny policemen who were forcibly removing 

 two very drunken draymen from the vicinity with 

 prodigious exertion, in which catch-as-catch-can, 

 Grseco-Roman, collar-and-elbow, hitch-and-trip, 

 "side holts," grapevine twists, hammer-locks, 

 cross-counters, straight lefts, jabs, upper-cuts, 



