It was the return of the prodigal son, and a great day in the old 

 home. It is needless to say that father was carried away by my in \\ 

 and youthful enthusiasm, and we immediately set about evolving plans 

 of a great poultry business. It was hard for father with his thrifty, 

 steady, easy-going ways to launch into such a big undertaking. 



Father had a life-time experience in doing things with his own two 

 hands on the old farm and had always taken a keen delight and a great 

 joy in his work, which, by the way, is, perhaps, the best blessing of 

 life. It was hard for him to be rushed off his feet with such a big 

 enterprise as my young imagination pictured to him. I was impetuous. 

 He, solid and sure. Safety first, with much care, and not too much 

 haste, was his motto. In after years I learned how wise was father in 

 all his deliberations and that the purest joy comes from work well 

 done with your own two hands. 



Imagination and ambition make a restless life and mother oft told 

 me that I was too ambitious and that I should be satisfied with the 

 common joys of living and not aspire so eagerly to youthful dreams. 

 Perhaps she was right, and in the end quiet paths of peace may be best. 

 But without imagination, and longings after ideals, and yearnings for 

 perfection, no progress can be made. Without dreamers, the world 

 would be very prosaic. In early days father had his youthful dreams, 

 and they were realized in a solid, substantial country home and broad, 

 fertile acres, with well-bred horses and cattle, and he was enjoying the 

 realization of his dream without the youthful impetuosity, and it was 

 hard, as it has always been, for the mature judgment and the young 

 ambition to work to the best satisfaction of each. 



So we talked poultry and studied poultry house plans and began to 

 launch off into the poultry business. It was hard to decide from the 

 multitude of plans just what kind of poultry houses to build. We were 

 bothered to know just what were the best breeds to choose. Had we 

 realized how little we really did know and how long the road to experi- 

 ence, we may have been discouraged. We read poultry books and 

 journals and wrote for catalogues, and drove for miles all round trying 

 to find the kind of fowls to start with. We finally found a flock of 

 pure-bred brown leghorns owned by a Mrs. Harvey, who was consid- 

 ered the best breeder of pure-bred poultry far and near. They were 

 beauties and from the best blood in the United States. Mrs. Harvey 

 showed us her brooder room, in which was a fine lot of new-hatched 

 fluffy brown chicks around a coal stove in the center of the room. 

 They were a pretty sight. This was the first artificial brooding I had 

 ever seen. Then she showed us her home-made incubator in the house. 

 It was a large square box with a copper boiler that held nearly a barrel 

 of warm water packed around with saw-dust. Under this warm water 

 was a drawer that held the eggs. To keep up the heat, you must first 

 draw off a bucket or two of water and pour in more hot water, which 

 would bring the temperature up to the desired point. The only 

 ventilation this home-made incubator had was a one-inch hole into the 

 chamber beneath the egg drawer. It was remarkable what fine hatches 

 Mrs. Harvey brought out of this crude incubator. This was the first 

 incubator I had ever seen in actual operation. We took measurements 

 and went home determined to make our own incubators, which \\-did. 

 We ordered hatching eggs from Mrs. Harvey and placed 240 eggs in 



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