1891.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 125 



up his hands and he say, ' That more stinks as butter,' and 

 that makes me discouraged. I don't know what I do." I 

 said : " Look here, Karl. The difficulty is, you have never 

 thought that butter is the product of the highest skill ; you 

 have sx)ld no skill. You are like a thousand other farmers, 

 who never think for a moment that they can sell skill. We 

 will correct that. You have got money enough to buy two 

 kerosene barrels." I knew I had got down to the very 

 bottom facts of that man's fortune. " Surely," he said. I 

 said : " They will cost you a dollar and twenty cents. Burn 

 out the oil, then buy five dollars' worth of lumber, and build 

 a rude shanty over them. Then go and buy some shotgun 

 cans down at the tinsmith's, and put your milk in them, 

 and, instead of keeping your milk in the house, fill those 

 barrels with water, and put the cans in them. Your wife 

 has been setting the milk in the house, and the smell of the 

 cooking and all the smells of wash-day go into your butter." 

 Well, the result of it was, that he started in at an expense 

 of about fifteen dollars. He told me his wife kept saying, 

 " Karl, that Yankee is a humbug ; " but he kept on, and when 

 the time came he took off his coat, churned the butter, put 

 it up in a twenty-pound package, and brought the package 

 to me. I tasted the butter and sent it to a commission man 

 in Chicago, with a letter in which I said: "These are the 

 first fruits of righteousness from my friend Karl Streider. 

 Fell this butter for what it is worth, — I know it is good 

 butter, — and send me the account of sales and your check." 

 It sold for twenty-four cents a pound. Butter was selling 

 in the cross-road markets at that time for about fourteen 

 or sixteen cents. I drove down to that little Dutchman's 

 house, and I tell you, my dear friends, I never felt better in 

 all my life than when I took that check in and said, "Karl, 

 there is your money for that tub of butter, — twenty pounds, 

 — twenty-four cents a pound." It was a light that broke 

 through the woods. "Twenty-four cents a pound!" he 

 said, "Mine Gott ! " He looked at the check, and then 

 caught his wife about the waist, and, with the check uplifted, 

 went waltzing round the floor, exclaiming, " Lusette ! 

 Lusette ! Mine Gott ! that is no humbug." That man is 

 worth to-day somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen or 



