CHAPTER I. 



HOW I CAME) TO BE; A FARMER. 



Y father was a clergyman and a part of his life an 

 editor. So my younger days were all spent in 

 town and city. The total extent of my farming 

 then was hoeing in a little garden, and how I used 

 to hate it ! I think most all boys do particularly 

 such work as was done then, all with the hand-hoe, 

 cutting off weeds and hilling up potatoes. Yes, 

 and I have wheeled soil to cover the corn, potatoes, etc., in our 

 rocky gardens in the East. Gardening now, on clean, mellow 

 clover sod, with tools so the horse can do most everything, and 

 the boy may be the skillful director, rather than the hard worker, 

 is quite a different matter. I mention this to show that there was 

 nothing in my bringing up to make me fall in love with getting 

 a living from the soil. When the first cultivator came around I 

 can well remember how I wanted to borrow one of a farmer 

 friend to save my back in the garden. But father thought it 

 would certainly do more harm than good to have a horse walking 

 around in among the vegetables. I do not know that he was 

 particularly given to old-fogyism. Cultivating crops was a new 

 departure. There were one or two bright spots in the garden to 

 me for a time. For example, I read how much saffron was worth 

 and obtained father's consent to my planting quite a large bed of 

 it. I worked, early and late over this, with visions of a little 

 money in the future. My back never ached then as when I had 

 to hoe the potatoes and corn and beans. Well, I got quite a crop, 

 and it was duly picked and dried, but I never was able to sell 

 one cent's worth. It was kept around in the garret year after 

 year, enough to make saffron tea for all the babies in the State. 

 Again father, although a very good man, I fear played a 

 sharp game on me to save his potatoes. You know the old-fash- 

 ioned potato bug or beetle that would blister your hand if you 

 smashed one on it ? Well, they got into our garden and father read 

 to me how someone had caught them by knocking them off in hot 

 water and then dried them and sold them at the drug stores. 

 That started me into business for myself again at once, notwith- 

 standing those bunches of unsold saffron in the garret. Father 

 got his potatoes saved in a hurry, and I could work in the garden 

 from morning till night and not get as tired as I did hoeing ten 

 hills of potatoes ; but alas! the beetles, all nicely dried, eventually 

 rested quietly by the side of the saffron. So you can see, friends, 



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