20 THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 



once pithily remarked: Shout in scallops, and swal- 

 low the lower point of every scallop. 



As for neighbors — they are helpful or the re- 

 verse. In my earliest tenderfoot days I had one 

 uncommonly gifted ; she had commonsense. To her 

 I flew for advice — not on farming matters, for with 

 those she troubled herself no whit, but when other 

 problems yet more vital pressed for wise solution. 

 When she said: If I were you I would do thus or 

 so, her suggestion presented itself at once as the 

 one right thing to do, and a load rolled from my 

 overburdened shoulders. Such persons are rare 

 as well as priceless friends, and when they fail to 

 live out their allotted span the world is left the poor- 

 er for their departure. There is such a thing as 

 seeing too much of both sides, and these good coun- 

 sellors hold the balance true; each one revolves 

 around his or her axis, never straying away to in- 

 vestigate the axes of other individuals or speculat- 

 ing as to how these axes may look to them, yet view- 

 ing quite enough for their own particular good and 

 for ours — for us, who see altogether too much. 



And so we come to the weightiest of all matters 

 for the Tenderfoot— the selection of competent 

 advisers. For in the times of which I write the 

 Farm Bureau and other like aids to ranchers had 

 no existence. On the whole, however, practical ex- 

 perience, intelligently applied, is hardly to be sur- 

 passed in value. 



I was mercifully preserved from the loss and 

 pain incurred by many newcomers to the Arid Belt, 

 who are satisfied that they know it all. Farmer or 



