FARMING BY INCHES; 



OR, WITH BRAINS, SIR. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE DREAM REALIZED. 



"WELL, doctor, what is it?" 



" Oh, nothing serious as yet. He seems very weak, but 

 I cannot discover symptoms of any definite disease. I 

 think his illness is more the result of overwork than of any- 

 thing else. He is asleep now, and had best not be 

 awakened." So saying he opened the front door and de- 

 parted into the gas-lighted street. 



Locking the door, I went upstairs, turned down the gas 

 in my husband's sick room, and, wrapping a shawl about me 

 sat down by the fire in the next room to watch and to think. 



My husband, the head book-keeper in a down-town com- 

 mission-house, had been brought home in a carriage that 

 morning quite ill. He had not been well for some time, but, 

 not thinking it anything serious, had continued his daily 

 labor at his desk. At night he had seeme.d worse ; so I 

 called the doctor. You have just heard what he said as he 



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