242 FARMING BY INCHES; 



our sales and expenditures proved to be no small undertak- 

 ing. After we were well under way hardly a day passed 

 without its moneyed transaction to be attended to in detail. 

 One day there would be a quantity of strawberries to be sent 

 off, the bills made out, and the boxes accounted for ; another 

 day a wagon load of vegetables had to be counted, de- 

 spatched, and properly accounted for on the return of the 

 empty wagon. Perhaps you wonder why my husband did 

 not see to this himself, he being a skilled accountant. It is 

 true he could have done so ; but every hour spent on work I 

 could do as well was an hour lost on work I could not do at 

 all. 



Having fully made up our minds to try our hands at the 

 business of farming, we resolved that all things should be 

 conducted in the most systematic order. We would bring 

 our methodical and mercantile ways of doing things into a 

 business notoriously loose and inaccurate in its operations. 

 Manifestly the first thing to be done was to draw up on 

 paper some sort of a plan of what we proposed to do, and 

 then endeavor to carry it out as nearly as may be. 



After breakfast Robert walked to the village and procured 

 the deed of our estate. Therein we found ourselves posses- 

 sors of a certain parcel of land, bounded on the east by a 

 line commencing on the county road at a stone post next 

 adjoining the estate of Widow Comfort Jones, and running 



