174 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



Once, in my newspaper days, I had been as- 

 signed to write a series of spring-time articles 

 that would relate the happy experiences of 

 some of our townsmen who had made good 

 with such ventures stories of back-yard cor- 

 ners that had made neat little fortunes. The 

 stories ought to be crisp and snappy, and they 

 must be literally true. My editor thought it 

 would be pretty clever to spring such a series. 

 Folks would be surprised, not to say startled, 

 to discover that such things were going on un- 

 suspected under their very noses. 



So they might have been, if only we could 

 have found the material. I spent two weeks 

 looking for it. I found plenty of people who 

 had had the vision; I found any number who 

 had loaded up with the enticing literature of 

 these bonanzas; I found scores who would 

 shamefacedly admit having started a mush- 

 room bed in the cellar, or a ginseng patch out 

 beside the barn, or a planting of patent per- 

 petual-motion strawberries, or a garden of 

 high-priced herbs, or something or other; but 

 I couldn't discover a soul who had been able 

 to make any one of these ventures pay back 

 even the money it had cost him to start. Re- 

 luctantly we gave up that series. 



