232 LIBERTY AND A LIVING. 



leather sometimes goes back to the woods in 

 summer or ploughs the wave in his yacht. But 

 very few of us get rich perhaps one in a thou- 

 sand. Is there no way of getting back to a 

 rational life without first winning a fortune, 

 something which comes to so few ? 



I am aware that here many a reader pro- 

 vided I am so fortunate as to have many readers 

 will say : " Oh, we have heard all this before ; 

 it is the old story of moving to the country in 

 order to raise cabbages for a living. It is one 

 more variation upon the ' Ten Acres Enough ' 

 idea." To some extent it is a variation upon 

 that famous book, but with a difference. The 

 hundreds of writers who have taken up the chief 

 idea of " Ten Acres Enough " the possibility 

 of earning a livelihood by out-door work, gar- 

 dening, fishing, etc., have, without exception, so 

 far as I know, begun with the assumption that 

 when life becomes impossible in town then the 

 country should be sought. In one case it is the 

 broken-down merchant, tired of meeting notes, 

 tired of the long struggle to ward off bank- 

 ruptcy, who finally says to himself : " I will sell 

 out my business and with the proceeds buy a 

 strawberry patch, upon which I can raise enough 



