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THE FAT OF THE LAND 
CHAPTER I 
MY EXCUSE 
My sixtieth birthday is a thing of yesterday, 
and I have, therefore, more than half descended 
the western slope. I have no quarrel with life or 
with time, for both have been polite to me; and I 
wish to give an account of the past seven years 
to prove the politeness of life, and to show how 
time has made amends to me for the forced res- 
ignation of my professional ambitions. For 
twenty-five years, up to 1895, I practised medi- 
cine and surgery in a large city. I loved my 
profession beyond the love of most men, and it 
loved me; at least, it gave me all that a reason- 
able man could desire in the way of honors and 
emoluments. The thought that I should ever 
drop out of this attractive, satisfying life, never 
seriously occurred to me, though I was conscious 
of a strong and persistent force that urged me 
toward the soil. By choice and by training I 
was a physician, and I gloried in my work; but 
by instinct I was, am, and always shall be, a 
farmer. All my life I have had visions of farms 
3 
