OUR COUNTRY LIFE 



poses lay near our country place; and although we had 

 plenty of opportunities — "rare opportunities" — pre- 

 sented by assiduous friends as well as by mere acquaint- 

 ances, thus far we had escaped the toils. In my 

 estimation we had already carefully selected all the 

 desirable features of farm life and rejected its per- 

 plexities. The woodlot with comfortably simple 

 house, the flower gardens, the kitchen gardens, the 

 glass houses were ours ; the crops and the live stock with 

 their attendants and buildings were our neighbor's. 

 It seemed to me an ideal arrangement. The waving 

 fields of corn for which this Big Foot Prairie is famous, 

 the rolling meadows of billowy grain outlining the 

 contours of the land, the vivid green of the alfalfa har- 

 vest, were they not mine to look at and enjoy as well as 

 the man's who owned them? 



To most people life in the country would be in- 

 adequate without at least one cow; but as cows 

 to us meant simply milk, and we never had any diffi- 

 culty in acquiring that from our neighbors, we were 

 content. I could and did enjoy my neighbor's cement, 



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