1914. 
THE R.URAI> NEW-YORKER 
86 G 
-IIIIIII Itlltlll Itlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll Ilf ItltlllllllllllllHIIttlMlllfMttllllllllllllllllllll lllltlllllllllllllll MIIIHIIIHIIIIIIIItlttlllllllllllltlllltllllllf III! IIIIIIHIIIIIIIII MlllllllllllllllltllHItlllllllllltllltllllttlltlf ItlMIMtllltJ - 
= ... = 
The Land of Fulfillment II 
A Story of Homesteading 
By Rose Seelye-Mil!er :=: 
i^iiiMiiiiiMmHtiminiiimmnmimniMiiiniiiiintiiimiimiiiiiii / /7 n *.2,; 44 . l/>/ 7 -£**✓%*** \ niiiiniiuiiiiiiiiiiiniitimiiiniiiiiiimmiiuiiiuinnmmniiimmsj 
?HiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiituiiiMiiiiiNiMiiiiiiiiiii' \ L/ 071Vl'H UC(l J 'i OTlir Jjil fJC /TjtJ, f iiiiiiiiimiiimiiiiiimiittmtiimiiimtrimmiimmiuimmumiun* 
N ORM found that while he could break 
but two acres a day with the oxen, 
with the new team he could break 
three acres; so it seemed to be a real, 
practical transaction—the buying of the 
team. The boys found little time to work at 
the polishing of the horns, and yet they felt 
such a deep necessity for the same that, 
utilizing every ounce of strength and 
every moment of time, by the 20th of 
October the second lot was shipped, and 
the check for ninety dollars looked like 
a veritable fortune to Nate and Norm. 
This money was immediately applied on 
the note, as it had been agreed that it 
might be lessened or taken up any time 
on or before the end of the six months’ 
time. The days were constantly shorten¬ 
ing. and the work in the field lessened, 
so there was more and more time for the 
horn polishing, and the third shipment 
was ready, when a letter came cancelling 
the order. A change in the management 
had taken place, and no more consign¬ 
ments could be made to the old firm, nor 
to the new, unless they should so order. 
This was a terrible blow to the young 
enthusiasts. They had practically spent 
all their money, they were in debt sixty 
dollars on their team, and the supplies 
laid in would not last all Winter, and 
there seemed no outlook for any paid 
work anywhere. Norm became very de¬ 
spondent, but Nate was still gay and 
light-hearted. The glory of the new life 
had entered his soul, and it seemed as 
though he could never be unhappy again. 
“Maybe we will find something else. 
Maybe we will get a better market, or 
something; who knows? It has seemed 
like a year of miracles to me all along, 
and I shall not be surprised at anything. 
That one curio firm isn’t the only one in 
the world. We’ll work anyway; we’ll 
polish and scrub and rub and oil. There 
is lots of fun just working. The world 
is probably starving for buffalo horns, if 
we' only knew just where the famine- 
stricken district might be.” Nate laughed 
an infectious laugh, and Norm joined in, 
saying: 
“You’d make a pretty good Christian, 
Nate, if faith were the chief requisite. 
Your optimism is pretty good dope to 
take, anyway. And here’s to you. We’ll 
work at everything we can find to do, 
and polish buffalo horns in the odd min¬ 
utes. ” 
So both boys rose above their dis¬ 
couragement temporarily, and went at 
their farm work with renewed vigor. 
The Fall was an open one and sunny 
away into November, but the soaking 
rain had kept the breaking possible. But 
little by little it grew colder and colder. 
The ground would be frozen a little in 
the morning, making breaking impossible 
until about 10 o’clock in the morning, 
and finally the freezing did not soften; 
and at last, with one hundred acres 
ready for the coining cropping, the boys 
accepted the dictum of Winter and 
ceased their efforts in the fields. 
But there was work, work. work. The 
tar-paper was put on the shanties and 
on the little barn and hencoop, anil many 
little conveniences made in the home 
places, for they maintained each his own 
place, although they were together the 
greater part of the time. They moved 
the grindstone and the bone-cutter to the 
shanty on the east of the creek, partly 
because they did their main cooking in 
the other one, and partly because they 
were less disturbed there. In this shack 
began the real work of bone-cutting. 
Failing on the horn business, Nate de¬ 
termined to make a venture at selling 
bone meal as a poultry accessory. He 
had ordered sacks with his bone-cutter, 
and these sacks he stenciled from a cut¬ 
ting made by himself on a piece of crack¬ 
er-box cardboard. The sacks bore this 
legend: 
“Puke Buffalo Bone Meal 
FOB POULTKY. N. & N. Co. ” 
After the sacks were ready, Nate print¬ 
ed on a large board, a sign reading: 
“Buffalo Bone Meal for Poultry. The 
Only Buffalo Bone Meal Made. Pro¬ 
duces the Biggest Eggs and the Best 
Poultry. Free Sample. Ask for it." 
With this notice and prices printed 
in Nate’s best lettering, on a clean, 
smooth board, the two boys sta¬ 
tioned themselves upon a busy corner of 
the- city street one Saturday afternoon in 
late November. Nate and Norm were 
good-looking boys, not so much from reg¬ 
ularity of feature, but because they 
looked alert and alive, as though life were 
well worth living and work well worth 
doing, for the pleasure of the work as 
well as for its other rewards, the reward, 
of strong muscles, sound sleep, and good 
appetites. They wanted money, to be 
sure, but they wanted to give a full equiv¬ 
alent of work value for the money. They 
had no idea or thought of seeking a “soft 
snap,” or an easy job. Both boys wore 
brown duck overalls and sheepskin-lined, 
brown duck coats, while fringed chaps, 
and felt sombreros added the picturesque 
touch, peculiarly Western. The boys had 
not stood there unnoticed, and here and 
there one paused to read the insoription 
on the board, and passed on. But al¬ 
though they had given away at least a 
fifth of their little sample sacks of the 
buffalo bone meal, no one had bought 
or ordered further. 
Suddenly from out the throng, came a 
figure and face they knew, and with no 
thought of bone meal or of sales, Nate 
gave a cheery hail, which was answered 
by Tom Miller, the man for whom the 
boys had worked in thrashing. There 
was a vigorous shaking of hands and 
quick shot of question and reply. Fin¬ 
ally Tom Miller espied the board and its 
legend: “What’s this? Bone meal? Giv¬ 
ing it away?” he said, alertly. 
“Only giving away small packages,” 
Nate admitted. “But we’d like to have 
you take a hundred pounds if you have 
any use for it.” 
“Sure,” cried Tom. “Just what we 
need to set the hens to shelling out Win¬ 
ter eggs. Wife has been worrying about 
their not laying for sometime. I’ll put a 
sack or two of oats in your wagon, when 
I get the meal. If you’ve got bone meal 
to give away I’ve got oats.” and Tom 
laughed, one of his good, infectious guf¬ 
faws. “ Where’s the oxen?" 
“Oh, we’re getting to be bloated bond¬ 
holders,” Nate chaffed’. “We’re driving 
a little real horseflesh now. We put them 
in the livery barn, for we expected to 
stay all day.’ 5 
“Say, our boys think we never- Bad 
such a cook on the thrasher. Don't yotr 
forget it, you’re part of my crew another 
year—both of you. Now for the bone 
meal. Wife’ll be tickled to death to get 
it. And fetch in about three hundred 
pounds when you come in, leave it at the 
mill for me.”’ 
A crowd had collected: while Tom Mil¬ 
ler had talked, and at once another man 
stepped up. to whom Nate presented the 
little gift sack of bone meal. The man 
looked at it questionly. “ Say. this might 
look like a, big feed to an Easterner, with 
six hens,, but I reckon there wouldn’t 
hardly be a chip apiece for my flock, I 
may’s well take a full sack, and you give 
this to some little feller, with a pair of 
hens.” 
“This is only fed sparingly, and not 
for a full diet,” Nate replied laughing 
joyously. “Where’s your rig, we’ll load a 
sack for you.” 
Before night the stock they had 
brought was exhausted, and the boys 
light-hearted as larks, were about to pick 
up their sign board and move homeward, 
fully intending to fetch in a few sacks of 
the bone meal each time they came and 
sell it on the streets. 
“Come in, you chaps!” called a hearty 
voice from a butcher’s shop near by. 
“Come in and set by. I see you’ve got 
a good thing there, now I’d like to han¬ 
dle your product.” 
After a little talk, it was agreed that 
the boys should sell to this man, Mr. 
Thompson, their meal, for three dollars 
a hundred, he would sell it for four dol¬ 
lars a hundred. 
“I’ll save all my scraps of meat and 
bone, for you, it will make it a more 
lively feed, and a better egg producer, 
and we might as well mix in a little red 
pepper, and Venetian red, these are both 
fine for poultry, and we’ll have the best 
stuff on the market.” 
“We needn’t worry any more about 
that note,” Nate said happily as soon as 
they were again upon the street. “It’s 
easier to grind bones and less fuss, than 
it is to polish buffalo horns.” 
“Did you have this in your head,, when 
you picked those bones?” Norm asked 
admiringly. 
“No, not a bit of it, I just thought I 
could help Jim and so pay for the use of 
his plow and tilings, and then when I 
saw how the hens ate the chiped bones, 
I thought maybe I could sell a little, but 
never any such amount as this; I had 
thought vaguely of shipping the bones to 
some fertilizing plant, but we’re so far 
from a railroad it would take time to 
haul them, and the pay wouldn’t be half 
what we’ll make this way. I don’t know 
but we ought to share with Jim.” 
“We will offer him a share if he wants 
to help grind,” Norm said cheerfully, “but 
as for the other fellows, who just dumped 
ou to us without so much as asking if 
they might, they can come and pick out 
their bones if they want to, and set up in 
competition.” 
“This is riding some,” Norm volun¬ 
teered, as he watched the fine dappled 
greys, trotting along as though they en¬ 
joyed it. “I can remember, when Red 
and Roan were the height of my arnbi- 
tiou.” 
“I can remember, though it seems ages 
ago, when I envied you the possession of 
Red and Roan, and felt that you were 
about the whole partnership.” Nate 
looked affectionately at Norm. 
“Huh!” snorted Norm. “You’re worth 
two of me. you find harvests, and make 
money out of things that seem too ut¬ 
terly worthless to be noticed by the rest 
of us. Say, kid, I believe I’m going to 
raise you after all!” 
Nate struck his chest a resounding 
blow, and both boys laughed, for life 
seemed like a large adventure to them, 
although their days were filled with the 
most menial labor, it was not so to them, 
work was a pleasure, an excitement, a 
joy, and the great game of homestead¬ 
ing seemed to them the most fascinating 
in the world. 
The Winter was open and delightful. 
The oxen ranged out all day long, coming 
up at night for shelter. The horses and 
the cow, too nibbled at the sweet, dry 
buffalo grass, and throve upon it, liking 
it even better than the slough hay, the 
boys had put up. 
Everything prospered. Even the few 
hens furnished a full quota of eggs, and 
Nate fed them enough ground bone to 
make their eggs all shells, had Nature 
so designed the egg. Even the cat, which 
had left while the boys were away thrash¬ 
ing, came rubbing about Norm’s knees 
one morning as he sat milking, and later 
on she was found with a family of six 
ensconced in the snuggest corner of the 
hay. This pleased the boys about as 
much as the accretion of six new calves 
could have done. 
“She’ll bring us good luck, sure,” 
Norm said, “for it’s the best luck in the 
world to have a cat stand by you.” 
And sure enough the cat seemed to 
have brought good luck, for when Jim 
returned from Wetasket late that da£, 
he brought a letter, and an order for 
more polished horns, and offering to take 
the entire output, as fast as they could 
be furnished. And so the sale of the 
horns and the bone meal, tided them over 
the Winter, and furnished money to help 
out in the Spring. 
All the settlers,, busy and happy,, were 
making preparations for Spring’s work. 
The boys had broken a hundred acres of 
land in the Fall, and they had decided to 
sow 60 acres to Spring wheat, but they 
had many counsels about the cropping of 
the other 40 acres. 
“Wheat will have to be our money 
crop.” Norm argued wisely, for wheat 
was the money crop in those early days. 
“I have seen oats and flax growing, but 
I don’t know anything about spelt and 
millet.” 
SOMETHING BRAND NEW 
Learn about the new and simple electric lighting plant 
unit that has put farm lighting on a cheaper and more 
satisfactory basis than ever before. It s called the 
“!R?ra?»]£xit>e” 
Our new booklet tells you all abont independent electric 
lighting plants. Your copy will be sent absolutely 
free for postal request. 
It’s valuable; you want it. 
office nearest you. 
Send for it now. Write the 
THE ELECTRIC 
STORAGE BATTERY CO. 
PHILADELPHIA 
New York, Boston, Chica¬ 
go, St. Louis, Cleveland, 
Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, 
San Francisco, Rochester, 
Portland, Ore., Toronto* 
Los Angeles, Seattle. 
“They say millet flax, and corn can 
all be put in late,” Nate replied also 
with, great solemnity. “I don’t know one 
thing from another, but Fm trying to 
learn.”' 
“Things are done on such a large scale 
out here,” Norm ventured, “it seems as 
if the very people are bigger than they 
are in places where a 10-acre field is a 
monstrous crop. I believe we’d best have 
the sixty of wheat, and divide the other 
40 amongst oat, rye* barley and spelt. 
This will give us a chance to try them 
out. then we’ll know another year what 
will be the best crop for our land. We’ll 
break more land for flax and corn, and 
potatoes.” 
(To he continued next month.) 
VTOTHING is more fascinating or more in vogue at this time 
^ ^ than Indian Bead Work articles. We have pro¬ 
cured an outfit for making these articles, which will be sent, 
delivery charges prepaid, for 
ONE NEW YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION 
OR 
THREE YEARLY RENEWAL SUBSCRIPTIONS 
( One of these may be the renewal of your own subscription for one year.) 
This outfit consists of a Patented Loom for making articles, tin instruc¬ 
tion and design book, a spool of cotton, twelve H. Milward Sons’ needles, 
seven bottles of colored beads—dark blue, green, light blue, black, red, 
yellow and white—a complete outfit to start the work. 
Every woman knows and appreciates the value of these home-made 
articles. 
Your neighbor needs The Rural New-Yorker. If he is not a reader 
get his subscription. If he is a subscriber get his renewal. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 333 W. 30th St., NEW YORK CITY 
DRY YOUR FRUIT 
and Vegetables on the “Granger” Fruit and 
Vegetable Evaporator. Cheaper than canning— 
No loss— Dries fruit in two hours. Cost, $3.00, $54(0 
and $8.00. Send for catalogue. EASTERN MFG. 
COMPANY, 359 So. 4th Street, Phila, Pa. 
Indian Bead Work 
Cider Presses 
You can earn money wher¬ 
ever apples grow if youowa 
a Monarch. A Monarch 
gets all the cider—you 
have satisfied custom¬ 
ers. We also make 
apple-butter cook¬ 
ers and evaporators. 
A. B. Farquhar Co., Ltd. 
'Box 130, York, Pa. 
Write for 
FREE 
