HOUSE AND GARDEN 
March, 1912 
35 
He was very sorry he did not have capital enough to run things 
in a business-like manner. 
The matter of selecting the corn was by no means so difficult, 
although here again Raffles’ opinion did not coincide with the 
advice given in the catalogues. The result was that one acre 
was to be planted with selected ears from the Squire’s stock of 
flint corn and the second with a highly praised early dent, which, 
for the peck required, cost one dollar. 
The corn they tested for germination in the greenhouse. 
Squire Hunderson's, from ears selected by Raffles, showed ninety- 
six per cent., that from the seedsman sixty-nine. Some of the 
kernels of the latter were small and evidently unripe, so they 
decided to plant this extra thick, making the amount bought for 
an acre cover only two-thirds, and get more of the Squire’s. 
Mantell was very impatient for the beginning of spring opera¬ 
tions, and if Raffles and the Squire had not been there to teach 
him better, would have begun work while the soil was still wet 
and pasty. As it was, 
he was the first one 
in the neighborhood 
to break ground, and 
the rolling over of the 
first brown furrow 
gave him a sensation 
of exhilaration and 
victory as great as 
that from any busi¬ 
ness success he had 
ever achieved. 
The Squire's pair 
of big grays — a little 
soft after the winter’s 
easier work — were in¬ 
clined to rush and 
fret at first, but soon 
steadied down as 
strip after strip of the 
long-unturned garden 
patch rolled up and 
over, and steamed in 
the bright spring sun. 
Nor was Mantell the 
only one to enjoy the 
scene — the feathered 
section of the poultry 
department came out 
in force, and had the 
feed of their young 
(or old, as the case 
might be) lives on the 
worms and grubs in 
the newly turned furrows, which they searched assiduously. 
Raffles came over from the greenhouse, where he was trans¬ 
planting tomatoes, and looked on critically for a few moments. 
Then he measured the depth of the furrow, dug down into the 
soil below, and told Mantell to make the man plow deeper. After 
some argument they got the Squire’s man to turning up just a 
little of the subsoil with each furrow, though he did it under 
protest, and said “plowin’ deeper’n what it had used ter be 
plowed warn’t no way to do.” 
The Squire had agreed to help Mantell out all he could, but 
as he found it necessary to plow his own oat fields as soon as 
Mantell’s garden was “fitted,” Mantell was obliged to look for 
help elsewhere. Mantell was very much surprised at the diffi¬ 
culty he experienced in getting any one to help him. Men who 
for weeks past had seemed to have little or nothing to do, now 
could not find an hour to spare. Several times he was promised 
faithfully by farmers, who did not even let him know that they 
would not come when the day for which they were engaged 
arrived. To make matters worse, they found that there was 
such a poor “stand” of grass on part of the land they had decided 
to leave for hay, that it would amount to practically nothing. 
So they decided to plow this and sow it to oats and grass seed, 
but as a result of his looking into the matter Mantell decided 
to try one acre out of the three with oats and vetches. 
Finally they secured the services of one Jeremiah Fosdick — 
after a great deal of coaxing, begging and persuading. Mantell 
was rather suspicious that he had let some other work go to 
accept this job, and principally out of curiosity to see the place 
of the city man who was reputed to be doing so many craz\- 
stunts. 
Jeremiah was a talker. He seemed to consider his work as 
merely incidental. He could ask more questions and furnish more 
gratuitous and useless information per sixty seconds than any 
two people Mantell 
had ever met. He 
was, however, one of 
those harmless, good 
natured, New Eng¬ 
land rural souls with 
whom it is next to im- 
l)ossible to get angry. 
He at once assumed 
himself so naturally to 
be upon Mantell’s 
level, and took him 
so personally into his 
confidence, that such 
a thing as being in¬ 
dignant did not occur 
to the former city 
man. 
Jeremiah finished 
the three acres of sod 
land with a walking 
plow and an odd pair 
of horses, one white, 
one black, and har¬ 
rowed it twice over. 
The fields he left in 
"lands.” The Squire 
loaned his seed drill 
for putting in the 
grass seed, which 
cost another pretty 
penny. They got the 
oats at the grain store 
at Priestly, as there 
was not time to send away for special seed oats. The Squire's 
fields were green before Mantell’s had come up, which displeased 
the latter greatly, but he had, of course, been helpless until he 
could get his ground plowed. He made a red-letter mental reso¬ 
lution not to get caught that way again. 
VHI. 
The second week in April had come on warm and balmy. 
The natives were still afraid to plant anything in the garden line, 
but Raffles was inclined to take some chances. Flis early peas 
had been in a week, and he had prepared and sowed quite a good 
sized bed of onions, while the wise ones shook their heads. When 
he set out nearly a thousand of the best cabbages, a hundred 
cauliflower, and a patch of lettuce, the Squire stopped on his way 
past and said he didn’t want to interfere, but that the climate 
around these parts was pretty tricky, and they mustn’t be misled 
{Continued on page 78) 
Jeremiah, a typical New England countryman, plowed the three acres of sod land 
