October, 1913 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
217 
II 
“See, Dad,” she cried enthu¬ 
siastically, "here is the way we 
have laid it out. Mr. Elkins 
says we can feed the neighbor¬ 
hood ! But I want a hundred 
dollars to start with—we’ve got 
to have several things right 
away — some more chicken wire, 
some more hand tools, a small 
cultivator, and some other sup¬ 
plies. I want some manure for 
part of the land, and there are 
some stakes and poles — I want 
a sprayer and some arsenic, 
some canvas and some lime, 
and then there are a lot of 
plants I want to get that I don’t 
want to start from seed — I’m 
going to try some celery, for 
one, and there is- 
As a labor saver in hauling from one end of the place to another the 
motor was ever so much better than a horse 
a good deal, of faith in the au¬ 
tomobile as an assistant. 
“See you’ve got your machine 
doing navvy work on your 
place!” said Mr. Gordon, a near 
neighbor, shortly after, observ¬ 
ing the box body to the car, as 
Mr. Spence got off at the sta¬ 
tion. 
“Yes, it’s as good as a horse. 
And it doesn't eat its head off 
when it isn’t working, either. 
Poor old Dobbin couldn't pay 
for himself on my place - ” 
“No, I don’t believe he does 
pay. I’ve had a ‘poor old Dob¬ 
bin,’ as you call him—only his 
name is Mary Jane — for two 
years. I’ve got up early and 
jogged down to the station 
“Heavens, girl, draw your breath! What do you think this while you fellows got up late and flew down. I ve come home 
is—a Government Experimental Farm or a home for the insane? later than all you fellows night after night, because Mary Jane 
I can’t let you bother with all that stuff!” is slow. I’ve been kept within ten miles of the house all the time, 
“It isn’t stuff, I’m not crazy, and Mr. Elkins went over the unless I took a train, and my wife hasn t been able to go about 
whole thing with me and said it was well planned. Didn’t T make like Mrs. Spence. And all because T thought I had to have a 
some money last 
year, just ‘grub¬ 
bing’ in a patch ?” 
“You certainly 
did — and I’m just 
teasing ! Grub ^ 
some more, and 
get fat. If a hun¬ 
dred dollars will 
fit you out, and 
you bring back 
half of it in beans 
and half in rosy 
cheeks, it’s well 
spent! Here you 
are-” and Mr. 
Spence cheerfully 
wrote his check. 
“I don’t sup¬ 
pose we can really 
do much with all 
that land,” he said 
to his wife, when 
the children had 
gone to bed, “but 
did you see Dorjy’s face?" 
“John Spence, you talk as 
if three acres was a ranch! 
I’ve read of thousand-acre 
farms out West. Why 
shouldn’t we manage three 
acres? If Dorry’s little patch 
paid last year, why shouldn't 
this experiment pay better?” 
And Mr. Spence, throw¬ 
ing up his hands, fled. That 
his city-bred wife wanted 
them to run a big garden was 
sufficiently amazing. But se¬ 
cretly he rejoiced that the 
experiment was to be made 
—and he had come to have 
The marketing of produce was in the hands of Dorry and the man, but was made feasible only 
through the assistance of the untiring motor 
Mr. Elkins’ experiments with a motor as a source of power showed the 
Spences that they might expect real work from their car 
horse to run my 
two acres and 
carry my stuff to 
market and mate¬ 
rials back again. 
Now, by golly, 
I’m going to get a 
machine. What’s 
yours, and would 
you advise me to 
get one like it?” 
Spence found 
that such conver¬ 
sions were going 
on everywhere, 
lie had almost 
forgotten his one¬ 
time antipathy to 
the automobile. 
When he remem¬ 
bered it, it was to 
smile at his mis¬ 
taken notions of 
a year ago as a 
m a n smiles at 
some remembrance of child¬ 
ish prejudices. 
“For I certainly couldn’t 
run the place without a car!” 
he often said. “It’s not only 
family transportation and 
general distance annihilator, 
but it’s man of all work and 
common conveyance.” 
And it was. They used 
the car to move heavy ma¬ 
terials to the boundaries of 
the estate. With the box 
body it brought seeds, fertil¬ 
izer and plants for trans¬ 
planting, carried boxes and 
barrels, ran errands and did 
