American Agriculturist, October 18, 1924 
273 
The Trouble Maker — By E. R. Eastman 
J IM TAYLOR leaned against the cross¬ 
piece between the handles of his 
cultivator and watched his neighbor, old 
Johnny Ball, come up the lot toward him 
on his way to the back pasture after the 
cows. 
Near where Jim stood was the new corn 
which he had been cultivating, just nicely 
showing the rows. Back of him along 
the stone-wall wild roses were in bloom. 
Beyond and across the valley, the after¬ 
noon sun, shining on a patch of woods, 
brought out and emphasized a million 
different shades of green. On every side, 
and as far as he could see, the green of the 
clover and the grass of the meadows was 
contrasted with the plowed fields of his 
neighbors, representing the mighty work 
of the seed tune. xAll around him, and 
stretching away to the horizon, bloomed 
the lavishness of Nature in the summer- 
land, for it was June, June in the hill 
country of New York. 
Had Jim been in the mood, he might, 
as he looked at the panorama, have 
thought of those lines of Lowell: 
“The flush of life may well be seen, 
Thrilling back o’er hills and valleys—” 
Or again, he might, as he saw across 
the valley the cows of his neighbors busy 
feeding on the pastures which had not yet 
turned brown from the hot summer sun, 
have thought of that other line so de¬ 
scriptive of the dairy country: 
“The cattle on a thousand hills—” 
But judging by the boy’s face, these 
pleasant things were not registered on his 
consciousness, for there was a moody 
shadow in his eyes and stern lines showed 
about his mouth. 
W HEN Ball came up to where Jim 
was standing, the two men left 
the horses in the row and climbed over 
the stone-wall fence to rest and to visit 
for a few minutes in the long shade of a 
nearby maple. 
“Johnny,” said Jim, after the old man 
had gotten his pipe well started, “I was 
a-wonderin’ as I watched you coming 
skatin’ across the old side hill so sort of 
full of pep and life, how you managed to 
keep such a cheerful outlook after sixty 
years of contendin’ with these hills. You 
know of late I’ve begun to have my 
doubts about this whole farm business, 
and about the business of life itself, for 
that matter.” 
“How old are you, boy?” asked the old 
man. 
“Twenty-seven.” 
“Well, son, twenty-seven is pretty 
young to get doubtful and cynical.” 
Then John Ball grinned as he concluded: 
“But I guess you will find it like the 
other diseases of childhood, likely to soon 
pass away with the years.” 
“No, I am serious,” said the young 
man. “What does it matter whether 
we cultivate a little corn or a lot of corn 
in a day, if in the end we get nothing for 
it? Same with everything else we do. 
Ever since I could straddle a milk pail I 
have been workin’ early and late on this 
farm, as my old Dad did before me. And 
where has it got me?” 
“Pretty husky, healthy, young animal, 
I should judge.” 
“Health isn’t any good,” returned Jim, 
“if all you use it for is hard work. I 
have been nowhere; had no fun; I’m just 
chief cook and bottle washer for a lot of 
cows. The farm is mortgaged to the 
hilt. Mother is a bed-ridden invalid, 
and has been for years as a result of over¬ 
work to make both ends meet.” 
“Yes, it is pretty hard about your 
mother, 1 ’ said Ball. 
“On the other hand,” continued the 
boy,” there’s young Green over the other 
side of your place. He don’t get up in 
the mornin’ till he feels like it, trots to 
town two or three times a week, always 
has time to stop and visit, starts hayin’ 
when the last of us are through, and milks 
his cows whenever he feels like it. All of 
us have been laughing at him about his 
farmin’ for years, but, by George, dunno 
but what he is the one that ought to 
laugh. Some way or other, he always has 
enough to eat and wear, and always seems 
to get fun out of life as he goes along, 
which is more than the rest of us can 
say.” 
“That’s all right,” said Johnny, “if you 
want to live as Green does. Most of us 
don’t get much out of bein’ shiftless.” 
“No longer ago than this morning,” 
continued Taylor, “the dealer sent all of 
my milk back, claiming that I had not 
cooled it low enough. Maybe not. But 
after the stuff had been churned clear to 
the station and back again in the hot sun 
it was still perfectly sweet this noon. 
When a feller is fightin’ along, needing 
every last cent just to make both ends 
Johnny, when we don’t have anything to 
make life a little pleasanter?” 
“Take that corn, now,” continued the 
old man. “When I look at my field, I 
think that with my own hands I turned 
over the sod, drawed the manure, and 
planted the seed. Later I will come up 
here some Sunday when it’s about ready 
to cut and when I see it wavin’ and 
rustlin’ in the sunlight, I’ll feel maybe like 
an artist does when he has just painted a 
nice picture. And the satisfaction I’ll 
get will be part of my fun for the labor 
that it took to grow the crop. But you 
young fellers, you look at it and all you 
think of is the hard work you’ve done and 
the money you ain’t goin’ to get for it.” 
“ Even artists can’t live on looks alone,” 
said Jim sarcastically. 
It. Starts This Week—“The Trouble Maker” 
T HE serial which American Agriculturist readers have 
been eagerly awaiting begins this week. In the first 
installment Mr. Eastman introduces you to three leading 
characters—Jim Taylor, a stalwart young farmer, who 
puzzles over the unequalities of life; crochetty Johnny Ball, 
his neighbor, who thinks the younger generation should be 
content with “ what was good enough for their fathers,” 
and lovely Dorothy Ball, Jim’s childhood playmate, who 
can make both men forget their arguments when she comes 
on the scene. 
Next time—trouble brewing! Don’t miss an issue of this 
splendid farm serial. 
meet, the way these milk buyers are 
acting is just the last straw. No, sir, as 
you say, this corn gives promise of being 
a middlin’ success, but I don’t take no 
pride in it no more, or with any of the 
other crops. I’m sick of the whole 
business.” 
T HE boy stopped [talking and both 
men sat quietly looking] into the hills 
across the valley. 
Then the boy said half to himself: “If 
it wasn’t for Mother and my kid sister, 
I’d quit and enlist with the Canadians to 
help lick Bill Kaiser’s dutchmen.” 
The old man made no immediate reply, 
but busied himself taking his pipe from 
one pocket and tobacco from another, 
slowly filling the bowl, and ramming it 
down with his thumb. Then when it was 
going well, he turned to Jim and said: 
“You young fellers make me a little 
tired sometimes, Jimmy. Your gener¬ 
ation is certainly the most complainingest 
set I ever saw. All of you want to start 
in where your dads left off.” 
“Well, that’s natural, isn’t it?” in¬ 
terrupted Jim. 
“It may be natural, but it ain’t reason¬ 
able,” replied the older man. “You 
ought to be willin’ to start back a ways 
and work forwards as your pas and mas 
did before you. I got my farm and got 
it paid for, but all the wife and I had when 
we started was a little second-hand 
furniture, two cows and a pair of horses, 
some tools that I owed Dad for, and one 
hundred dollars in cash. Going without 
autos, motion pictures and other modern 
contraptions didn’t worry us because 
then there wasn’t no such.” 
“Yes,” said the boy, “but you had 
some fun, I’ll bet.” 
“Not what you call fun,” said Ball. 
“Once in a while in a slack time we’d go 
visitin’, and sometimes we had a neighbor¬ 
hood spellin’ match, or some other kind of 
party; but most of the time we worked 
and we got our fun out of our work.” 
“No fun in work when you don’t get 
nothin’ for it,” said Jim. 
“Yes there is fun in honest work, too, 
if you set your mind to think about it 
that way, and not be thinkin’ all the time 
about somethin’ that you can’t have.” 
“How can you help thinkin’ about it. 
T HE old man paid no attention, but 
continued: 
“Poor folks nowhere have easy times, 
least of all in the cities. We country 
people do pretty well, all considered, if 
we just stopped some of this blame 
grumblin’, complainin’ and belly-achin’ 
because we can’t have some of the fool 
things that some extravagant neighbor 
does.” 
The old man paused for breath. 
“I didn’t hear any of that ‘Pollyanna 
stuff’ out of you when the milk dealer 
sent your milk back the other day.” 
John Ball laughed. 
“Well, I’m not saying farmin’ ain’t 
irritatin’,” he said. “My claim is, 
though, that irritatin’ things is part of 
life and can’t be escaped nohow. A lot of 
folks is always lookin’ for the pot of gold 
at the end of the rainbow a way off some¬ 
where else, forgettin’ that some of the 
good things of life might be found right 
under their feet. Even cattle have the 
notion too, always lookin’ over the fence 
at the grass on the other side which 
looks greener, but ain’t.” 
So deeply engrossed were the men in 
their discussion that they did not hear 
the light footsteps behind them and both 
jumped when a sunbonnet poked its head 
around the tree and a voice from under 
the bonnet said: 
“Caught loafing again, you rogues! 
I can’t turn my back for even an hqur to 
pick a few strawberries if you two are 
within a mile of each other, without both 
of you hitting for the nearest shade tree 
to quarrel and argue.” 
“Well, anyway, Dorothy,” said the 
younger man, his bronze lantern-jawed 
face lighting up with a crinkly smile, 
singularly attractive, “neither your old 
dad nor I ever have any quarrel with 
you.” 
“We both know it ain’t any use, don’t 
we, Jimmy?” said her father. “Dot’s 
some more of this crazy generation of 
yours. Don’t ever know what she wants, 
but always wantin’ it darn hard. Let me 
tell you, if she ever once gets her mind set 
on a feller that she wants to marry, that 
poor cuss will be lost, hook, line and 
sinker. She’d foiler him to Timbuctoo if 
he tried to’escape. ’ ’ 
The girl blushed, and to cover her 
embarrassment, turned quickly to Jim 
and said: 
“Life’s too short for the waiting game, 
isn’t it, Jimmy?” 
“Yes,” answered the boy bitterly. 
“But some of us have to wait just the 
same.” 
A S SHE stood there bantering with 
the men and swinging her pail of 
strawberries in one hand and an old sun- 
bonnet in the other, some of the bitter¬ 
ness faded out of Jim’s heart. What a 
thoroughbred she is, he thought. 
He would have had to be something 
more than human not to have responded 
to the good spirits which the girl fairly 
radiated. She was tall, but not too tall, 
with that round slenderness so much 
desired and admired in our modern 
American girl. The rays of the sun 
coming through the shade of the maple 
struck glints of gold in her brown hair, and 
her brown eyes dancing with life and 
twinkling with mischief gave the boy a 
thrilling glimpse into the unfathomable 
and unknown soul of girlhood. 
Noticing the boy’s too intent gaze, 
Dorothy turned a little away from him 
and said: 
“Jimmy, haven’t you a water pail up 
here so that I can send some of these 
berries down to your mother for supper 
to-night?” 
Jim, followed by Dorothy, went over 
in the shade of the fence, found a pail 
and held it while Dorothy poured a part 
of the berries out of her pail into his. 
As the old man lay for a moment 
watching the young couple together, in 
the natural setting of field and young and 
growing life, he said softly to himself: 
“Created He the world and all manner 
of living things, and man to rule over all; 
and then it was not good for man to live 
alone, so He created woman.” 
Jim heard a part of this remark, and 
turning around he inquired: 
“What’d you say, Johnny?” 
“Didn’t say nothin’,” said Ball, 
sitting up straight. “Gittin’ old and 
foolish,” and he got up and walked away. ' 
With a tender, whimsical smile draw¬ 
ing up the corners of her mouth, Dorothy 
stood watching her father as he slowly 
climbed the steep hill after his cows, 
while the boy was very busy watching 
Dorothy. 
Finally, turning to Jim, Dorothy said: 
“What do you and Father find to 
argue so much about lately, Jimmy? 
Really, every time you get together, 
which is nearly every day, I notice quite 
heated conversations. First thing you 
know, you’ll get to quarreling, and I 
shouldn’t like that.” 
“Oh I guess not. He just tries to make 
me believe that this dairy business is all 
right when he knows and I know darn 
well that it isn’t, but we wouldn’t really 
quarrel.” 
“What’s the matter with the dairy 
business?” asked the girl. 
“The matter is, it makes no difference 
how hard a farmer works in these times, 
he never can get where it’s safe to try 
to plan for a home of his own. We work, 
and we work, and we never get anything 
for it. You know what so much over¬ 
work did for Mother, and it certainly 
wasn’t Father’s fault for he did the very 
best he could.” 
T HE girl stood looking a moment at 
the boy’s gloomy face and bowed 
head. 
“Sometimes I think the trouble with 
you is, you take life too seriously, Jimmy. 
Maybe you’ve got too much of that old 
New England conscience.” 
He made no reply, and Dorothy picked 
a daisy and absentmindedly pulled off 
the petals one by one. She loosened the 
yellow seeds in the center, threw them in 
the air, and caught some of them on the 
back of her hand. As she noticed what 
she had done and remembered the old 
country legend about telling fortunes 
{Continued on page 277) 
