duce it a little next year, and each
year thereafter. But, supposing it only pays expenses, how can you put
on as much style on the interest of $100,000 anywhere else as you can
here? It can't be done. When the fruit comes in and this factory is
running full time, it will earn well on toward $25,000 a year, and it
will not cost over $14,000 to run it, interest and all. It won't take
long at that rate to wipe out the interest-bearing debt. You'll be rich,
Polly, before you're ten years older."

"You are rich now, in imagination and expectation, Mr. Headman, but I'll
bank with you for a while longer. But what's the use of charging the
farm with interest when you credit it with our keeping?"

"There isn't much reason in that, Polly. It's about as broad as it is
long. I simply like to keep books in that way. We charge the farm with a
little more than $4000 interest, and we credit it with just $4000 for
our food and shelter. We'll keep on in this way because I like it."

CHAPTER LIII

THE MILK MACHINE

In opening the year 1898 I was faced by a larger business proposition
than I had originally planned. When I undertook the experiment of a
factory farm, I placed the limit of capital to be invested at about
$60,000. Now I found that I had exceeded that amount by a good many
thousand dollars, and I knew that the end was not yet. The factory was
not complete, and it would be several years before it would be at its
best in output. While it had cost me more than was originally
contemplated, and while there was yet more money to be spent, there was
still no reason for discouragement. Indeed, I felt so certain of
ultimate profits that I was ready to put as much into it as could
possibly be used to advantage.

The original plan was for a soiling farm on which I could milk thirty
cows, fatten two hundred hogs, feed a thousand hens, and wait for
thirty-five hundred fruit trees to come to a profitable age. With this
in view, I set apart forty acres of high, dry land, for the
feeding-grounds, twenty acres of which was devoted to the cows; and I
now found that this twenty-acre lot would provide an ample exercise
field for twice that number. It was in grass (timothy, red-top, and blue
grass), and the cows nibbled persistently during the short hours each
day when they were permitted to be on it; but it was never reckoned as
part of their ration. The sod was kept in good condition and the field
free from weeds, by the use of th