aste useful time carting milk to market--feed it to
the hogs rather. If a farmer or a milkman will call for it, sell what
you have to spare for what he will give, and have done with it quickly.
You are to manage the hogs on the same principle. Fatten those which are
ready for it, with anything you find on the place. We will get rid of
the whole bunch as soon as possible. You see, I must first clear the
ground before I can build my factory. Let the hens alone for the
present; you can eat them during the winter.

"Now, about the crops. The hay in barns and stacks is all right; the
wheat is ready for threshing, but it can wait until the oats are also
ready; the corn is weedy, but it is too late to help it, and the
potatoes are probably covered with bugs. I will send out to-morrow some
Paris green and a couple of blow-guns. There is not much real farm work
to do just now, and you will have time for other things. The first and
most important thing is to dig a cellar to put your house over; your
comfort depends on that. Get the men and horses with plough and scraper
out as early as you can to-morrow morning, and hustle. You have nothing
to do but dig a big hole seven feet deep inside these lines. I count on
you to keep things moving, and I will be out the day after to-morrow."

The mason had finished his estimate, which was $560. After some
explanations, I concluded that it was a fair price, and agreed to it,
provided the work could be done promptly. The carpenter was not ready to
give me figures; he said, however, that he could get a man to move the
house for $120, and that he would send me by mail that night an itemized
estimate of costs, and also one from a plumber. This seemed like doing a
lot of things in one afternoon, so Polly and I started for town content.

"Those people can't be very luxurious out there," said Polly, "but they
can have good food and clean beds. They have all out-doors to breathe
in, and I do not see what more one can ask on a fine August evening, do
you, Mr. Headman?"

I could think of a few things, but I did not mention them, for her first
words recalled some scenes of my early life on a backwoods farm: the log
cabin, with hardly ten nails in it, the latch-string, the wide-mouthed
stone-and-stick chimney, the spring-house with its deep crocks, the
smoke-house made of a hollow gum-tree log, the ladder to the loft where
I slept, and where the snows would drift on the floor through the rifts
in the