isit my wife's folks for three months. We've worked hard enough to
take a vacation."

"Will you rent me the mill while you are gone?"

"Go ahead; you can have it for nothing, if you will watch the ice."

"All right; let me know when you come back and I'll drive to town and
bring you home."

* * * * *

Three months went by, and one day in February the city man, in
response to a letter, hitched up and drove to town to bring his
neighbor back home. It was four o'clock in the afternoon when they
started out, and it was six--dark--when they turned the bend in the
road to the farm house. They helped the wife and children out, with
their baggage, and as Perkins opened the door of the house, he reached
up on the wall and turned something that clicked sharply.

Instantly light sprang from everywhere. In the barn-yard a street lamp
with an 18-inch reflector illuminated all under it for a space of 100
feet with bright white rays of light. Another street lamp hung over
the watering trough. The barn doors and windows burst forth in light.
There was not a dark corner to be found anywhere. In the house it was
the same. Perkins led the amazed procession from room to room of the
house they had shut up for the winter. On the wall in the hall
outside of every room was a button which he pushed, and the room
became as light as day before they entered. The cellar door, in
opening, automatically lighted a lamp illuminating that cavern as it
had never been lighted before since the day a house was built over it.

Needless to say, the farmer and his family were reduced to a state of
speechlessness.

"How the deuce did you do it?" finally articulated the farmer.

"I put your idle water wheel to work," said Perkins; and then,
satisfied with this exhibition, he put them back in the sleigh and
drove to his home, where his wife had supper waiting.

While the men were putting up the team in the electric lighted barn,
the farmwife went into the kitchen. Her hostess was cooking supper on
an electric stove. It looked like a city gas range and it cooked all
their meals, and did the baking besides. A hot-water tank stood
against the wall, not connected to anything hot, apparently. But it
was scalding hot, by virtue of a little electric water heater the size
of a quart tin can, connected at the bottom. Twenty-four hours a day
the water wheel pumped electricity into that "can," so that hot water
was to be had at any