lfred, it is the fear of all
your friends in this club that the minstrel show will not make enough
money to run the farm."

[Illustration: Alfred as a Farmer]

Alfred replied to the introduction:

"Gentlemen, the introduction honors me; to be a farmer has been the
dream of my life. Beginning life on a farm, I ask no more pleasant
ending than to live the last days of my earthly time on a farm.

"The facetious remarks of the toastmaster do not explain my reasons for
engaging in farming. It is true, financial consideration did not govern
me in this matter, although I do hope to make the farm self-supporting.
If I do not, I shall not feel that I have made a bad investment.

"In seeking the quietude of the farm, I was actuated by that yearning
that comes to all men who have led a busy life--to turn back the years
and try to live the days of patches, freckles, stone bruises and
laughter; to live those days again when there was only one care in the
world, not to be late for meals.

"I want to go way back yonder in my life to a house half hidden from
view by the locusts and maples, where the bees hummed and swarmed. I
want a scent of the honeysuckle as the maples and locusts budded forth
in what seemed to me the morning of the world--springtime. I want to
follow the path down by the big spring, through the hazel bushes, where
the cotton tail jumped up just ahead of you and the redbird sang his
sweetest song. I can follow the path in my mind as the hunting dog
follows the scent, down to the old rock hole where the clear, cool
waters of the creek formed an eddy, in which the chub and yellow perch
lurked and jumped at the bait as they never did anywhere else.

"I want to feel that ecstacy that only comes to a boy when the bottle
cork you used for a bobber goes under water, when something is pulling
on the line like a scared mule, bending double the pole cut in the
thicket on your way to the creek. I want to throw the pole away, roll up
the tangled line, hide it away in the corn crib, and sneak back to the
house the opposite direction from the creek, that the folks wouldn't
suspect I had been fishing on Sunday.

"I want to go back yonder in my life where the hills meet the sky in a
purple haze, where you feel yourself growing with the trees, where the
smell of new earth calls you to the woods, where the dogwood is budding
and the may-apple peeps up through last year's leaves at the new leaves
budding out on the grand old m