remember a good illustration in a man
who used to live in East Brookfield, Mass. He was a shoemaker, and he
was out of work, and he sat around the house until his wife told him
"to go out doors." And he did what every husband is compelled by law
to do--he obeyed his wife. And he went out and sat down on an ash
barrel in his back yard. Think of it! Stranded on an ash barrel and
the enemy in possession of the house! As he sat on that ash barrel, he
looked down into that little brook which ran through that back yard
into the meadows, and he saw a little trout go flashing up the stream
and hiding under the bank. I do not suppose he thought of Tennyson's
beautiful poem:

"Chatter, chatter, as I flow,
To join the brimming river,
Men may come, and men may go,
But I go on forever."

But as this man looked into the brook, he leaped off that ash barrel
and managed to catch the trout with his fingers, and sent it to
Worcester. They wrote back that they would give him a five dollar bill
for another such trout as that, not that it was worth that much, but
he wished to help the poor man. So this shoemaker and his wife, now
perfectly united, that five dollar bill in prospect went out to get
another trout They went up the stream to its source and down to the
brimming river, but not another trout could they find in the whole
stream; and so they came home disconsolate and went to the minister.
The minister didn't know how trout grew, but he pointed the way. Said
he, "Get Seth Green's book, and that will give you the information you
want." They did so, and found all about the culture of trout. They
found that a trout lays thirty-six hundred eggs every year and every
trout gains a quarter of a pound every year, so that in four years a
little trout will furnish four tons per annum to sell to the market
at fifty cents a pound. When they found that, they said they didn't
believe any such story as that, but if they could get five dollars a
piece they could make something. And right in that same back yard with
the coal sifter up stream and window screen down the stream, they
began the culture of trout. They afterwards moved to the Hudson, and
since then he has become the authority in the United States upon the
raising of fish, and he has been next to the highest on the United
States Fish Commission in Washington. My lesson is that man's wealth
was out there in his back yard for twenty years, but he didn't see it
until his wife dro