You simply request him to deliver the water he
usually blends with the milk in a separate vessel, which, of course, you
are glad to provide. Then if you get only a pint of cow's milk for the
price of a quart, you are satisfied, because you have the privilege of
seasoning it by superior home-methods of irrigation to suit yourself. I
was too much of a farmer to ever board comfortably in the city.

Jim always agreed with me in those days before nervousness induced by
woman drove us through fire and over the bumpy paths of error, that
housekeeping was the ideal life. Knowledge of what the people will stand
is power, and it has packed some powerful doses in cans. They used to
throw away half the hog until they got knowledge. Some epicure who lived
on rats and bats' eyes, announced that the black spot in the oyster is
the best part. What he had to say was published in a bulletin or a
report--let me see, was it from the Department of Agriculture? I've read
a good many of their bulletins, but I can't be sure if they did that for
the country or not. At any rate, the report went into oysters from away
back, quoted authorities from Egypt and Persia, who were fond of dogs,
and gave the needed impetus to the captains of the canning industry, who
are always on the lookout for pointers--or pugs. Since then all the
black spots have been saved on the farm, whether in hogs or apples, done
up at some factory in neat glass jars, with a chemist's certificate
that they do not contain boracic acid or turpentine, and will not eat
the enamel off a stew-kettle; sterilized, gold-labeled and rechristened
"Meadfern" crab apples, mince-meat, gelatine, invalid's food and what
not, until it is hard to tell where the economy will stop. The latest
thing in this line is the current information that it pays to feed the
stimulating prickers from the wild gooseberries to make the hens lay.

I once asked a fellow who ran a cannery why he used such expensive
labels.

"To please the goats," he answered.

And so his business is largely human nature, too. We laugh at the
foolish goats for eating the label off a can--we eat the same thing
ourselves. When I come to drink the bitter hemlock, I pray it may be
labeled so as to take the pucker out of it.

I would rather starve than board, so I started out to find my desert
island.

"You advertise rooms for light housekeeping," said I to a sad-faced,
middle-aged woman, who answered my ringing of the bell of a thr