cal way, Mr.
Morgan--I'm afraid not much. I'd advise watch repairing and jewelry in
addition. This town is going to be made a railroad division point
before long, I could get you appointed watch inspector for the company.
Now, I've got a nice little storeroom----"

"I'm afraid you've got me in the wrong deck," Morgan interrupted,
unwilling to allow the judge to go on building his extravagant fancy. "I
could no more fix a watch than I could repair a locomotive, and
spectacles are as far out of my line as specters."

Judge Thayer's face reddened above his thick beard at this easy and
fluent denial of all that he had constructed from a hasty and indefinite
bit of information.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Morgan. It was Joe Lynch, the fellow that drives
the bone wagon, who got me wrong. He told me you were an oculist."

"I think that was his rendition of optimist, perhaps," Morgan said,
laughing with the judge's hearty appreciation of the twist. "I told him,
in response to a curious inquiry, that I was an optimist. I've tried
hard--very hard, sometimes--to live up to it. My profession is one that
makes a heavy drain on all the cheerfulness that nature or art ever
stocked a man with, Judge Thayer."

"It sounds like you might be a lawyer," the judge speculated, "or maybe
a doctor?"

"No, I'm simply an agriculturist, late professor of agronomy in the Iowa
State Agricultural College. It takes optimism, believe me, sir, to try
to get twenty bushels of wheat out of land where only twelve grew
before, or two ears of corn where only two-thirds of one has been the
standard."

"You're right," Judge Thayer agreed heartily; "it takes more faith,
hope, and courage to be a farmer than any other calling on earth. I
often consider the risks a farmer must take year by year in comparison
with other lines of business, staking his all, very frequently, on what
he puts into the furrows, turning his face to God when he has sown his
seed, in faith that rains will fall and frosts will be stayed. It is
heroic, sometimes it is sublimely heroic. And you are going to try your
fortunes here on the soil?"

"I've had my eye on this country a good while in spite of the dismal
tales of hardship and failure that have come eastward out of it. I've
looked to it as the place for me to put some of my theories to the test.
I believe alfalfa, or lucerne, as it is called back East, will thrive
here, and I'm going to risk your derision and go a little farther