vid cordially.

"Good-morning, Dave. How are things out your way? Hail do much damage?"

"Some damage," echoed the farmer. "It hailed just about four hundred
dollars' worth too much for me."

"What, you don't say so! That's the trouble with your farming."

Caleb Warner was an affable little man with a frank, almost innocent,
look on his smooth-shaven face. Spontaneous interest in his friends'
affairs made him an agreeable companion and helped materially to
increase his clientele--Caleb Warner dealt in real estate and,
incidentally, in oil stocks and gold stocks.

"That's just the trouble with your farming," he repeated. "You slave and
break your back and crops are fine and you hope to have a good return
for your labor, when along comes a hail storm and ruins your fruit or
tobacco or corn, or along comes a dry spell or a wet spell with the same
result. It sounds mighty fine to say the farmer is the most independent
person on the face of the earth--it's a different proposition when you
try it out. Not so?"

"I'm about convinced you speak the truth about it," said the farmer.

"I know I do. I used to be a farmer, but I have grown wiser. I think
there are too many other ways to make money with less risk."

"That is why I came----" David hesitated, but the other man waited
silently for the explanation. "Have you any more of the gold-mine stock
you offered me some time ago?"

"That Nevada mine?"

"Yes."

"Just one thousand dollars' worth; the rest is all cleaned out. I sold a
thousand yesterday. Listen, Dave, there's the chance of your life. You
know how I worked on that farm of mine, how my wife had to slave, how
even Mary had to work hard. Then one day a friend of mine who had gone
west came to me and offered me some stock in a western gold mine. My
wife was afraid of it, said I'd lose every cent I put in it and we'd
have to go to the poorhouse--women don't generally understand about
investments. But I went ahead and got the stock, and in a few years I
sold out part of it for a neat sum and drew big dividends on what I
kept. Then we moved to town; my wife keeps a maid, Mary goes to college,
and we're living instead of slaving our lives away on a farm. And it's
honestly made money, for the gold was put into the earth for us to use.
It is just a case of running a little risk, but no person loses money
because of your risk. Of course, there's lots of stock sold that's not
worth the paper it's written on, but I don