an
shall be a good animal."

Philip D. Armour fulfilled the requirements.

He was dowered with a vital power that fed his restless brain and made
him a regular dynamo of energy for sixty-nine years--and with a little
care at the last should have run for ninety years with never a hotbox.

He used to say, "If my ancestors had been selected for me by Greek
philosophers, specialists in heredity, they could not have done better.
I can not imagine a better woman than my mother. My childhood was ideal.
God did not overlook me."

Well did this happy, exuberant, healthy man say that his parentage and
childhood environment were ideal. Here was a family of six boys and
three girls, brought up on a beautiful hillside farm amid as peaceful
and lovely a landscape as ever the sun shone upon. Down across the creek
there were a hundred acres of bottom-land that always laughed a harvest
under the skilful management of Danforth Armour. Yet the market for
surplus products was distant, so luxury and leisure were out of the
question. And yet work wasn't drudgery. Woods, hills, running streams,
the sawmill and the gristmill, the path across the meadow, the open
road, the miracle of the seasons, the sugar-bush, the freshet that
carried away the bridge, the first Spring flowers peeping from beneath
the snow on the south side of rotting logs, the trees bursting into
leaf, the hills white with blossoms of wild cherry and hawthorn, the
Saturday afternoon when the boys could fish, the old swimming-hole, the
bathing of the little ones in the creek, the growing crops in the
bottom-land, bee-trees and wild honey, coon-hunts by moonlight, the
tracks of deer down by the salt-lick, bears in the green corn,
harvest-time, hog-killing days, frost upon the pumpkin and fodder in the
shock, wild turkeys in the clearing, revival-meetings, spelling-bees,
debates at the schoolhouse, school at the log schoolhouse in
Stockbridge, barn-raisings, dances in the new barn, quilting-bees,
steers to break, colts to ride, apple butter, soft soap, pickled pigs'
feet, smoked hams, side-meat, shelled walnuts, coonskins on the
barn-door, Winter and the first fall of snow, boots to grease, harness
to mend, backlogs, hickory-nuts, cider, a few books and all the other
wonderful and enchanting things that a country life, not too isolated,
brings to the boys and girls born where the rain makes musical patter on
the roof and the hand of a loving mother tucks you in at night!