y
ought to work, just as those who have to support them must work."

The old Squire, after consulting with the two other selectmen, finally
offered five of the paupers fifty cents a day and their board if they
would come to our place and dry apples. Three of the five were women,
one was an elderly man, and the fifth was a not over-bright youngster of
eighteen. So far from disliking the project all five hailed it with
delight.

Having paupers round the place was by no means an unmixed pleasure. We
equipped them with apple parers, corers and slicers and set them to work
in the basement of the haymaker. Large trays of woven wire were prepared
to be set in rows on the rack overhead. It was then October; the fire
necessary to keep the workers warm was enough to dry the trays of sliced
apples almost as fast as they could be filled.

For more than a month the five paupers worked there, sometimes well,
sometimes badly. They dried nearly two tons of apples, which, if I
remember right, brought six cents a pound that year. The profit from
that venture alone nearly paid for the haymaker.

The weather was bright the next haying time, so bright indeed that it
was scarcely worth while to dry grass in the haymaker; and the next
summer was just as sunny. It was in the spring of that second year that
Theodora and Ellen asked whether they might not put their boxes of
flower seeds and tomato seeds into the haymaker to give them an earlier
start, for the spring suns warmed the ground under the glass roof while
the snow still lay on the ground outside. In Maine it is never safe to
plant a garden much before the middle of May; but we sometimes tried to
get an earlier start by means of hotbeds on the south side of the farm
buildings. In that way we used to start tomatoes, radishes, lettuce and
even sweet corn, early potatoes, carrots and other vegetables, and then
transplanted them to the open garden when settled warm weather came.

The girls' suggestion gave us the idea of using the haymaker as a big
hothouse. The large area under glass made the scheme attractive. On the
2d of April we prepared the ground and planted enough garden seeds of
all kinds to produce plants enough for an acre of land. The plants came
up quickly and thrived and were successfully transplanted. A great
victory was thus won over adverse nature and climate. We had sweet corn,
green peas and everything else that a large garden yields a fortnight or
three weeks earlie