rk his crop in spite of failure, hopin' every year to
hit it the nex' time. Would a merchant or manufacturer or anybody
else do that? No, they'd make an assignment the second year of
failure. But not so with the farmer, and it shows God intended he
shu'd keep at it.

"Now, I'm goin' to give this mill a chance to raise its own cotton,
besides everything else its people needs to eat. I figger we can
raise cotton cheaper than we can buy it, an' keep our folks healthy,
too."

Near Cottontown was an old cotton plantation of four thousand acres.
It had been sadly neglected and run down. This the bishop purchased
for the company for only ten dollars an acre, and divided it into
tracts of twenty acres each, building a neat cottage, dairy and barn,
and other outhouses on each tract--but all arranged for a family of
four or five, and thus sprang up in a year a new settlement of two
hundred families around Cottontown. It was no trouble to get them,
for the fame of The Model Mill had spread, and far more applied
yearly for employment than could be accommodated. This large farm,
when equipped fully, represented fifty thousand dollars more, or an
investment of ninety thousand dollars, and immediately became a
valuable asset of the mill.

It was divided into four parts, each under the supervision of a manager,
a practical and experienced cotton farmer of the valley, and the tenants
were selected every year from among all the workers of the mill,
preference always being given to the families who needed the outdoor
work most, and those physically weak from long work in the mill. It was
so arranged that only fifty families, or one-fourth of the mill, went
out each year, staying four years each on the farm. And thus every four
years were two hundred families given the chance in the open to get in
touch with nature, the great physician, and come again. After four years
they went back to the mill, sunburnt, swarthy, and full of health, and
what is greater than health,--cheerfulness--the cheerfulness that comes
with change.

On the farm they received the same wages as when in the mill, and each
family was furnished with a mule, a cow, and poultry, and with a good
garden.

To reclaim this land and build up the soil was now the chief work of the
old man; but having been overseer on a large cotton plantation, he knew
his business, and set to work at it with all the zeal and good sense of
his nature.

He knew that cotton was one of the