me along while Hiram was making ready his plat
in the garden for tomatoes. The young farmer was setting several rows of
two-inch thick stakes across the garden, sixteen feet apart in the row,
the rows four feet apart. The stakes themselves were about four feet out
of the ground.

"What ye doin' there, Hiram?" asked Henry, curiously. "Building a
fence?"

"Not exactly."

"Ain't goin' to have a chicken run out here in the garden, be ye?"

"I should hope not! The chickens on this place will never mix with the
garden trucks, if I have any say about it," declared Hiram, laughing.

"By Jo!" exclaimed Henry. "Dad says Maw's dratted hens eat up a couple
hundred dollars' worth of corn and clover every year for him-runnin'
loose as they do."

"Why doesn't he build your mother proper runs, then, plant green stuff
in several yards, and change the flock over, from yard to yard?" "Oh,
hens won't do well shut up; Maw says so," said Henry, repeating the
lazy farmer's unfounded declaration-probably originated ages ago, when
poultry was first domesticated.

"I'll show you, next year, if we are around here," said Hiram, "whether
poultry will do well enclosed in yards."

"I told mother you didn't let your chickens run free, and had no hens
with them," said Henry, thoughtfully.

"No. I do not believe in letting anything on a farm get into lazy
habits. A hen is primarily intended to lay eggs. I send them back to
work when they have hatched out their brood.

"Those home-made brooders of ours keep the chicks quite as warm, and
never peck the little fellows, or step upon them, as the old hen often
does."

"That's right, I allow," admitted Henry, grinning broadly.

"And some hens will traipse chicks through the grass and weeds as far
as turkeys. No, sir! Send the hens back to business, and let the chicks
shift for themselves. They'll do better."

"Them there in the pens certainly do look healthy," said his friend.
"But you ain't said what you was doin' here, Hiram, setting these
stakes?"

"Why, I'll tell you," returned Hiram. "This is my tomato patch."

"By Jo!" ejaculated Henry. "You don't want to set tomatoes so fur apart,
do you?"

"No, no," laughed Hiram. "The posts are to string wires on. The tomatoes
will be two feet apart in the row. As they grow I tie them to the wires,
and so keep the fruit off the ground.

"The tomato ripens better and more evenly, and the fruit will come
earlier, especially if I pinch back the en