veying the brown, muscular troop, "but the two
little ones are good in summer at berry-picking." They had just then
come in from the lima-bean field, where they had planted poles. Even
the baby had helped.

"I put two beans in a hill instead of four. I tell you why," said the
farmer; "I wait three days, and see if they come up. If they do not, I
put down two more. Most of them come up, and I save two beans. A
farmer has got to make money on saving expenses."

The sound of a piano interrupted him. "It is my daughter," he said.
"They help me, and I let them have in turn what young people
want--piano, music lessons, a good horse to drive. It pays. They are
all here yet. In the beginning we starved together, had to eat corn
with the cows, but the winter tailoring pulled us through. Now I want
to give it up. I want to buy the next farm. With our 34 acres, it will
make 60, and we can live like men, and let those that need the
tailoring get it. I wouldn't exchange this farm for the best property
in the city."

His two eldest sons nodded assent to his words.

Late that night, when we were returning to Woodbine, we came suddenly
upon a crowd of boys filling the road. They wore the uniform of the
Hirsch School. It was within ten minutes of closing-time, and they
were half a mile from home. The superintendent pulled up and asked
them where they were going. There was a brief silence, then the
hesitating answer:--

"It is a surprise party."

Mr. Sabsovich eyed the crowd sharply and thought awhile.

"Oh," he said, remembering all at once, "it is Mr. Billings and his
new wife. Go ahead, boys!"

To me, trying vainly to sleep in the village hotel in the midnight
hour with a tin-pan serenade to the newly married teacher going on
under the window, there came in a lull, with the challenge of the
loudest boy, "Mr. Billings! If you don't come down, we will never go
home," an appreciation of the Woodbine system of discipline which I
had lacked till then. It was the Radetzky plan over again, of giving
the boys a chance, to make them stay on the farm.

If it is difficult to make the boy stay, it is sometimes even harder
to make the father go. Out of a hundred families picked on New York's
East Side as in especial need of transplanting to the land, just seven
consented when it came to the journey. They didn't relish the "society
of the stumps." The Jews' colonies need many things before they can
hope to rival the attraction of the ci