ton, deciding to try and get at the
question in another way.

"I have a wood-lot. But I built a good strong fence around it, since I
came here,--ye don't mean to tell me that doesn't improve it? If ye
lived here, ye'd know better."

"That's all right, Mr. Meacham, it makes it better all right, but it
isn't counted in as 'improved land.' I'll put it down specially though.
There's ten acres of it, you said."

"And there's ten acres of swamp land that ye couldn't improve unless ye
built it on piles," the farmer said.

"I'll have to refer that to the Reclamation Service, I guess," the boy
answered, "anyhow for the time we'll just call it 'unimproved' and let
it go at that."

The next few questions passed off without a hitch, but an inquiry
concerning the number of animals born on the place during the year was
like opening the flood-gates of a dam. If Meacham had been as good a
farmer as a yarn-spinner there would have been no question as to his
success, for he had some story to tell about every yearling on the
place, and they were inimitably told. It was with great reluctance that
Hamilton found himself obliged to head off the man's eloquence and make
him stick to hard facts. An inquiry as to the number of eggs sold was
somewhat of a puzzle, but the farmer's wife knew the amount of the
"trade" she had received at the grocery store in the nearest town in
return for eggs, and at an average sale price of nine cents a dozen,
this was easily computed. She was also the authority on the amount of
butter made and sold, and on the garden truck.

The business man of the house was a twelve-year-old boy. Not far away, a
neighbor had forty acres in clover and some fruit trees, and knowing the
value of bees for pollinating the fruit, he was glad to have this boy
keep six hives near the orchard and field. A good share of the honey had
gone to the neighbor, and the family themselves had used all they
wanted, but still the boy's profit for what he had sold amounted to
sixty dollars. He was keen to have Hamilton enter him on the schedule as
an independent apiarist on his own account, but Hamilton pointed out to
him that a $250 farm was the smallest one allowed to be listed.

This low limit was almost reached the next day when Hamilton found
himself on a peanut farm for the first time. He had always known that
peanuts, unlike all other "nuts," grew underground but he had made the
common mistake of supposing them to grow on the roots o