he time as well as not," she answered.

"You all think because I don't go into the field with a team any more,"
I objected, "that I don't amount to anything on the farm; but I tell you
that what I do in the way of chores and planning, practically amounts to
a man's work."

"Of course it does," she admitted, though between you and me it wasn't
so. "But any man can do the chores, and the planning you can do
still--and nobody can write the History of Vandemark Township but
Jacobus Teunis Vandemark. You owe it to the West, and to the world."

So, here I begin the second time. I have been bothered up to now by
feeling that I have not been making much progress; but now there will
be no need for me to skip anything. I begin, just as that canvassing
rascal said, a long way from Vandemark Township, and many years ago in
point of time; but I am afloat with my prow toward the setting sun on
that wonderful ribbon of water which led to the West. I was caught in
the current. Nobody could live along the Erie Canal in those days
without feeling the suck of the forests, and catching a breath now and
then of the prairie winds. So all this really belongs in the history.

J.T. VANDEMARK.

VANDEMARK'S FOLLY

CHAPTER I

A FLAT DUTCH TURNIP BEGINS ITS CAREER

My name is Jacobus Teunis Vandemark. I usually sign J.T. Vandemark; and
up to a few years ago I thought as much as could be that my first name
was Jacob; but my granddaughter Gertrude, who is strong on family
histories, looked up my baptismal record in an old Dutch Reformed church
in Ulster County, New York, came home and began teasing me to change to
Jacobus. At first I would not give up to what I thought just her silly
taste for a name she thought more stylish than plain old Jacob; but she
sent back to New York and got a certified copy of the record. So I had
to knuckle under. Jacobus is in law my name just as much as Teunis, and
both of them, I understand, used to be pretty common names among the
Vandemarks, Brosses, Kuyckendalls, Westfalls and other Dutch families
for generations. It makes very little difference after all, for most of
the neighbors call me Old Jake Vandemark, and some of the very oldest
settlers still call me Cow Vandemark, because I came into the county
driving three or four yoke of cows--which make just as good draught
cattle as oxen, being smarter but not so powerful. This nickname is
gall and wormwood to Gertrude, but I can't quite hold with her whim