Driven Back to Eden | Page 9

on you; and for your sakes
mamma and I decided to go to the country."
At last, in reply to my inquiries and my answers to advertisements, I
received the following letter:--
Maizeville, N.Y. March 1st, '83
Robert Durham, Esq.
Dear Sir
I have a place that will suit you I think. It can be bought at about the
figure you name. Come to see it. I shant crack it up, but want you to
judge for yourself.
Resp'y John Jones
I had been to see two or three places that had been "cracked up" so
highly that my wife thought it better to close the bargain at once before
some one else secured the prize--and I had come back disgusted in each
instance.

"The soul of wit" was in John Jones's letter. There was also a downright
directness which hit the mark, and I wrote that I would go to Maizeville
in the course of the following week.

CHAPTER VI
A BLUFF FRIEND
The almanac had announced spring; nature appeared quite unaware of
the fact, but, so far as we were concerned, the almanac was right.
Spring was the era of hope, of change, and hope was growing in our
hearts like "Jack's bean," in spite of lowering wintry skies. We were as
eager as robins, sojourning in the south, to take our flight northward.
My duties to my employers had ceased the 1st of March: I had secured
tenants who would take possession of our rooms as soon as we should
leave them; and now every spare moment was given to studying the
problem of country living and to preparations for departure. I obtained
illustrated catalogues from several dealers in seeds, and we pored over
them every evening. At first they bewildered us with their long lists of
varieties, while the glowing descriptions of new kinds of vegetables
just being introduced awakened in us something of a gambling spirit.
"How fortunate it is," exclaimed my wife, "that we are going to the
country just as the vegetable marvels were discovered! Why, Robert, if
half of what is said is true, we shall make our fortunes."
With us, hitherto, a beet had been a beet, and a cabbage a cabbage; but
here were accounts of beets which, as Merton said, "beat all creation,"
and pictures of prodigious cabbage heads which well-nigh turned our
own. With a blending of hope and distrust I carried two of the
catalogues to a shrewd old fellow in Washington Market. He was a
dealer in country produce who had done business so long at the same
stand that among his fellows he was looked upon as a kind of patriarch.
During a former interview he had replied to my questions with a blunt
honesty that had inspired confidence. The day was somewhat mild, and

I found him in his shirt-sleeves, smoking his pipe among his piled-up
barrels, boxes, and crates, after his eleven o'clock dinner. His day's
work was practically over; and well it might be, for, like others of his
calling, he had begun it long before dawn. Now his old felt hat was
pushed well back on his bald head, and his red face, fringed with a
grizzled beard, expressed a sort of heavy, placid content. His small gray
eyes twinkled as shrewdly as ever. With his pipe he indicated a box on
which I might sit while we talked.
"See here, Mr. Bogart," I began, showing him the seed catalogues,
"how is a man to choose wisely what vegetables he will raise from a list
as long as your arm? Perhaps I shouldn't take any of those old-
fashioned kinds, but go into these wonderful novelties which promise a
new era in horticulture."
The old man gave a contemptuous grunt; then, removing his pipe, he
blew out a cloud of smoke that half obscured us both as he remarked,
gruffly, "'A fool and his money are soon parted.'"
This was about as rough as March weather; but I knew my man, and
perhaps proved that I wasn't a fool by not parting with him then and
there.
"Come now, neighbor," I said, brusquely, "I know some things that you
don't, and there are affairs in which I could prove you to be as green as
I am in this matter. If you came to me I'd give you the best advice that I
could, and be civil about it into the bargain. I've come to you because I
believe you to be honest and to know what I don't. When I tell you that
I have a little family dependent on me, and that I mean if possible to get
a living for them out of the soil, I believe you are man enough both to
fall in with my plan and