Hiram The Young Farmer | Page 4

his head, now turning from the pleasanter prospect of the
farming land and staring down into the town.
"Maybe I'm not a success because I don't stick to one thing. I've had six
jobs in less'n two years. That's a bad record for a boy, I believe. But
there hasn't any of them suited me, nor have I suited them.
"And Dwight's Emporium beats 'em all!" finished Hiram, shaking his
head.
He turned his back upon the town once more, as though to wipe his

failure out of his memory. Before him sloped a field of wheat and
clover.
It had kept as green under the snow as though winter was an unknown
season. Every cloverleaf sparkled and the leaves of wheat bristled like
tiny spears.
Spring was on the way. He could hear the call of it!
Two years before Hiram had left the farm. He had no immediate
relatives after his father died. The latter had been a tenant-farmer only,
and when his tools and stock and the few household chattels had been
sold to pay the debts that had accumulated during his last illness, there
was very little money left for Hiram.
There was nobody to say him nay when he packed his bag and started
for Crawberry, which was the metropolis of his part of the country. He
had set out boldly, believing that he could get ahead faster, and become
master of his own fortune more quickly in town than in the locality
where he was born.
He was a rugged, well-set-up youth of seventeen, not over-tall, but
sturdy and able to do a man's work. Indeed, he had long done a man's
work before he left the farm.
Hiram's hands were calloused, he shuffled a bit when walked, and his
shoulders were just a little bowed from holding the plow handles since
he had been big enough to bridle his father's old mare.
Yes, the work on the farm had been hard--especially for a growing boy.
Many farm boys work under better conditions than Hiram had.
Nevertheless, after a two years' trial of what the city has in store for
most country boys who cut loose from their old environment, Hiram
Strong felt to-day as though he must get back to the land.
"There's nothing for me in town. Clerking in Dwight's Emporium will
never get me anywhere," he thought, turning finally away from the

open country and starting down the steep hill.
"Why, there are college boys working on our street cars here--waiting
for some better job to turn up. What chance does a fellow stand who's
only got a country school education?
"And there isn't any clean fun for a fellow in Crawberry--fun that
doesn't cost money. And goodness knows I can't make more than
enough to pay Mrs. Atterson, and for my laundry, and buy a new suit of
overalls and a pair of shoes occasionally.
"No, sir!" concluded Hiram. "There's nothing in it. Not for a fellow like
me, at any rate. I'd better be back on the farm--and I wish I was there
now."
He had been to church that morning; but after the late dinner at his
boarding house had set out on this lonely walk. Now he had nothing to
look forward to as he returned but the stuffy parlor of Mrs. Atterson's
boarding house, the cold supper in the dining-room, which was
attended in a desultory fashion by such of the boarders as were at home,
and then a long, dull evening in his room, or bed after attending the
evening service at the church around the corner.
Hiram even shrank from meeting the same faces at the boarding house
table, hearing the same stale jokes or caustic remarks about Mrs.
Atterson's food from Fred Crackit and the young men boarders of his
class, or the grumbling of Mr. Peebles, the dyspeptic invalid, or the
inane monologue of Old Lem Camp.
And Mrs. Atterson herself--good soul though she was--had gotten on
Hiram Strong's nerves, too. With her heat-blistered face, near-sighted
eyes peering through beclouded spectacles, and her gown buttoned up
hurriedly and with a gap here and there where a button was missing,
she was the typically frowsy, hurried, nagged-to-death boarding house
mistress.
And as for "Sister," Mrs. Atterson's little slavey and
maid-of-all-work---

"Well, Sister's the limit!" smiled Hiram, as he turned into the street,
with its rows of ugly brick houses on either hand. "I believe Fred
Crackit has got it right. Mrs. Atterson keeps Sister instead of a cat--so
there'll be something to kick."
The half-grown girl--narrow-chested, round shouldered, and
sallow--had been taken by Mrs. Atterson from some charity institution.
"Sister," as the boarders all called her, for lack of any other cognomen,
would have her yellow hair in four attenuated pigtails hanging down
her back, and