Keeping up with Lizzie | Page 5

the future?'
"'I mean to be a lawyer,' says he.
"'Quit it,' I says.
"'Why?' says he.
"'There are too many lawyers. We don't need any more. They're
devourin' our substance.'
"'What do you suggest?'
"'Be a real man. We're on the verge of a social revolution. Boys have
been leaving the farms an' going into the cities to be grand folks. The
result is we have too many grand folks an' too few real folks. The tide
has turned. Get aboard.'

"'I don't understand you.'
"'America needs wheat an' corn an' potatoes more than it needs
arguments an' theories.'
"'Would you have me be a farmer?' he asked, in surprise.
"'A farmer!' I says. 'It's a new business--an exact science these days.
Think o' the high prices an' the cheap land with its productiveness more
than doubled by modern methods. The country is longing for big,
brainy men to work its idle land. Soon we shall not produce enough for
our own needs.'
"'But I'm too well educated to be a farmer,' says he.
"'Pardon me,' I says. 'The land 'll soak up all the education you've got
an' yell for more. Its great need is education. We've been sending the
smart boys to the city an' keeping the fools on the farm. We've put
everything on the farm but brains. That's what's the matter with the
farm.'
"'But farming isn't dignified,' says Dan.
"'Pardon me ag'in,' says I. 'It's more dignified to search for the secrets o'
God in the soil than to grope for the secrets o' Satan in a lawsuit. Any
fool can learn Blackstone an' Kent an' Greenleaf, but the book o' law
that's writ in the soil is only for keen eyes.'
"'I want a business that fits a gentleman,' says Dan.
"'An' the future farmer can be as much of a gentleman as God 'll let
him,' says I. 'He'll have as many servants as his talents can employ. His
income will exceed the earnings o' forty lawyers taken as they average.
His position will be like that o' the rich planter before the war.'
"'Well, how shall I go about it?' he says, half convinced.
"'First stop tryin' to keep up with Lizzie,' says I. 'The way to beat Lizzie
is to go toward the other end o' the road. Ye see, you've dragged yer

father into the race, an' he's about winded. Turn around an' let Lizzie try
to keep up with you. Second, change yer base. Go to a school of
agriculture an' learn the business just as you'd go to a school o' law or
medicine. Begin modest. Live within yer means. If you do right I'll buy
you all the land ye want an' start ye goin'.'
"When he left I knew that I'd won my case. In a week or so he sent me
a letter saying that he'd decided to take my advice.
"He came to see me often after that. The first we knew he was goin'
with Marie Benson. Marie had a reputation for good sense, but right
away she began to take after Lizzie, an' struck a tolerably good pace.
Went to New York to study music an' perfect herself in French.
"I declare it seemed as if about every girl in the village was tryin' to be
a kind of a princess with a full-jewelled brain. Girls who didn't know an
adjective from an adverb an' would have been stuck by a simple sum in
algebra could converse in French an' sing in Italian. Not one in ten was
willin', if she knew how, to sweep a floor or cook a square meal. Their
souls were above it. Their feet were in Pointview an' their heads in
Dreamland. They talked o' the doin's o' the Four Hundred an' the
successes o' Lizzie. They trilled an' warbled; they pounded the family
piano; they golfed an' motored an' whisted; they engaged in the
titivation of toy dogs an' the cultivation o' general debility; they ate
caramels an' chocolates enough to fill up a well; they complained; they
dreamed o' sunbursts an' tiaras while their papas worried about notes
an' bills; they lay on downy beds of ease with the last best seller, an'
followed the fortunes of the bold youth until he found his treasure at
last in the unhidden chest of the heroine; they created what we are
pleased to call the servant problem, which is really the drone problem,
caused by the added number who toil not, but have to be toiled for;
they grew in fat an' folly. Some were both ox-eyed an' peroxide.
Homeliness was to them the only misfortune, fat the only burden, and
pimples the great enemy of woman.
"Now the organs of the human body are just as shiftless