The Story of the Soil | Page 4

soil is written in
co-operation with the Press of America and in competition with popular

fiction.
The scenes described exist; the references given can all be found and
verified; and the data quoted are exact, although some of the story dates
antedate the scientific data.
As a rule the names employed are substitutes, but the general localities
are as specified.
If the Story of the Soil should ever fall into the hands of any individual
who suspects that he has contributed to its information, the author begs
that he will accept as belonging to himself every gracious attribute and
take it for granted that anything of opposite savor was due to
autosuggestion.
CYRIL G. HOPKINS.
University of Illinois, Urbana.

CHAPTER I
THE OLD SOUTH

PERCY JOHNSTON stood waiting on the broad veranda of an
old-style Southern home, on a bright November day in 1903. He had
just come from Blue Mound Station, three miles away, with suit-case in
hand.
"Would it be possible for me to secure room and board here for a few
days?" he inquired of the elderly woman who answered his knock.
"Would it be possible?" she repeated, apparently asking herself the
question, while she scanned the face of her visitor with kindly eyes that
seemed to look beneath the surface.
"I beg your pardon, my name is Johnston,--Percy Johnston--" he said
with some embarrassment and hesitation, realizing from her speech and
manner that he was not addressing a servant.
"No pardon is needed for that name," she interrupted; "Johnston is a
name we're mighty proud of here in the South."
"But I am from the West," he said.
"We're proud of the West, too; and you should feel right welcome here,
for this is 'Westover,'" waving her hand toward the inroad fields

surrounding the old mansion house. "I am Mrs. West, or at least I used
to be. Perhaps the title better belongs to my son's wife at the present
time; while I am mother, grandma, and great-grandmother.
"Yes, Sir, you will be very welcome to share our home for a few days if
you wish; and we'll take you as a boarder. We used to entertain my
husband's friends from Richmond,--and from Washington, too, before
the sixties; but since then we have grown poor, and of late years we
take some summer boarders. They have all returned to the city,
however, the last of them having left only yesterday; so you can have
as many rooms as you like.
"Adelaide!" she called.
A rugged girl of seventeen entered the hall from a rear room.
"This is my granddaughter, Adelaide, Mr. Johnston."
Percy looked into her eyes for an instant; then her lashes dropped. He
remembered afterward that they were like her grandmother's, and he
found himself repeating, "The eye is the window of the soul."
"My Dear, will you ask Wilkes to show Mr. Johnston to the southwest
room, and to put a fire in the grate and warm water in the pitcher?"
"Thank you, that will not be necessary," said Percy. "I wish to see and
learn as much as possible of the country hereabout, and particularly of
the farm lands; and, if I may leave my suit-case to be sent to my room
when convenient, I shall take a walk,--perhaps a long walk. When
should I be back to supper."
"At six or half past. My son Charles has gone to Montplain, but he will
be home for dinner. He knows the lands all about here and will be glad,
I am sure, to give you any information possible."
With rapid strides Percy followed the private lane to the open fields of
Westover.
"Is he a cowboy, Grandma?" asked Adelaide, in a tone which did not
suggest a very high regard for cowboys. "Anyway," she continued,
detecting a shade of disapproval in the grandmother's face, "he has a
cowboy's hat, but he doesn't wear buckskin trousers or spurs."
Percy's hat was a relic of college life. Two years before he had
completed the agricultural course at one of the state universities in the
corn belt. Somewhat above the average in size, well proportioned,
accustomed to the heaviest farm work, and trained in football at college,
he was a sturdy young giant,--" strong as an ox and quick as lightning,"

in the exaggerated language of his football admirers

CHAPTER II
FORTY ACRES IN THE CORN BELT

PERCY JOHNSTON'S grandfather had gone west from "York State"
and secured from the federal government a 160-acre "Claim" of the rich
corn belt land. His father had received through inheritance only 40
acres of this; and, marrying his choice from the choir of the local
Lutheran congregation, he had farmed his forty and an adjoining eighty
acres, "rented on shares," for only three years, when he was