The Story of the Soil | Page 5

taken with
pneumonia from exposure and overwork, and died within a week.
Percy was scarcely a year old when his father was laid in the grave; but
to the sorrowing mother he was all that life held dear. Existence seemed
possible to her only because she could bestow upon him her double
affection, and because the double duties which she took upon herself
completely occupied her time.
She was not in immediate financial need, for her husband had been able
to put some money in the bank during the last year, after having paid
for his "outfit;" the forty-acre farm was free from debt, but under the
law it must remain the joint property of mother and child for twenty
years.
Wisely or unwisely she rejected every opportunity presented that would
have given Percy a stepfather. As daughter and wife she had learned
much of the art of agriculture, and, after some consultation with a
neighbor who seemed to be successful, she made her own plans.
In her make up, sentiment was balanced with sense. Even as a young
wife she had sometimes driven the mower or the self-binder to
"help-out," and she had found pleasure and health in such hours of
out-door life. "I can work and not overwork," she said to her friends;
and in any case the crops seemed to grow better under the eye of the
mistress.
Some years she employed a neighbor boy or girl, and always hired such
other help as she needed. Prices were sometimes low and crops were

not always good; and only widowed mothers can know the full story of
her labor, love and sacrifice. With Percy's help he was sent to school
and finally to the university, choosing for himself the agricultural
college, much to the surprise and disappointment of his devoted
mother.
"Why," she asked, "why should my son go to college to study
agriculture? Have you not studied farming in the practical school of
experience all your life? Surely we have done as much as could be done
on our own little farm; and you have also had the benefit of the longer
experience of our best farmers hereabout, and of the accumulated
wisdom of our ancestors. Oh, I had hoped and truly believed that you
would become interested in engineering, or in medicine, or may be in
the law. I cannot understand why you should think of going to college
to study farming. Surely you already know more than the college
professors do about agriculture."
Percy's mother had too much good sense to have raised a spoiled boy.
He had been taught to work and to think for himself. She loved her boy
far better than her own life,--loved as only a widowed mother can who
has risked her life for him, and who has given to him all her thought
and all her energy from the best twenty years of her own life; but she
had never let herself enjoy that kind of selfishness which prompts a
mother to do for her child what he should be taught to do for himself.
Despite his natural love of sport and the severe trials he had often
brought to her patience and perseverance during his boyhood days, he
had reached a development with the advance of youth that satisfied her
high ideal. His love and appreciation and tender care for her repaid her
every day, she told herself, for all the years of watching, working,
waiting. Never before had he withstood her positive wish and final
judgment.
And yet it was she who had told him that he alone must choose his life
work and his college course in preparation for that work; but, after the
years of toil, she had not dreamed that he would choose the farm life.
"My darling boy," she continued, "it leads to nothing. This little farm is
poorer to-day than it was when your dear father and I came here to live
and labor. To be sure, the lower field still grows as good or better crops
than ever; but I can remember when that field was so wet and swampy
that it could not be cultivated, and it was in the work of ditching and

tiling that field," she sobbed, "that your father took the sickness that
caused his death."
Tears were in Percy's eyes as he put his arm about his mother and
wiped her tears away.
"But I must tell you what I know to be the truth," she went on quickly.
"The older fields that your grandfather cultivated are less productive
now than when he received them from our generous government.
Indeed, it was your father's plan to continue to farm here only for a few
years longer until he could save enough to enable him, with what we
could