The Abandoned Farmers

e lines reach the reader's eye, because the next time she and Scott come over-they are neighbors of ours out here in Westchester-I mean to ask her to t read copy on this book. They drop in on

y person in all other regards, is hopelessly provincial. We

f our friends in the same sphere of endeavor. Indeed, farming is the commonest topic of conversation in our vicinity. Because, like us, nearly all our friends in this part of the coun

e have a regular Gloat Club with an open membership and no dues. If an amateur tiller of the soil and his wife drop in on us on a fine spring evening to announce that yesterday they had their first mess of green peas, whereas our pea vines are still in the blossoming state; or if in midsummer they come

they didn't brag so much!" Then one of us opportunely recalls that last year their potatoes developed a slow and mysterious wasting disease resembling malignant tetter, which carried off the entire crop in its infancy, whereas we harvested a cellarful of wonderful praties free from skin blemishes of whatever sort; and warmed by that

again. It is a never-ending round of new experiences, because no matter how disastrously one's most recent experiment has tinned out the agricultural weeklies are constantly holding forth the advantages of a field as yet new and untried and morally insured to be one that will yield large and nourishing dividends. It is my sober conviction that the most inspired ficti

as constantly running out of cooking soda at his house owing to using so much of it on his face and hands and his neck for poulticing purposes-and tell us what charming creatures bees were and how much honey he expected to lay by that fall. From what he said we gathered that the half had never been told by Maeterlinck about the engaging personal habits and captiva

asm had waned, for it did not, but for professional reasons so