Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1893-02-17


which we pay forty dollars, must be
planted with corn, and / have already
selected the seed. AS the land is partic-
ularly clean and of uncommon good soil.
the yield should be not less than sew
enty. five bushels to the acre, which, if
corn comes down to an unprecedentedly
low figure, will still pay all expenses for
seed, rent, tillage, and leave us enough
to fatten our hogs after ALL"
The deacon was silent from astonish-
ment.
"I shall raise as many chickens as
possible through the neat of the coming
summer; so that the next spring shall
have eggs by the quantity, when the
market reports quote good price, with
supply less than the demand"
"You talk like farmer, Priss," ejac-
ulated the dazed deacon. "When did you
learn so much, I wondera"
"Don't ask me questions, but promise
me-" giving him tight squeeze.
81 promise"
She shook herself loose from him,
and poured out for herself cup of hot
tea.
every we'll; go to work and make me
some chicken coops and hen house,
and fetch home my hens tomorrow, and
this fall l will show square accounts
with some folks know Of"
In the course of time the cows were
driven home, the chickens roasted in the
deacon's hen house, and the "female
hog, with her seven children, occupied
the attention of the deacon's daughter.
OF morning Prissy went into the cellar
and skinned, and strained, ,and churned,
and outside the deacon himself, with
the spade aud ak made good time among
the stumps, thereby saving hired help
and the additional cost of a wood pile.
The deacon had lived all his life under
a law cloud. He couldn't cut wood, he
said, because it made him so tired. He
couldn't work at farming, because the
weather was either too hot or too cold,
or too wet or too dry. He couldn't stay
all the while at his place of business (he
was photographer and wait for Gus
TONERS, because he "wanted to get out
and stretch his legs" But suggest the
idea of an impossible enterprise to him,
or ask him to invest in lottery ticket,
or talk travel, and directly the deacon
was your man.
He was utterly and abominably lazy
and selfish. He forced Prissy to pinch
and save dollar, while he would
squander fifty, and have nothing to show
for what he had paid out. Such is man
that is, so much of it as went by the
name of Deacon Dodge.
One of the things the strong-miuded
girl got him to do was to make fence,
which she insisted should be hedge. A
hawthorne hedge, she declared, was
both beautiful and attractive, besides
Just as useful as any other.
So, under her vigilant generalship, he
delivered some trees tor the nursery
men and took his pay in hedge plants,
which she made him set out and attend
to.
Little by little she put the deacon on
his mettle, until at last she herself was
surprised to find how much she had made
him accomplish. At the end of the first
year ne had gruDbed their one and a
half acres, put the first coat of paint on
the house, made the fence, dug the cell
lar, built outhouses, cut all the fire wood
and made five dollars week besides.
At the end of their first year Prissy
found she has sold six dozen chickens at
four dollars per dozen, and had as many
more to winter over. She had sold six
hundred pounds of butter, at an average
of thirty cents pound. The two calves
fetched twelve dollars readily, and the
fatted hog twenty-seven more. Their
household expenses had been just one
hundred dollars, aside from what she
had raised in the garden, and the butter
and eggs were of home manufacture,
also. She spent not penny for cloth
ing.
Together they checked off accounts
one evening, and to bis intense surprise
the deacon found little matter of four
hundred and fifty dollars to his credit,
besides having much better start tor
the next year.
He paid the balance due on his lum'
ber, and thankfully took up three other
notes, after which he breathed more
freely. The next year the invincible
Prissy sold two hundred dollars worth
of hogs, sixty dollars worth of eggs, and
ten dozen chickens, still keeping house
hold and personal expenses at the lowest
possible point.
The deacon, too, had better luck. or
perhaps attended more strictly to }1Is
business, and the end of the second year
was also the death knell of the iHsatiab bic
mortgage.
AS this is no fancy sketch, but, on the
contrary, is veritab!e "leaf from life, -
cannot state what the result was for