The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1893-03-11

me a COW and hog of the female
persuasion for it, and as the watch is
useless to me in our present circum-
stances, | have made up my mind
to close with him. SO there is COW
No. 2, and aforesaid pig.
The deacon opened his eyes.
Pom my word, Priss, you're a
born trader. But what about the
chickens?
have bought hve-tour hens and
one rooster-ot the Bowers, on
"tick," as they say. The hens are
wanting to set, and 1 shall send you
to Neighbor Tootle for eggs to set
them with. Tootle charges fifty
cents per dozen for eggs, but his are
an extra kind OF large fowl that can
be made to bring four dollars per
dozen as early spring chickens by
the first of June. | can have at least
thirty or forty chicks for the June
market and the proceeds theretrom
will take up certain note OF yours.
In the meantime the butter shall pay
our household expenses as we go
along. There shall be no butchers
bill. nor any other kind OF bill, run
up for future settlement. The calves
we will fatten and sell this fall, the
hog ditto. Uncle Bemus advises
me TO keep the litter of pigs until
next year, when they will fetch US
something over hundred dollars.
The eight acres of ground, for the
use of which we pay forty dollars,
must be planted with corn, and |
have already selected the seed. AS
the land is particularly clean and of
uncommon good soil, the yield
should be not less than seventy 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 aston
ishment.
| shall raise as many chickens as
possible through the heat of the
coming summer; SO that the next
spring shall have eggs by the
quantity, when the market reports
quote a good price, with supply less
than the demand.
You talk like a farmer, Priss,
calculated the dazed deacon. When
did you learn so much, | wonder?
Don't ask me questions, but
promise me, giving him a tight
squeeze.
promlse.
She shook herself loose from him,
and poured out tor herself a cup of
hot tea.
Very well; GO to work and make
me some chicken coops and hen
house, and fetch home my hens to
morrow, and this fall / 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 morn
ing Prissy went into the cellar and
skinned, and strained, and churned,
and outside the deacon himself, with
the spade and 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 lazy 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 Che
was photographer) and wait for
customers, because he wanted to
get out and stretch hi' legs. But
suggest the idea oil an impossible
enterprise to him, 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 put
out. Such is man-that is, SO much
of it as went by the name of Deacon
Dodge
One OF the things the strong
minded girl got him to do was to
make fence, which she insisted
should be hedge. A hawthorne
hedge, she declared, was both beau
tiful and attractive, besides just as
useful as any other.
So, under her vigilant generalship,
he delivered some trees for the nur
serymen 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 her
self was surprised to find how much
she had made him accomplish. At
the end of the first year he had
grubbed their one and half acres,
put the first coat OF paint on the
house, made the fence, dug the eel.
lar, built outhouses, cut all the fire
wood and made five dollars a week
besides.
AT thesend of their first year Prissy
found she had sold six dozen chick
ems at four dollars per dozen, and
| bod nc r,apv more to winter oyer