Los Angeles herald., 1910-08-28
AUGUST %, 1910.
HOW PREACHER BECAME
A SUCCESSFUL HoMEsTEADER

For the benefit of any of my aged
brethren (not too aged-say fifty or
sol who may be tired of precarious
existence as hook agents or insurance
solicitors and to suggest a way of
escape to any clerk, teacher book
keeper, cashier, stenographer or other
mere male toiler who has been crowd
ed to the wall by "woman's INVASION"
l will set down just what a man
without reference to age, race, color
or previous condition of servitude may
do on homestead land in the state of
perpetual sunshine, says William JUS
tin Harsha in an article entitled 1.-The
Preacher and a Potato" in, the August
Success Magazine OF course, If you
are so constituted that city life is the
only life for you; If. as a New Yorker
once said to me, "You love the very
mud of the streets" or If, as a clergy
man, the breath of your nostrils is to
argue learnedly in your church coun-
ellis on predestination or infant saliva
ton or falling from grace, the simple
life / am to describe will have no at
fractions for you. If you are able to
purchase improved landau eighty
in Illinois, an orange grove in Cali
fornia, a peach orchard in the valley
of the Gunnison or an abandoned farm
in New England--this may be the
thing to do. But if you possess but
slender means or practically none at
all (the walking is good from the
easD, and for health considerations or
any other reason you wish to come to
the playground of the nation" and
grow up with the sagebrush, l will
relate my experience to you in the
hope that it may be helpful For
we'll know, from lot rs of inquiry
NtNh g.. lnoa Il
sources. that many deadli ~ fellows
on whose heads the almond tree has
begun to spread its blossoms would
be far happier If they were to follow
In. sensible trend of modern taste
and get back to the soil.
Something more than five years ago.
then, we found ourselves with an in
valid son. two dependent daughters,
sizable bit of worry and about twelve
hundred dollars in available cash. My
wife had often said that never. never
would she go on a farm to live, just
as in the days of blushing maiden
hood she had asseverated that she
would never marry a minister though
every hair of his head was hung with
a diamond-which made it morally GER
tain that both of these contingencies
would fall to her lot-this is to say,
minus the diamonds. In the crisis
gripping us she was the first to sug-
gest a homestead. Accordingly, af-
ter looking around carefully. we de-
cided on a 100 acres in one of the
beautiful parks of the mountains of
Colorado. For this we paid Uncle Sam
sixteen dollars as initial payment and
the final payments will amount to
fourteen dollars more. We can prove
up now at any time, the proof con-
sisting in assuring the government
commissioners, through competent
..rsA dn6
tinuously for five years on the land
and have shown an intention to make
it our home. The homesteader is al
lowed absences of not longer than
six months at time; he is also al
lowed six months from the date of
his entering the land to actually move
upon it. But the days of the old too
easy frauds on the government in
graspng land under pretense of home
stealing it are over.