than a canal-boat, somewhere east of Syracuse, New York, in 1850, I'll need some money if I print the whole story--judging of its length by that. Of course, the publication of the book must be financed."

"There's the door!" I said, and pointed to it.

He went out like a shot, and Gertrude, who was on the front porch, came flying in to see what he was running from. I was just opening the stove door. In fact I had put some scraps of paper in; but there was no fire.

"Why, grandpa," she cried, "what's the matter? What's this manuscript you're destroying? Tell me about it!"

"Give it to me!" I shouted; but she sat down with it and began reading. I rushed out, and was gone an hour. When I came back, she had pasted the pages together, and was still reading them. She came to me and put her arms about my neck and kissed me; and finally coaxed me into telling her all about the disgraceful affair.

Well, the result of it all was that she has convinced me of the fact that I had better go on with the history. She says that these county-history promoters are all slippery people, but that if I can finish the history as I have begun, it may be well worth while.

"There are publishers," she said, "who do actually print such things. Maybe a real publisher will want this. I know a publisher who may be glad to get it. And, anyhow, it is a shame for all your experiences to be lost to the world. It's very interesting as far as you've got. Go on with it; and if no publisher wants to print it now, we'll give the manuscript to the Public Library in Monterey Centre, and maybe, long after both of us are dead and gone, some historian will find it and have it printed. Some time it will be found precious. Write it, grandpa, for my sake! We can make a wonderful story of it."

"We?" I said.

"You, I mean, of course," she replied; "but, if you really want me to do it, I will type it for you, and maybe do a little editing. Maybe you'll let me do a little footnote once in a while, so my name will go into it with yours. I'd be awfully proud, grandpa."

"It'll take a lot of time," I said.

"And you can spare the time as well as not," she answered.

"You all think because I don't go into the field with a team any more," I objected, "that I don't amount to anything on the farm; but I tell you that what I do in the way of chores and planning, practically amounts to a man's work."

"Of course it does," she admitted, though between you and me it wasn't so. "But any man can do the chores, and the planning you can do still--and nobody can write the History of Vandemark Township but Jacobus Teunis Vandemark. You owe it to the West, and to the world."

So, here I begin the second time. I have been bothered up to now by feeling that I have not been making much progress; but now there will be no need for me to skip anything. I begin, just as that canvassing rascal said, a long way from Vandemark Township, and many years ago in point of time; but I am afloat with my prow toward the setting sun on that wonderful ribbon of water which led to the West. I was caught in the current. Nobody could live along the Erie Canal in those days without feeling the suck of the forests, and catching a breath now and then of the prairie winds. So all this really belongs in the history.

J.T. VANDEMARK.

VANDEMARK'S FOLLY

CHAPTER I

A FLAT DUTCH TURNIP BEGINS ITS CAREER

My name is Jacobus Teunis Vandemark. I usually sign J.T. Vandemark; and up to a few years ago I thought as much as could be that my first name was Jacob; but my granddaughter Gertrude, who is strong on family histories, looked up my baptismal record in an old Dutch Reformed church in Ulster County, New York, came home and began teasing me to change to Jacobus. At first I would not give up to what I thought just her silly taste for a name she thought more stylish than plain old Jacob; but she sent back to New York and got a certified copy of the record. So I had to knuckle under. Jacobus is in law my name just as much as Teunis, and both of them, I understand, used to be pretty common names among the Vandemarks, Brosses, Kuyckendalls, Westfalls and other Dutch families for generations. It makes very little difference after all, for most of the neighbors call me Old Jake Vandemark, and some of the very oldest settlers still call me Cow Vandemark, because I came into the county driving three or four yoke of cows--which make just as good draught cattle as oxen, being smarter but not so powerful. This nickname is gall and wormwood to Gertrude, but I can't quite hold with her whims on the subject of names. She spells the old surname van der Marck--a little v and a little d with an r run in, the first two syllables written like separate words, and then the big M for Mark with a c before the k. But she will know better when she gets older and has more judgment. Just now she is all worked up over the family history on which she began laboring when she went east to Vassar and joined the Daughters of the American Revolution. She has tried to coax me to adopt "van der Marck" as my signature, but it would not jibe with the name of the township if I did; and anyhow it would seem like straining a little after style to change a name that has been a household word hereabouts since there were any households. The neighbors would never understand it, anyhow; and would think I felt above them. Nothing loses a man his standing among us farmers like putting on style.

I was born of Dutch parents in Ulster County, New York, on July 27, 1838. It is the only anniversary I can keep track of, and the only reason why I remember it is because on that day, except when it came on a Sunday, I have sown my turnips ever since 1855. Everybody knows the old rhyme:

"On the twenty-seventh of July
Sow your turnips, wet or dry."

And wet or dry, my parents in Ulster County, long, long ago, sowed their little red turnip on that date.

I often wonder what sort of dwelling it was, and whether the July heat was not pretty hard on my poor mother. I think of this every birthday. I guess a habit of mind has grown up which I shall never break off; the moment I begin sowing turnips I think of my mother bringing forth her only child in the heat of dog-days, and of the sweat of suffering on her forehead as she listened to my first cry. She is more familiar to me, and really dearer in this imaginary scene than in almost any real memory I have of her.

I do not remember Ulster County at all. My first memory of my mother is of a time when we lived in a little town the name and location of which I forget; but it was by a great river which must have been the Hudson I guess. She had made me a little cap with a visor and I was very proud of it and of myself. I picked up a lump of earth in the road and threw it over a stone fence, covered with vines that were red with autumn leaves--woodbine or poison-ivy I suppose. I felt very big, and ran on ahead of my mother until she called to me to stop for fear of my falling into the water. We had come down to the big river. I could hardly see the other side of it. The whole scene now grows misty and dim; but I remember a boat coming to the shore, and out of it stepped John Rucker.

Whether he was then kind or cross to me or to my mother I can not remember. Probably my mind was too young to notice any difference less than that between love and cruelty. I know I was happy; and it seems to me that the chief reason of my joy was the new cap and the fact that my heart swelled and I was proud of myself. I do not believe that I was more than three years old. All this may be partly a dream; but I think not.

John Rucker was no dream. He was my mother's second husband; and by the time I was five years old, and had begun to go to one little school after another as we moved