tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">CHAPTER XXXVI   OUR FRIENDS
CHAPTER XXXVII   THE HEADMAN'S JOB
CHAPTER XXXVIII   SPRING OF '97
CHAPTER XXXIX   THE YOUNG ORCHARD
CHAPTER XL   THE TIMOTHY HARVEST
CHAPTER XLI   STRIKE AT GORDON'S MINE
CHAPTER XLII   THE RIOT
CHAPTER XLIII   THE RESULT
CHAPTER XLIV   DEEP WATERS
CHAPTER XLV   DOGS AND HORSES
CHAPTER XLVI   THE SKIM-MILK TRUST
CHAPTER XLVII   NABOTH'S VINEYARD
CHAPTER XLVIII   MAIDS AND MALLARDS
CHAPTER XLIX   THE SUNKEN GARDEN
CHAPTER L   THE HEADMAN GENERALIZES
CHAPTER LI   THE GRAND-GIRLS
CHAPTER LII   THE THIRD RECKONING
CHAPTER LIII   THE MILK MACHINE
CHAPTER LIV   DEEP WATERS
CHAPTER LV   THE OLD TIME FARM-HAND
CHAPTER LVI   THE SYNDICATE
CHAPTER LVII   THE DEATH OF SIR TOM
CHAPTER LVIII   BACTERIA
CHAPTER LIX   COMFORT ME WITH APPLES
CHAPTER LX   "I TOLD YOU SO"
CHAPTER LXI   THE BELGIAN FARMER
CHAPTER LXII   HOME-COMING
CHAPTER LXIII   AN HUNDRED FOLD
CHAPTER LXIV   COMFORT ME WITH APPLES
CHAPTER LXV   THE END OF THE THIRD YEAR
CHAPTER LXVI   LOOKING BACKWARD
CHAPTER LXVII   LOOKING FORWARD
THE RURAL SCIENCE SERIES

THE FAT OF THE LAND

CHAPTER I

MY EXCUSE

My sixtieth birthday is a thing of yesterday, and I have, therefore, more than half descended the western slope. I have no quarrel with life or with time, for both have been polite to me; and I wish to give an account of the past seven years to prove the politeness of life, and to show how time has made amends to me for the forced resignation of my professional ambitions. For twenty-five years, up to 1895, I practised medicine and surgery in a large city. I loved my profession beyond the love of most men, and it loved me; at least, it gave me all that a reasonable man could desire in the way of honors and emoluments. The thought that I should ever drop out of this attractive, satisfying life, never seriously occurred to me, though I was conscious of a strong and persistent force that urged me toward the soil. By choice and by training I was a physician, and I gloried in my work; but by instinct I was, am, and always shall be, a farmer. All my life I have had visions of farms with flocks and herds, but I did not expect to realize my visions until I came on earth a second time.

I would never have given up my profession voluntarily; but when it gave me up, I had to accept the dismissal, surrender my ambitions, and fall back upon my primary instinct for diversion and happiness. The dismissal came without warning, like the fall of a tree when no wind shakes the forest, but it was imperative and peremptory. The doctors (and they were among the best in the land) said, "No more of this kind of work for years," and I had to accept their verdict, though I knew that "for years" meant