TEN ACRES ENOUGH

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Every huckster in her shamble, every vender of peanuts in the street, will testify to this. The modern art of semi cookery for fruit, and of preserving it in cans and jars, has made sale for enormous quantities of those choicer kinds which return the highest profit to the grower. It is in the grain market that panic often rages, but never in the fruit market. If it ever enters the latter, the struggle is to obtain the fruit, not to get rid of it.

BUYING A FARM A LONG SEARCH ANXIETY TO SELL FORCED TO QUIT

I had in round numbers a clear two thousand dollars, with which to buy and stock a farm, and keep my family while my first crops were growing. As I was entirely free from debt, so I determined to avoid it in the future. Debt had been the bitter portion of my life, not from choice, but of necessity. My wife took strong ground in support of this resolution what we had she wanted us to keep.

I had settled it in my mind that I would use one thousand dollars in the purchase of land, and that I could make Ten Acres Enough. This I was determined to pay for at once, and have it covered by no man's parchment. But when we set out on our search, we found some difficulties.

Every county in New Jersey contained a hundred farms that were for sale. Most of them were too large for my slender purse, though otherwise most eligibly situated. Then we must have a decent house, even if we were forced to put up with less land.

Numerous locations of this kind were offered. The trouble was keeping my slender purse in view that the farms were either too large or too small. My wife was not fastidious about having a fine house. On the contrary, I was often surprised to find her pleased with such as to me looked small and mean. Indeed, it seemed, after ten days' search, that the tables had been turned she was more easily suited than myself. But the same deference which I paid to her wishes, she uniformly paid to mine.

It was curious to note the anxiety of so many land owners to sell, and to hear the discordant reason which they gave for desiring to do so. The quantity in market was enormous. All the real estate agents had large books filled with descriptions of farms and fancy country seats for sale, some to be had by paying one fourth of the purchase money down, and some which the owners would exchange for merchandise, or traps, or houses in the city.

Many of the sellers appeared simply to want something else for what they already had. They were tired of holding, and desired a change of some kind, better if they could make it, and worse if they could not. City merchants, or thriving mechanics, had built country cottages, and then wearied of them it was found inconvenient to be going to and fro in fact, they had soon discovered that the city alone was their place. Many such told us that their wives did not like the country.

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