"Well, farmin' is like runnin' a paper in regard to some things. Every feller in the world will take and turn in and tell you how to do it, even if he don't know a blame thing about it. There ain't a man in the United States to-day that don't secretly think he could run airy one if his other business busted on him, whether he knows the difference between a new milch cow or a horse hayrake or not. We had one of these embroidered nightshirt farmers come from town better'n three years ago. Been a toilet-soap man and done well, and so he came out and bought a farm that had nothing to it but a fancy house and barn, a lot of medder in the front yard, and a Southern aspect. The farm was no good. You couldn't raise a disturbance on it. Well, what does he do? Goes and gits a passle of slim-tailed yeller cows from New Jersey and aims to handle cream and diversified farming. Last year the cuss sent a load of cream over and tried to sell it at the new crematory while the funeral and hollercost was goin' on. I may be a sort of a chump myself, but I read my paper and don't get left like that." "What are the prospects for farmers in your State?" "Well, they are pore. Never was so pore, in fact, sence I've ben there. Folks wonder why boys leaves the farm. My boys left so as to get protected, they said, and so they went into a clothing store, one of 'em, and one went into hardware, and one is talkin' protection in the Legislature this winter. They said that farmin' was gettin' to be like fishin' and huntin', well enough for a man that has means and leisure, but they couldn't make a livin' at it, they said. Another boy is in a drug store, and the man that hires him says he is a royal feller." "Kind of a castor royal feller," I said, with a shriek of laughter. He waited until I had laughed all I wanted to, and then he said: