"You come over some time and I'll show you some stock that'll open your
eyes. Bring your friends along. Tell the conductor on the trolley where
you want to go and he'll set you down right at my gate. You can't miss
it, though, anyhow, for I've got nearly a quarter of a mile of houses
there. Silver Campines are my specialty. Raise a few White Wyandottes,
too. You wouldn't think to look at me that the doctors came mighty near
giving me up ten or eleven years ago, eh? Did, though. That was just
after I finished college. They said the only thing would save me was
hiking out to Colorado or Arizona or New Mexico. Some said one place and
some said another. Seeing that they couldn't decide, I settled the
question myself. Came out here, bought ten acres of land--I've got
nearly forty now--and lived in a tent one Summer while my house was
building. Doctors said it wouldn't do, but I fooled them. Slept out of
doors every night, worked like a slave fourteen hours a day and put on
flesh right from the start. I'm not what you'd call fat now, I guess,
but you ought to have seen me then! An old chap I had putting up my
first chicken house told me he could work me in nicely for a roosting
pole! Went back to one of the doctors three years ago and had him look
me over. He had to admit that I was a pretty healthy specimen. You could
see that he was downright peeved about it, though!" Mr. Brady chuckled.
"Then I settled the matter to my own satisfaction by taking out some
life insurance. When I got my policy I stopped worrying about my health.
You drop over some afternoon and let me show you how to live like a
white man and make a little money, too. There's no life like it, and I
wouldn't go back to the city if they gave me the Ritz-Carlton to live
in!"
[Illustration: Finally, Don was unceremoniously yanked up and through]
Clint responded that he and the others would like very much to visit
Cedar Ridge some day, but that just now they were all pretty busy in
the afternoons with football. That struck a responsive chord and Mr.
Brady harked back to his school and college days when he, too, had
fondled the pigskin. "I wasn't much of a player, though," he
acknowledged. "I was sort of tall and puny-looking and not very strong.
Still, I did get into my school team in my senior year and played on my
freshman team in college. The next year I had to give it up, though. I'd
like to come over some day and see you fellows play. I've always been
intending to. I haven't seen a real smashing football game for years.
That's funny, too, for I can remember the time when I used to think that
if I could get on my 'varsity eleven I'd die happy." He laughed as he
swept the searchlights around a corner. "A man's ambitions change, don't
they? Now what I want to do is to raise the champion egg producer. I'm
going to do it, too, before long."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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