It is a nipping, eager air; the signs of Fall are everywhere. The coal man smiles, the ice man grieves; the trees have shed their summer leaves; the cockleburs and other flowers that brighten all the summer hours, are lying dead; the birds have flown to lands where blizzards are unknown. The farmer sits around indoors, when he has done his evening chores, and finished all the daily grind, and talks of plans he has in mind. “Amanda Jane,” he tells his wife, the faithful partner of his life, “the time has come when we can build; the strongbox is with rubles filled. It hasn’t been the best of years, but I have sold a bunch of steers, and, too, a galaxy of swine, and quite a wad of dough is mine. We’ll build the house we long have planned, with modern things on every hand, with weather strips and folding doors, and walnut stairs and rosewood floors.” “Now, Hiram, you are safe and sane,” remarks the glad Amanda Jane. “For twenty weary years, alack, we’ve lived in this old dingy shack; we’ve built fine shelter for the cows, and sheds palatial for the sows, and gorgeous stables for the mules, and lived in this old shack, like fools. Now let us have a dwelling fine, and not a dugout twelve by nine. And, Hiram, bear this thought in mind: When buying, do not go it blind. I’ve talked with women who have homes which are for beauty simply pomes, and they have told me many a time, that cheap john woodwork is a crime. With it your house will be a frost, regardless of the roll it cost.” “Don’t worry, wife,” old Hiram sighs; “methinks you’ll find your husband wise; I’ve had that matter long in mind, and I shall buy the Curtis kind.” HOUSING THE HELP I tried to sell a load of slabs to Charles Augustus Clarence Dabbs. He owns a farm some nine miles long, and twice as wide--unless I’m wrong; I am not sure about its size, but it is big, or some one lies. “I cannot blow myself for slabs,” said Charles Augustus Clarence Dabbs; “with forty kinds of grief I’m filled, I’m not in shape this year to build. When one is loaded to the ears with cares and woes, and doubts and fears, he’s in no mood to talk of planks, or building stunts, you bet your shanks. “The government,” said Mr. Dabbs, “is on the farmers keeping tabs; it looks to us to raise the wheat, that half the blooming world shall eat. It looks to us for corn and hay, and succotash and beans and whey. We farmers want to raise the stuff; we surely have desire enough; we have the land, we have the mules, we have the seed, we have the tools, but where in thunder shall we get the laborers, to toil and sweat? We cannot keep men on the farm; the life appears to have no charm. I need a half a dozen hands to cultivate my fertile lands; I’d give them work the whole year round, if men of muscle could be found.”