Ducks and Geese 72 A Corner of the Vegetable Garden 96 Mushrooms 122 June Roses 156 A Cellar Store-Room 186 MAKING HOME PROFITABLE MAKING HOME PROFITABLE A PROFITABLE HOME It is just sixteen years since misfortune brought about our emancipation. A disastrous business venture made it necessary to curtail expenses. Rent being an especially heavy item, the hunt for a cheaper habitation commenced. Toiling up and down innumerable stuffy staircases in tow of slatternly janitors revealed the fact that cheap flats were either over-crowded barracks redolent of dirty soapsuds and stale cooking, or overdecorated cubbyholes where children were tabooed. Evening after evening for two weeks I returned home weary and discouraged. Then chance, in the shape of a poultry show, came to my relief. Instead of a cheap flat and semi-dark rooms, why not a house and garden, where we could have chickens, eggs and vegetables of our own? Friends scoffed; and even my husband, who had always joined me in planning the ideal home of our old age, as a place far from the noise and rush of the city, where we could indulge our love of flowers and animals, demurred at first, though he eventually became imbued with my enthusiasm, and told me to go ahead if I felt equal to shouldering the responsibilities which city duties would obviously prevent his sharing. He stipulated also that transportation to and from his business in the city, and all other expenses, should come within the newly necessary curtailment of expenses, which limited rent to twenty-five dollars a month and the housekeeping allowance to twelve dollars a week; that none of our very limited capital should be risked, excepting one hundred dollars to cover expense of moving, etc., and that even this sum should be considered as a loan. To satisfy the dear man’s cautious, masculine ideas of fairness, I took twenty-four hours to consider the conditions, and then, with solemn, businesslike gravity, accepted. A painstaking advertisement in a Sunday paper, stating plainly that we wanted a small farm near the city and a railway station, the rent not to exceed fifteen dollars a month, brought dozens of letters offering all sorts of places at all sorts of distances and prices, but only six real answers. With the writers of these six letters I corresponded; studied innumerable railway guides; took several fruitless journeys; hesitated about two or three places, then just stumbled upon the right place. It is like choosing a new hat or garment. You like that one, but this one is more becoming. You suddenly see something else quite different--hesitancy is over; the unconscious ideal is found.