“Don’t ask me,” he answered. “The fact is they buy western corn for all their stock.” “Won’t corn grow here?” “I reckon it would grow if they planted it,” he answered. “Seems t’ me I recollect something about the Injuns growing it. But I guess that maybe the Injuns didn’t have to plant theirs. Maybe it just growed. I s’pose it’s hard work to plant corn and hoe it.” He laughed to himself at a story this suggested. All these people had Lincoln’s gift of pointing a fact with a story. “They tell about Josh Whiting who lived in that old house down to the lower end of the village where Horatio Sampson lives now. Josh was so all-fired lazy that he wouldn’t do no work at all and like to starved to death. So the neighbors after feeding him for a while allowed that so long as he warn’t no good he might just as well be buried. A committee of ’em went down to his house one day and took him out and put him in a hearse and started for the graveyard. When they were nighing the gate a stranger came along and inquired what was up. They told him and it seemed to him like such hard lines that he offered to do something. “‘I’ll give the corpse a bag of corn anyhow,’ says he. “‘All right,’ they says. “So he went to the hearse and opened the door and looked in. “‘I can’t see a man die for lack of food,’ says he. ‘So I’ll give ye a bag of corn.’ “Josh, he hitched up on one elbow to see who was speakin’. ‘Is it shelled?’ says he. “‘No,’ answered the fellow. ‘But it won’t be much trouble for you to shell it.’ “Josh settled down on his back again with his hands crossed over his chest. ‘Drive on,’ he says.” “Well,” I said, when I was through laughing, “who gets what chickens they do raise?” “Dardoni,” he answered. “He buys them for cash and sends them to the wholesaler in town. When I want one I buy from the wholesaler.” “What about eggs?” “Same thing. They bring in a few to swap for groceries. But look at ’em.” He went to a basket and held up one about as large as a robin’s egg. “That’s the kind they bring in,” he said. “An egg is an egg and I take them ’cause I can sell them back again. But when I want a decent egg I have to pay the market quotation for it. They all take the papers and they charge accordin’ to what they read there.” “But vegetables--” “They don’t raise enough for themselves--except Dardoni and a few other Dagoes.” “What _do_ they raise?” I asked. “Damfino,” he answered. “Measles mostly. Some rheumatiz and a fine crop of dyspeptsy. You want to know what I make more profit on than anything in my store?” “What?” He pointed to three shelves loaded with patent medicine bottles. “That stuff,” he said. “There’s fifty per cent. profit in it and I can’t keep nuff of it.” “But good Lord, you wouldn’t think that in the country--” “They live on it,” he answered; “what it says on the bottles is pretty nigh true; ‘Babies cry for it.’ Only they oughter add onto that, ‘And parents die for it.’”