"I believe I do," I answered, amused yet fascinated by her idea. "It will total a large amount if you keep on, but I don't see how a farm can be made to pay without investing money in it. Why, you've got to put money into anything, even into a gold mine, before you can get returns." It was an unfortunate illustration, as I learned from Marion's pitying look. I winced; I knew what was coming. "Henry," she said, and in her face I saw that she was responding to the call of duty, "I don't grudge one dollar of that money you put into the Emperor shares last year, even if the lesson is wasted on you, as it seems to be; for that experience made me determine that I would never trust your judgment about investments again when my common-sense tells me you are wrong. Aunt Sophy says that all men who haven't been brought up on a farm are attacked by an insane belief, at some period of their lives, that they can make money by farming. She says Uncle Philip had made a hundred thousand dollars in the grocery business when he retired and bought a farm. She implored him not to do it, but he persisted, saying there was heaps of money in farming if properly managed, and he could run a farm on business principles and make it pay. But when he died she found he had left only forty thousand dollars for her to live on, and she is convinced that if he hadn't been taken away so suddenly she would have been altogether penniless. Poor Aunt Sophy! She weeps more over that money than over Uncle Philip, and the worst of it is that some semi-religious novel she has read has unsettled her old-fashioned ideas about heaven so that she is afraid that when her turn comes she'll find him at it again. The thought has hardened her so that I shouldn't be surprised if she married old Mr. Fairman and renounced Uncle Philip." I had been about to say that I felt myself to be peculiarly fitted to illustrate paying methods of farming, but I desisted. I had been inclined to resent Marion's taunt about the unlucky mining venture, but the serious recital of the woes of her uncle and aunt moved me to laughter. I jocularly declared I would go around to the bank to see if the money we had saved by not buying a farm had been placed to my credit, but her anxiety that I should understand her theory checked my innocent levity. "You wouldn't make light of this matter," she said, reproachfully, "if you understood its importance. Now listen: what I mean is, that instead of calculating how much money we might be able to spend on the farm we should try to see how much we can do without spending. I am sure that is the right way to avoid making a farm not pay. For example, if you think you want to buy an electric potato-digger you ought to save up the money and then----" "And then you'll decide that I can afford not to buy it!" "Probably--but don't you see the money would then be clear profit, and you would have it instead of a useless machine." "It wouldn't be useless--it would dig potatoes."