Practically all our little group specialize. We go in for some line that is absolutely guaranteed to be profitable until the expense becomes too great for a person of limited means any longer to bear up under. Then we drop that and specialize in another line, also recommended as being highly lucrative, for so long as we can afford it; and then we tackle something else again. It is a never-ending round of new experiences, because no matter how disastrously one's most recent experiment has turned out the agricultural weeklies are constantly holding forth the advantages of a field as yet new and untried and morally insured to be one that will yield large and nourishing dividends. It is my sober conviction that the most inspired fiction writers in America--the men with the most buoyant imaginations--are the regular contributors to our standard agricultural journals. And next to them the most gifted romancers are the fellows who sell bulbs and seeds. They are not fabulists exactly, because fables have morals and frequently these persons have none, but they are inspired fancifiers, I'll tell the world. Each succeeding season finds each family among us embarking upon some new and fascinating venture. For instance, I have one friend who this year went in for bees--Italian bees, I think he said they were, though why he should have been prejudiced against the native-born variety I cannot understand. He used to drop in at our place to borrow a little cooking soda--he was constantly running out of cooking soda at his house owing to using so much of it on his face and hands and his neck for poulticing purposes--and tell us what charming creatures bees were and how much honey he expected to lay by that fall. From what he said we gathered that the half had never been told by Maeterlinck about the engaging personal habits and captivating tribal customs of bees; bees, we gathered, were, as a race, perhaps a trifle quicktempered and hot-headed, or if not exactly hotheaded at least hot elsewhere, but ever ready to forgive and forget and, once the heat of passion had passed, to let bygones be bygones. A bee, it seemed from his accounts, was one creature that always stood ready to meet you halfway. He finally gave up bee culture though, not because his enthusiasm had waned, for it did not, but for professional reasons solely. He is a distinguished actor and when he got the leading rôle in a new play it broke in on his study of the part to be dropping the manuscript every few minutes and grabbing up a tin dish and running out in an endeavor, by the power of music, to induce a flock of swarming bees to rehive themselves, or whatever it is bees are supposed to do when favored with a pie-pan solo. It seemed his bees had a perfect mania for swarming. The least little thing would set them off. There must have been too much artistic temperament about the premises for such emotional and flighty creatures as bees appear to be.