"I know what's in the prairie soil pretty well. I know that crops will fail sometimes and boom sometimes, and I know if I live I mean to own three times what I have now; that I'll have a grove a mile square on it, and a lake in the middle, and a farmhouse of colonial style up on the swell where we are living now and that neither John Jacobs nor the First National Bank of Careyville will hold any mortgage on it." Asher's face was bright with anticipation. "You are a dreamer, Aydelot." "No, Jim Shirley's a dreamer," Asher insisted. "Mrs. Aydelot and I planned our home the first night she came a bride to our little one-roomed soddy. There are cottonwoods and elms and locust trees shading our house now where there was only a bunch of sunflowers then, and except for Jim's little corn patch and mine, not a furrow turned in the Grass River Valley. We have accomplished something since then. Why not the whole thing?" "You have reason for your faith, I admit. But you are right, Shirley is a dreamer. What's the matter with him?" "An artistic temperament, more heart than head, a neglected home life in his boyhood, and a fight for health to do his work. He'll die mortgaged, but he has helped so many other fellows to lift theirs, I envy Jim's 'abundant entrance' by and by. But now he dreams of a thousand things and realizes none. Poor fellow! His dooryard is a picture, while the weeds sometimes choke his garden." "Yes, he'll die mortgaged. He's never paid me interest nor principal on my little loan, yet I'd increase it tomorrow if he asked me to do it," John Jacobs declared. "You are a blood-sucking Shylock, sure enough," Asher said with a smile. "I wish Jim would take advantage of you and quit his talking about the boom and his dreams of what it might do for him." "How soon will you be platting your Sunflower Ranch into town lots for the new town that I hear is to be started down your way?" John Jacobs inquired. "Town lots do not appeal to me, Jacobs," Asher replied. "I'm a slow-growing Buckeye, I'll admit, but I can't see anything but mushrooms in these towns out West where there is no farming community about them. I've waited and worked a good while; I'm willing to work and wait a while longer. Some of my dreams have come true. I'll hold to my first position, even if I don't get rich so fast." "You are level-headed," Jacobs assured him. "You notice I have not turned an acre in on this boom. Why? I'm a citizen of Kansas. And while I like to increase my property, you know my sect bears that reputation--"Jacobs never blushed for his Jewish origin--"I want to keep on living somewhere. Why not here? Why do the other fellows out of their goods, as we Jews are always accused of doing, if it leaves me no customer to buy? I want farmers around my town, not speculators who work a field from hand to hand, but leave it vacant at last. It makes your merchant rich today but bankrupt in a dead town tomorrow. I'm a merchant by calling."