People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 27-25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1896 — WOULDN’T USE A WINDMILL. [ARTICLE]

WOULDN’T USE A WINDMILL.

u liy a Way buck fanner I’referrect to Water by Hand. The man who sold windmills adjusted his chair at a new angle, says the Boslon Herald, crossed his feet on the railing of the balcony, locked his hands over the top of his head and began: ‘Curious fellows, those Wayback farmers are: droil chaps to deal with, too; cute and sharp at a bargain. Most of 1 bem know a good thing when they see it, so [ took a good many orders, but once in a while I come across a conservative old hayseed whose eyes are closed to anything modern. One of that sort helped me to a good laugh the other day and I might as well pass it on. He was a genial, white-haired old fellow, who owned several fine farms, with prime orchards and meadows, barns and fences in apple-pie order and dwellings serene in comfort, lie listened closely while I expatiated on the excellence of our make of machines; then, taking a fresh supply of tobacco, he squared himself in his chair, with his hands in his pockets, and held forth in this fashion:

“ ‘Waal, stranger,’ he said, ‘your machine may be all right, but now, see here. T settled here in the airly *sos, broke the trail for the last few miles! blazin’ the trees as we came along. I had a fair start, good health, a yoke o’ cattle, a cow, an ax, with one bit and three coppers in my pocket. I built a log house, with a snake ruff an’ a puncheon floor, an’ a cow-shed of popple poles, ruffed with sod. I worked hard, up airly an’ down late, clearin’ up land by degrees an’ diggin’ a livin’ out o’ the sile by main strength, an’ no favors except the blessin’ o’ Almighty. The Lord’s been good to me. He’s gi’n me houses an’ barns; He’s gi’n me horses an’ cattle; He’s gi’n me sheep an’ swine an’ feathered fowl o’ many kinds. An’ now, stranger, after all that I’ll be everlastingly durned if I’ll be so mean as to ask Him to pump water for ’em.’ “And then,” continued the story-tell-er,-“he brought his hand down on his knee with a whack that fairly echoed through the house. Of course, I couldn’t urge him to purchase after that expression of sentiments and I left him. Independent, wasn’t he?” Then the windmill man chuckled as if he enjoyed the memory of the scene he had just described, and his hearers enjoyed his story so much that when he left he was richer by three or four orders.