farmers, up with the sun and to bed with the same.  Andrew
wore overalls and a soft shirt and grew brown and tough.  My
hands got red and blue with soapsuds and frost; I never saw a
Redfern advertisement from one year's end to another, and my
kitchen was a battlefield where I set my teeth and learned to
love hard work.  Our literature was government agriculture
reports, patent medicine almanacs, seedsmen's booklets, and
Sears Roebuck catalogues.  We subscribed to _Farm and Fireside_
and read the serials aloud.  Every now and then, for real
excitement, we read something stirring in the Old
Testament--that cheery book Jeremiah, for instance, of which
Andrew was very fond.  The farm did actually prosper, after a
while; and Andrew used to hang over the pasture bars at
sunset, and tell, from the way his pipe burned, just what the
weather would be the next day.

As I have said, we were tremendously happy until Andrew got
the fatal idea of telling the world how happy we were.  I am
sorry to have to admit he had always been rather a bookish
man.  In his college days he had edited the students'
magazine, and sometimes he would get discontented with the
_Farm and Fireside_ serials and pull down his bound volumes of
the college paper.  He would read me some of his youthful
poems and stories and mutter vaguely about writing something
himself some day.  I was more concerned with sitting hens than
with sonnets and I'm bound to say I never took these threats
very seriously.  I should have been more severe.

Then great-uncle Philip died, and his carload of books came to
us.  He had been a college professor, and years ago when
Andrew was a boy Uncle Philip had been very fond of him--had,
in fact, put him through college.  We were the only near
relatives, and all those books turned up one fine day.  That
was the beginning of the end, if I had only known it.  Andrew
had the time of his life building shelves all round our
living-room; not content with that he turned the old hen house
into a study for himself, put in a stove, and used to sit up
there evenings after I had gone to bed.  The first thing I
knew he called the place Sabine Farm (although it had been
known for years as Bog Hollow) because he thought it a
literary thing to do.  He used to take a book along with him
when he drove over to Redfield for supplies; sometimes the
wagon would be two hours late coming home, with old Ben
loafing along between the shafts and Andrew lost in his book.

I didn't think much of all this, but I'm an easy-going woman
and as long as Andrew kept the farm going I had plenty to do
on my own hook.  Hot bread and coffee, eggs and preserves for
breakfast; soup and hot meat, vegetables, dumplings, gravy,
brown bread and white, huckleberry pudding, chocolate cake and
buttermilk for dinner; muffins, tea, sausage rolls,
blackberries and cream, and doughnuts for supper--that's the
kind of menu I had been preparing three times a day for years.
I hadn't any time to worry about what wasn't my business.

And then one morning I caught Andrew doing up a big, flat
parcel for the postman.  He looked so sheepish I just had to
ask what it was.

"I've written a book," said Andrew, and he showed me the title page--

                      PARADISE REGAINED
                             BY
                        ANDREW McGILL

Even then I wasn't much worried, because of course I knew no
one would print it.  But Lord! a month or so later came a
letter from a publisher--accepting it!  That's the letter
Andrew keeps framed above his desk.  Just to show how such
things sound I'll copy it here:

                DECAMERON, JONES AND COMPANY
                         PUBLISHERS
                   UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK

                                         January 13, 1907.

DEAR MR. McGILL:

We have read with singular pleasure your manuscript "Paradise
Regained."  There is no doubt in our minds that so spirited an
account of the joys of sane country living should meet with
popular approval, and, with the exception of a few revisions
and abbreviations, we would be glad to publish the book
practically as it stands.  We would like to have it
illustrated by Mr. Tortoni, some of whose work you may have
seen, and would be glad to know whether he may call upon you
in order to acquaint himself with the local colour of your
neighbourhood.

We would be glad to pay you a royaLty of 10 per cent. upon the
retail price of the book, and we enclose duplicate contracts
for your signature in case this proves satisfactory to you.

Believe us, etc., etc.,
                                       DECAMERON, JONES & CO.

I have since thought that "Paradise Lost" would have been a
better title for that book.  It was published in the autumn of
1907, and since that time our life has never been the same.