if we looked after our students! It is only in these last years that I
have learned that I can go forth unto my work and to my labor until the
evening, quitting then, and getting home in time to feed the chickens
and milk the cow. I am a professional man, and I dwell in the midst of
professional men, all of whom are inclined to help the Lord out by
working after dark--all of whom are really in dire constitutional need
of the early roosting chickens and the quiet, ruminating cow.

To walk humbly with the hens, that's the thing--after the classes are
dismissed and the office closed. To get out of the city, away from
books, and theories, and students, and patients, and clients, and
customers--back to real things, simple, restful, healthful things for
body and soul, homely domestic things that lay eggs at 70 cents per
dozen, and make butter at $2.25 the 5-pound box! As for me, this does
"help immensely," affording me all necessary hair-cuts (I don't want
the "Eugenic Review"), and allowing Her to send the family washing
(except the flannels) to the laundry.

Instead of crippling normal man's normal work, country living (chickens
and a cow) will prevent his work from crippling him--keeping him a
little from his students and thus saving him from too much teaching;
keeping him from reading the "Eugenic Review" and thus saving him from
too much learning; curing him, in short, of his "constitution" that is
bound to come to some sort of a collapse unless rested and saved by
chickens and a cow.

"By not too many chickens," she would add; and there is no one to match
her with a chicken--fried, stewed, or turned into pie.

The hens are no longer mine, the boys having taken them over; but the