CHAPTER XIII

PROSPEROUS DAYS



My business in 1879 returned me nearly sixteen thousand dollars,
a satisfactory increase over the previous year.

My wife and I had become much attached to "Sunnyside," and as the
owner was willing to sell it to us for just what it had cost to
build, plus one thousand dollars for the land, we bought it. We
then spent eleven hundred dollars in improvements, and when finished
our home had cost us sixty-five hundred dollars.

It was certainly a very attractive place for that amount of money.
To be sure it was only an unpretentious cottage, but a pretty one,
and the interior had been so successfully though inexpensively
treated in decorations and appointments that the general effect
attracted from our friends universal admiration.

As our neighbor, Charlie Wood, put it on his first inspection,
we had succeeded in making a "silk purse out of a sow's ear." His
remark rather grated on us, but it was characteristic of the man
and we knew it was simply his way of paying us a compliment.