Chapter II

“I understood you had a large quantity of corn for sale,” said the stranger.

“Well, I’ve got consider’ble, but I don’t care no great about sellin’ it.”

“I should like to buy.”

“I can spare a couple o’ hund’ed bushels for a fair price.”

“What do you ask for it?”

“Well, I don’t know; how is corn nowadays?”

“Last sales in Boston were sixty-eight to seventy cents.”

“Rather low; I meant to git seventy-one for mine,” returned Farmer Cheney, who was disposed to be shrewd.

“What will you take for the lot?”

“Seventy-one.”

“Say seventy, and we won’t stand about trifles.”

“Can’t do it; seventy-one is my lowest price,” replied Farmer Cheney, finding that he had got an available customer.

“Split the difference, and it’s a trade,” said the stranger, nervously.

“Couldn’t do it.”

“I’ll take it then. Give me a receipt for this cash to bind the bargain.”

Farmer Cheney, congratulating himself on the good trade he had made, wrote the receipt after considerable labor, and put the money in his pocket book.

“Know of any one else who has got any corn to sell?”

“My neighbor Parker, I rather guess, has got some.”

“You won’t say a word that I paid you seventy-one for yours? It might spoil a trade.”

“Not a word,” replied Farmer Cheney.

Towards night our two farmers happened to meet again.

“Sold your corn to-day, neighbor Parker?” inquired Farmer Cheney.

“Every speck of it,” replied Parker.

“Did you? What did you get?”

“Eighty-one.”

“How much?”

“Eighty-one.”

“You didn’t, though, did ye?” exclaimed the man who would not take the newspaper.

“That is just what I got, and I think I could have got eighty-two if I had stuck a little longer.”

“You don’t, though!”

“The same man bought yours, I believe.”

“Yes,” replied Farmer Cheney, edging off.

“What did you get—eighty-two?”

“Well, I guess I didn’t git quite that.”

“O, eighty-one. Well, after all, that is a good price, and ten cents on a bushel more than I had any idea of getting.”

“I did not get eighty-one,” replied Farmer Cheney, rather crestfallen.

He did not like to deceive his neighbor; he had studied the Bible and the almanac enough to know better than that; but it came “dreadful hard” to own up the truth.

“How much did you get?”

“I dar’sent tell.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got took in if the feller gave you eighty-one.”

“What did you get, though, neighbor—seventy-five?”

“Seventy-one.”

“Well, you have been taken in, then; I guess you haven’t heard the news.”

“No—what?”

“Crops failed in the west.”

“How you talk!”

“And the prospect of a war in Europe; so that our breadstuffs will be extensively exported, which run up the price of flour and grain.”

“What war?”

“Between Russia and Turkey.”

“Turkey! Well, I hope them cu’sed Turks will get licked!” exclaimed Farmer Cheney, whose ideas were somewhat antiquated.

“You differ from the world in general. The sympathies of all civilized nations go with Turkey in this quarrel.”

“You don’t say so! When I was a boy, the schoolmaster used to teach us to hate the Turks. They are a barbarous race.”

“I think, neighbor Cheney, you will confess now that you had better take a paper.”

“Confess no sich thing; I wouldn’t have one round the house.”

“If you had taken the papers, you would have known about this rise in grain.”

“Perhaps I should; but Reuben generally tells me about these things.”

“It was only in the paper that came to-day; I read it since I saw you this morning. But I should no more think of selling any thing of any consequence without seeing how the Boston markets were, than I should think of cutting my own throat.”

“Kind of a dog’s life to be tied to a newspaper,” sneered Farmer Cheney.

“But if you had taken a newspaper, neighbor, and read it, you would have made twenty dollars by it in this one trade; twenty dollars, neighbor—enough to pay for the paper ten years.”

“Git out! These things look well enough as you book farmers figger ’em up; but, you see, when you come to the scratch, they ain’t nowhere.”

“It looks to me like a plain case.”

“Now, ’spose I could make twenty dollars by takin’ the paper; it would do me a darn sight more mischief than that.”

“How?”

“Why, the newspaper puts the very devil in the gals’ heads. Now, they never use to have their cu’sed picnics round here, till the gals got to readin’ on ’em in the papers. And then the buryin’ ground, they couldn’t even let that alone. Some feller put a piece in the paper about Mount Auburn, Sorrel Hill, Greenbush, and some sich place, and the fust thing we know the gravestones are all jumbled up in a heap, gravel is carted in, and posies set out all over it. Now they call it a ‘symmetry,’ I b’leve.”

“A cemetery, neighbor; but we who read the newspapers like these things. There is something pleasant in ornamenting with flowers the resting place of our dead.”

“It looks to me more like ‘sacrelation.’”

“Sacrilege! O, no; far from it.”

“Well, I think so; and then we’ve got to have new school houses, a new town house, and the roads must all be ‘McDonalized.’”

“McAdamized.”

“Well, no matter what it is; it all comes of these cu’sed newspapers. My taxes are twenty dollars a year more than they used to be.”

“And you sell the produce of your farm for five hundred dollars more.”

“Well, that’s true; but there’s no kind of need of makin’ the taxes any more, all for newspapers.”

“But you must think how much better and wiser your family would be with a newspaper to read.”

“By mighty! I should think they would! Only look at Deacon Craig’s folks. Them gals cost him a fortin every year in books and new gowns. The newspapers won’t do; they must have books, and waste half their time readin’ on em.”

“But it is a very worthy and intelligent family, and the deacon’s income, owing to his more enlightened method of conducting business, is at least ten times as great as it used to be, and he can well afford to spend all he does in educating his children.”

“No use o’ talkin’ about it; give me the good old way; and when I’m dead, I ain’t at all particular about havin’ buttercups and whiteweed growin’ on my grave;” and Farmer Cheney went off, “wondering what the world was coming to.”