Aunt Sarah protested.  “The idea, John, at your age, being out so late at night and returning from the city on the early milk train the following morning, and then being still several miles from home.  It’s scandalous!”

He only chuckled to himself; and what the entertainment had been, which was provided at Lulu Temple, and which he had so thoroughly enjoyed, was left to her imagination.  His only remark when questioned was:  “Sarah, you’re not in it.  You are not a ‘Shriner.’” And as John had in every other particular fulfilled her ideal of what constitutes a good husband, Sarah, like the wise woman she was, allowed the subject to drop.

A good, practical, progressive farmer, John Landis constantly read, studied and pondered over the problem of how to produce the largest results at least cost of time and labor.  His crops were skillfully planted in rich soil, carefully cultivated and usually harvested earlier than those of his neighbors.  One summer he raised potatoes so large that many of them weighed one pound each, and new potatoes and green peas, fresh from the garden, invariably appeared on Aunt Sarah’s table the first of July, and sometimes earlier.  I have known him to raise cornstalks which reached a height of thirteen feet, which were almost equaled by his wife’s sunflower stalks, which usually averaged nine feet in height.

Aunt Sarah, speaking one day to Mary, said:  “Your Uncle John is an unusually silent man.  I have heard him remark that when people talk continuously they are either very intelligent or tell untruths.”  He, happening to overhear her remark, quickly retorted: 

    “The man who speaks a dozen tongues,
      When all is said and done,
    Don’t hold a match to him who knows
      How to keep still in one.”

When annoyed at his wife’s talkativeness, her one fault in her husband’s eyes, if he thought she had a fault, he had a way of saying, “Alright, Sarah, Alright,” as much as to say “that is final; you have said enough,” in his peculiar, quick manner of speaking, which Aunt Sarah never resented, he being invariably kind and considerate in other respects.

John Landis was a successful farmer because he loved his work, and found joy in it.  While not unmindful of the advantages possessed by the educated farmer of the present day, he said, “’Tis not college lore our boys need so much as practical education to develop their efficiency.  While much that we eat and wear comes out of the ground, we should have more farmers, the only way to lower the present high cost of living, which is such a perplexing problem to the housewife.  There is almost no limit to what might be accomplished by some of our bright boys should they make agriculture a study.  Luther Burbank says, ’To add but one kernel of corn to each ear grown in this country in a single year would increase the supply five million bushels.’”

CHAPTER V.