“Sam,” said I, “I am going to start this poultry plant from just as near the beginning of things as possible.  I want you to dispose of every hen on the place within the next twenty days, and to burn everything that has been used in connection with them.  We’ve cleared this land of disease germs, if there were germs in it, by turning it bottom-side up; now let’s start free from the pestiferous vermin that make a hen’s life unhappy.  No stock, either old or young, shall be brought here.  When we want to change our breeding, we’ll buy eggs from the best fanciers and hatch them in our own incubators.  It will then be our own fault if we don’t keep our chickens comfortable and free from their enemies.  This is sound theory, and we’ll try how it works out in practice.  Certainly it will be easier to keep clean if we start clean.  Not one board or piece of lumber that has been used for any other purpose shall find place in my hen-houses.  Eternal vigilance makes a full egg basket; and a full egg basket means a lot of money at the year’s end.  I will never find fault with you for being too careful Attend to the details in such way as suits you best, provided the result is thorough and everlasting cleanliness.  Nothing less will win out, and nothing less will meet the requirements of our factory rules.

“The first thing to do is to get the incubating cellar made.  It ought to be four feet in the ground and four feet out of it.  Make it ten feet by fifteen, inside measure, and you can easily run five two-hundred-egg incubators.  Build it near the south fence in No. 4,—­that’s the lot for the hens.  The walls are to be of brick, and we’ll have a brick floor put in, for it’s too cold to concrete it now.  Gables are to point east and west, and each is to have a window; put the door in the middle of the south wall, and shingle the roof.  Digging through three feet of frost will be hard, but it must be done, and done quickly.  I want you to start your incubator lamps before the 3d of February.”

“I can dig the hole without much trouble,—­big fire on the ground for two or three hours will help,—­and I can put on the roof and do all the carpenter work, but I can’t lay the brick.”

“I’ll look out for that part of the job, but I want you to see that things are pushed, for I shall have a thousand eggs here by February 1st and another thousand by the 25th, and these eggs mean money.”

“What do you have to pay for them?”

“Ten cents apiece,—­$200 for two thousand eggs.”

“Well, I should say!  Are they hand-painted?  I wouldn’t have had to quit business if I could have sold my eggs at a quarter of that price.”

“That’s all right, Sam, but you didn’t sell White Wyandotte eggs for hatching.  I’ve contracted with two of the best-known fanciers of Wyandottes in the country to send me five hundred eggs apiece February 1st and 25th.  I don’t think the price is high for the stock.”

“Have you decided to keep ’dottes?  I hoped you would try Leghorns; they’re great layers.”