Hiram the Young Farmer

The young fellow who said this stood upon the highest point of the Ridge Road, where the land sloped abruptly to the valley in which lay the small municipality of Crawberry on t...

When you came into “Mother” Atterson's front hall (the young men boarders gave her that appellation in irony) the ghosts of many ancient boiled dinners met you with--if you were...

Daniel Dwight's Emporium, the general store was called, and it was in a very populous part of the town of Crawberry. Old Daniel was a driver, he seldom had clerks enough to hand...

Had Hiram Strong not been a muscular youth for his age, and sturdy withal, the excited horses would have broken away from him and the carriage would certainly have gone into the...

By chance that evening Hiram got home to his boarding house in good season. The early boarders--“early birds” Crackit always termed them--had not yet sat down to the long table...

“I've sure got plenty of time now to look for a job,” observed Hiram Strong when he was two blocks away from Dwight's Emporium. “But I declare I don't know where to begin.”

Sometimes Hiram wondered when the girl ever slept. She was still dragging about the kitchen or dining-room when he went to bed, and she was first down in the morning--even earli...

The Pollocks proved to be a neighborly family--and a large one. As Henry said, there was a “whole raft of young 'uns” younger than he was. They made Hiram very welcome at the su...

Henry showed Hiram the “branch”, a little stream flowing into the river, which marked the westerly boundary of the farm for some ways, and they set off up the steep bank of this...

On Monday morning Mrs. Atterson put her house in the agent's hands. On Wednesday a pair of spinster ladies came to look at it. They came again on Thursday and again on Friday.

There was no bend in the highway for some distance, but the overhanging trees masked the track completely, save for a few hundred yards. The horse, whether driven or running at...

He went to see the lawyer who had transacted Uncle Jeptha Atterson's small business in the old man's lifetime, and had made his will--Mr. Strickland. Hiram judged that this gent...

These early Spring days were busy ones for Hiram Strong. The mornings were frosty and he could not get to his fencing work until midforenoon. But there were plenty of other task...

Hiram had already begun early rising, however, for the farmer who does not get up before the sun in the spring needs must do his chores at night by lantern-light. The eight-hour...

“Old Lem Camp,” as he had been called for so many years that there seemed no disrespect in the title, was waking up. Not many mornings was he a lie-abed. And the lines in his fo...

“The old Atterson place” as it was called in the neighborhood, began to take on a brisk appearance these days. Sister, with the help of Old Lem Camp, had long since raked the do...

But Hiram noted again that Lettie Bronson did not display terror. While her friends were screaming and crying, she sat perfectly quiet, and for a minute said never a word.

Now, a rattlesnake is poisonous, but he gives fair warning; a swamp moccasin lies in wait for the unwary and strikes without sign or sound. Into Hiram Strong's troubled mind cam...

HIRAM found Abel Pollock mending harness in the shed. Hiram opened his business bluntly, and told the farmer what was up. Mr. Pollock scratched his head, listened attentively, a...

On the platform outside, which was illuminated by a single smoky lantern, a group of small boys were giggling, and they watched Hiram unhitch the old horse and climb into the sp...

To some youths this matter of the option would have been such a clog that they would have lost interest and slighted the work. But not so with Hiram Strong.

For the first time since they had come to the farm, Hiram was the last to get up in the house. And when he came down to breakfast, still trembling from the exertion of the previ...

He had planted in the window boxes seed of several different varieties. He had transplanted to the coldframe strong plants numbering nearly five hundred. He believed that, under...

Hiram caught sight of Pepper in town one day and went after him. He knew the real estate man had returned from his business trip, and the fact that the matter of the option was...

On the seventeenth day of June Hiram had “grappled out” a mess of potatoes for their dinner. They were larger than hen's eggs and came upon the table mealy and white.

Despite the fact that she had seemed inclined to snub him, the young farmer was vastly taken with the pretty girl. He had seen nobody about Scoville as attractive as Lettie--nor...

A broad streak of crimson along the eastern horizon, over the treetops, announced the coming of the sun when Hiram Strong reached the automobile road to which he, on the previou...

But Hiram was not at all sure that he would ever see a celery crop in this bottom-land. Pepper still “hung fire” and he would not go to Mr. Strickland with his option.

Sister had begun school on the very first day it opened--in September. She was delighted, for although she had had “lessons” at the “institution”, they had not been like this re...

The fun went on after that with more moderation, and everybody had a pleasant time. That is, so supposed Hiram Strong until, in going out of the barn again to get a breath of co...

Hiram Strong was not likely to forget that long and arduous night. It was impossible to force the horse out of a walk, for the drifts were in some places to the creature's girth.

Despite Hiram Strong's warning to his employer when they started work on the old Atterson Eighty, that she must expect no profit for this season's, work, the Christmas-tide, whe...

Especially was the young farmer inspired to greater effort. He saw the second growing season before him. And he saw, too, that now, indeed, he had that chance to prove his effic...

Hiram crawled through the wires, and followed the plain foot-marks back to the Dickerson sheds. He lost them there, of course, but he knew by the size of the footprints that eit...

During this year Hiram had not seen much of Mr. Bronson, or Lettie. They had gone back to the West over the summer vacation, and when Lettie had returned for her last year at St...