Our Christmas dinner consisted almost wholly of such vegetables as we proposed to raise in the coming summer.  Never before were such connoisseurs of carrots, beets, onions, parsnips, and so on through almost the entire list of such winter stock as was to be obtained at our nearest green-grocery.  We celebrated the day by nearly a dozen dishes which the children aided my wife in preparing.  Then I had Merton figure the cost of each, and we were surprised at the cheapness of much of country fare, even when retailed in very small quantities.

This brought up another phase of the problem.  In many respects I was like the children, having almost as much to learn as they—­with the advantage, however, of being able to correct impressions by experience.  In other words, I had more judgment; and while I should certainly make mistakes, not many of them would be absurd or often repeated.  I was aware that most of the homely kitchen vegetables cost comparatively little, even though (having in our flat no good place for storage) we had found it better to buy what we needed from day to day.  It was therefore certain that, at wholesale in the country, they would often be exceedingly cheap.  This fact would work both ways:  little money would purchase much food of certain kinds, and if we produced these articles of food they would bring us little money.

I will pass briefly over the period that elapsed before it was time for us to depart, assured that the little people who are following this simple history are as eager to get away from the dusty city flat to the sunlight, breezy fields, brooks, and woods as were the children in my story.  It is enough to say that, during all my waking hours not devoted to business, I read, thought, and studied on the problem of supporting my family in the country.  I haunted Washington Market in the gray dawn and learned from much inquiry what products found a ready and certain sale at some price, and what appeared to yield to the grower the best profits.  There was much conflict of opinion, but I noted down and averaged the statements made to me.  Many of the market-men had hobbies, and told me how to make a fortune out of one or two articles; more gave careless, random, or ignorant answers; but here and there was a plain, honest, sensible fellow who showed me from his books what plain, honest, sensible producers in the country were doing.  In a few weeks I dismissed finally the tendency to one blunder.  A novice hears or reads of an acre of cabbages or strawberries producing so much.  Then he figures, “if one acre yields so much, two acres will give twice as much,” and so on.  The experience of others showed me the utter folly of all this; and I came to the conclusion that I could give my family shelter, plain food, pure air, wholesome work and play in plenty, and that not very soon could I provide much else with certainty.  I tried to stick closely to common-sense; and the humble circumstances of the