"I wish to speak to you, ma'am. I've been waiting for you. You may remember you passed us driving in a wagon this morning? The man whose wagon we were in and who was driving, said: 'That's the lady for you; she's got plenty of land and money and you'd better see her.'"
I laughed and said, "He was right about the land, but much astray in the other statement. I have about a thousand acres of land, but not a cent of money."
"Well, ma'am, it's the land I'm after. I want to farm. I've been working with a big company at my trade, steam-fitting and carpenter's work, and they've laid off their hands in this tight spell, and I've took a notion to go back to farming for a while. I was raised on a farm an' was a-ploughin' cotton when I was 12 years old—I don't belong to this State. I come here last year for my wife's health. She loves the country, so I would like to take about thirty acres on shares."
I asked if he could manage that much alone. He pointed to his pretty wife and said:—
"She's just the workin'est woman you ever see an' she'll do her share, I reckon."
I told him to come up to Cherokee as soon as he could and look over the land; that I had a cottage which used to be our schoolhouse when I was a child, which I thought would be very comfortable for him after a little work. I asked him what shares he proposed. He said:—
"In course I don't know the way you works shares in this State, but at home I rents my farm to my brother-in-law an' I furnishes the team and feeds it and the land is under good fence an' we divides the cost of fertilizer an' he does all the work an' we shares the crop in half; he takes one-half and gives me one-half."
I told him that would suit me entirely. I had my land under good wire fencing and would furnish a team and feed it.
I drove on—I have always said I was the special child of Providence and here is an instance—waylaid on the road by the very person I was wanting to find and have been looking for in vain.
I was late for luncheon, but was forgiven in view of such unforeseen interruption.