[A YARN FROM THE LOG-BOOK OF TOM FAIRWEATHER.]
A Visit to an Ostrich Farm.
BY LIEUTENANT E. W. STURDY, U.S.N.
"Hello!" cried Tom, "we're off."
Off from Cape Town, South Africa. Wasn't Tom a lucky fellow? He was cruising around the world in his father's ship. To-day he was going a few miles inland to visit Mr. Van Zeilin's ostrich farm. Queer kind of farm, eh? Are you wondering whether the ostriches were the farmers? Well, you'll see.
It was a lovely trip in a railway car, much like our cars at home, by-the-bye, over fair fields bright and sweet with flowers.
Tom enjoyed it after having been cooped up on ship-board for some time; in fact, he grinned from ear to ear with pleasure. I have a colored photograph of him I would like to show you. Blue, roving eyes, yellow hair, round, rosy cheeks—dressed in a suit of sailor clothes. His messmates thought him a nice boy, and called him "Little Boy Blue."
"Ostrich farming is a new thing, is it not?" asked Tom's father, Captain Fairweather, of Mr. Van Zeilin, the owner of the farm they were going to visit, and who, as his name showed, came of the early Dutch settlers of the colony.
"Yes; the attempt was first made only about twenty years ago." (Tom thought twenty years made a very old thing of it.) "We have been fairly successful; our only profit is in the feathers, as you doubtless know."