Since his butter was so inferior

By the time he reached town a cold rain had set in.  He went at once to the intelligence office, but could obtain no girl for Mrs. Mumpson to "superintend," nor any certain promise of one.  He did not much care, for he felt that the new plan was not going to work.  Having bartered all his eggs for groceries, he sold the old stove and bought a new one, then drew from the bank a little ready money.  Since his butter was so inferior, he took it to his friend Tom Watterly, the keeper of the poorhouse. Prosperous Tom slapped his old friend on the back and said, "You look awfully glum and chopfallen, Jim.  Come now, don't look at the world as if it was made of tar, pitch, and turpentine.  I know your luck's been hard, but you make it a sight harder by being so set in all your ways.  You think there's no place to live on God's earth but that old up-and-down-hill farm of yours that I wouldn't take as a gift.  Why, man alive, there's a dozen things you can turn your hand to; but if you will stay there, do as other men do.  Pick out a smart, handy woman that can make butter yaller as gold, that'll bring gold, and not such limpsy-slimsy, ghostly-looking stuff as you've brought me.  Bein' it's you, I'll take it and give as much for it as I'd pay for better, but you can't run your old ranch in this fashion." "I know it, Tom," replied Holcroft ruefully. "I'm all at sea; but, as you say, I'm set in my ways, and I'd rather live on bread and milk and keep my farm than make money anywhere else.  I guess I'll have to give it all up, though, and pull out, but it's like rooting up one of the old oaks in the meadow lot.  The fact is, Tom, I've been fooled into one of the worst scrapes I've got into yet." "I see how it is," said Tom heartily and complacently, "you want a practical, foresighted man to talk straight at you for an hour or two and clear up the fog you're in.  You study and brood over little things out there alone until they seem mountains which you can't get over nohow, when, if you'd take one good jump out, they'd be behind you.