FREELY GIVEN
Despite his best efforts, an encyclopedia salesman just couldn’t interest a farmer in an expensive set of encyclopedias. “That sounds like too much money to me,” the farmer objected. “Well, I do have a less-expensive set,” the salesman finally proposed. “I’ll tell you what. If you let me pick all the corn I can in an hour out of that field over there, I’ll give you the set.” The farmer readily agreed to the trade. As soon as the two men had shaken hands, the salesman began to laugh and smugly said, “Silly farmer, you aren’t going to get very much useful information out of that set of encyclopedias, it’s 30 years old.” “Well, I suppose not,” the farmer agreed, “But, then you won’t be getting much corn out of my okra patch, either.” John W. Moore, Farm and Ranch Living, October/November, 1990, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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