After extracting the best that was in him in the course of twenty years' service, with them, the Peoples' Insurance Company discharges Joe Jackson, a faithful bookkeeper. So at middle life, Joe finds the sum-total of a "city career" a nervous wife, a drooping infant and a grown-up son and daughter, whom the city has converted into shallow, idle, selfish creatures. His own gains are a bank account that wouldn't stand the strain of city rent-paying and city living, while he was hunting for a job, so Joe concluded to get "back to nature." He bought a farm with his savings and transported himself there with his family, much against the wishes of two members thereof, the indolent son and daughter, of course.