1883.] HINTS TOWARD SMALL FARMING. 261 



village enterprise ; "can't afford " to take any other paper than the 

 Courant, and all that. Still, it is so hard to see them grow old 

 before their time. A relative of their father's, a farmer from 



, says to him : " You might have been a rich man if you 



had spent the manure you have done on any other land than this." 



Now, are there not instances of successful farming with small 

 means on just such land as this ? Cannot Mr. J. B. Olcott or 

 others bring them forth for the inspiration of our young people ? 



As for my only son — p'rhaps it is as well that his father (who 



was a clergyman) died "intestate," and that, through Rev. 



's interest, he is starting a sheep-ranch for a Boston man in 



Southwest Missouri. His exile comes hard upon his mother and 

 sister, but he bears it bravely, as so many others have done before. 



That you may never grow weary in all your well-doing for Con- 

 necticut homes and farming is the wish of one among the many 

 benefited through your instrumentality. 



Respectfully yours, 



Mrs. . 



I did not see this letter until my piece was done, but I know the 

 burden of it by many instances, and could scarcely have changed 

 my course of thought had I seen it. Successes of any kind are 

 like wild pigeons in not always lighting on the same tree. 

 Samples of success in small farming — even on sandy land, are as 

 plenty as healthy broods of chickens. But if the chicks are lousy, 

 and hawks and skunks abound, we must clear out the vermin 

 before we can expect thrift. First pure, then peaceable. To have 

 small farming earnest and strong in Connecticut, Society, the 

 ignorant Pharaoh and task-master of these times, must see the 

 need for its own welfare, of letting the people go at it. The old 

 preachers were not out of the way when they urged a change of 

 heart for righteousness' sake. 



This very interesting letter gives a hint of the enormous mass 

 of materials awaiting investigation by the people in every neighbor- 

 hood before we can have social science or a saving common sense 

 for the farm. Each word of this sincere, womanly epistle is sug- 

 gestive. We get in it a glimpse of every rural community in the 

 commonwealth. The most hopeful reflection about it is that 

 where one woman has got ready to write her troubles to the State 

 authorities, thousands must be thinking about them as they never 

 thought before. 



The matter of small farming before us is a grave social subject, 

 older than history and coeval with trade or barter. We need to 

 know how society grows as well as how crops grow. Being 



