1883.] HINTS TOWARD SMALL FARMING. 293 



at hand, respecting farm goods, we should touch them lightly or 

 remain studying with those who do know. Yet faint heart never 

 made a profitable crop. 



Whatever we undertake to do let us do it better than we did 

 before, or have seen it done, if we can. Beat yourselves every 

 time. Never mind whether you exceed your neighbors or not, 

 beat yourselves. "What we admire in an animal or plant we 

 admire more in man — that is growth. 



If you are making beef, or pork, or mutton, or milk, or butter, or 

 cheese, working oxen or trotting horses, make them better next 

 time, especially if you make things for the judgment day of the 

 market. 



So of vegetables or fruit products. Let withered and inferior 

 goods come by railway. Don't allow the market to know of your 

 going back in quality any. It will despise and never forgive you 

 if you do, as you despise and will never forgive the weakly animal 

 or plant. I am not hinting that you should lie about the quality 

 to cover a failure either. Manufacturers dispose of their mistakes 

 under another name. The nice farmer can feed them to his cattle 

 and pigs or chickens. 



Again, don't try to do too much of a kind nor too many kinds 

 of things. To excel in leaping you can't jump in all directions — 

 you must throw your heft towards one point. 



While we are young, doubtless we shall have to prove many 

 things and scatter trials in various practice to find our bearings 

 and form our minds; but after forty years of age, more or less, we 

 must concentrate and intensify our work. 



Then we shall begin to see, the sharper we look, how much 

 there is to see, and how very little we absolutely know. 



When we bend our minds to the production of one or two 

 staples — the commonest, the easiest, the ones we supposed we 

 knew all about years ago — then small farming jumps in industrial 

 importance. Then we shall find our chosen branch of agriculture 

 a most absorbing pursuit. Then we shall know the unlimited 

 chance of failure and infinite progress in every direction, passing 

 the limit of one short span of life except to make the feeblest 

 beginning. 



At that point we shall have no fear of competition. We court 

 it, rather, to help in our studies and share in our labors, for in the 



