222 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



address, he went to my house to dinner, and when dinner 

 was over, he said, "I want to go over your farm." I took 

 him over the farm, and when we got back he said, "You have 

 got a hirge farm, and I want to send you twenty or thirty 

 Swedes and Germans to help on the farm." "But," said I, 

 "I can't afford to pay them." Said he, "I noticed that you 

 have thirty or forty acres of hardhack here, and that you 

 want to get rid of." I said, "I have not yet been able to de- 

 vise any means to get it out, without a gi-eat deal of expense." 

 Said he, "I am going to the Constitutional Convention at 

 Albany this winter, and I want to come over to your place, 

 and when I come, I expect to see all those bushes cleared off." 

 In a few mouths I got a line from him, stating that he was 

 comiug to see me. I had not touched the hardhack, but there 

 was about an acre that could be seen from the fence near my 

 house, and I set my men at work and had this place cleared. 

 I did not find it such terribly hard work as I contemplated. 

 One man took hold of a clump of the bushes and another cut 

 the roots with a stub-hoe and then tore them out. When Mr. 

 Greeley came I was very anxious he should see what had been 

 done, and I took him out to the fence, and he was entirely 

 satisfied. He assumed that the whole forty acres had been 

 cleared, and said that was good farming. I kept at work upon 

 them until the whole forty acres were cleared, and got rid 

 of the last of them this summer. The bushes have all been 

 torn up and burned. I am going further than that. I have 

 got the hardhack ashes, which are the best manure in the 

 world, and I am having them distributed over the land, and 

 next spring I mean to take Professor Stockbridge's advice, 

 and run my harrow over it and sow it with grass-seed. I had 

 hoped, after Mr. Greeley had been defeated as a candidate for 

 the Presidency (for I did not want to see him elected), to 

 have had the pleasure of seeing him at my house, and show 

 him, truthfully and faithfully, what had been done. I men- 

 tion this, in the first place, to show that after a man once gets 

 started in a good work, it is very easy to go ahead and carry 

 it out; and this work of clearing pastures, either by feeding 

 them off with sheep, or by cutting them off, when you once 

 really set about it, becomes a pleasurable business. You can 

 clear your pastures of this hardhack, and you have no idea 



