ANNUAL WINTER MEETING AT WARRENSBUBG. 255 



use. Horticulture may embrace anything of the vegetable order, on 

 occasion. Taking wider views regarding not only the things produced, 

 but their effects on society, there is hardly any question that may not 

 come into our discussions, which may thus become of interest to all 

 the dwellers in our region. And there is hardly any section of the 

 country where the people are so confined to a small number of pro- 

 ducts as in our own. It would seem that five-sixths of the labor is ex- 

 pended on cattle, swine and that great article for producing grease 

 — corn. Ours is the greatest manufactory of fat the world has yet 

 seen. Wherever the bone and muscle may be made we make the tal- 

 low and lard. Some men who might succeed admirably in other direc- 

 tions fail here regularly as graziers. While writing this I have just 

 had a suggestive experience. The miller passed along and asked if 

 "we wanted any buckwheat flour?" "If such an article, all buck- 

 wheat, can be had, we do." " That I guarantee. We ground it our- 

 selves, and it is all you will get; for, searching the county over, but 

 two hundred bushels can be found, all raised by one man who made 

 a lucky hit. Everything else he had failed." 



Another man came with some celery in a sack. "I had to hide 

 this or you never would have got it," said he. " I had no idea I could 

 sell it, but every time I get in town my whole load is taken from me 

 by the first ones that see it. They tell me 1 could sell car loads of it 

 in St. Joe." Now the man don't know very well how to raise any- 

 thing else but celery. Every dozen stalks sell for from forty to fifty 

 ■cents. With a little direction and encouragement he has a fortune in 

 his power, only that making is so much easier than keeping money. 



An old lady who lives with her sixteen-year old boy on a small 

 bit of ground was making some nice presents to a comfortably estated 

 married daughter for her and her grand children. The daughter ex- 

 postulated, "Mother ! You connot afford to do this." "N-ever mind 

 about me. I have sold my onions well, and George has sold his ber- 

 ries. We are all. right. I sold twelve hundred dollars worth." These 

 are the things one likes to hear. They stand at the very foundation 

 of all the real strength and greatness of a nation. "The old woman 

 must have worked hard!" Possibly, but she knew enough to hire on 

 occasion. Do you know that there are men who would never dream 

 of running a saw mill without hiring, and yet will not hire help on a 

 160-acre farm ? Well, such men ought to run saw mills, not farms. 

 "The best fertilizer ever put on a farm is a big'rent," say English land- 

 lords, for then renters are forced to develop the power of every acre 

 -commensurably with the rent. Lord Brengham, speaking of North 

 British farmers in 1816, said the renter of a 400- acre farm there, leav- 



