36 VERMONT AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



are many defects of management which I shall include under 

 the general head of carelessness. The man who is careless in 

 one thing will be heedless in other things, and will be success- 

 ful in his business in proportion as he mends his ways and not 

 otherwise. 



I know a man who always turns his cattle into his pasture 

 in the spring before he mends his fences, and he never gets 

 around to mend them until after the cows get out of the pasture 

 and that man spends five times as much time every summer in 

 running after his cows, as would be needed to put the fences 

 in good condition before the cows were turned out. 



Speaking of fences, I consider it to be gross carelessness 

 to build a barbed wire fence without a good strong pole on top. 

 I am no friend of barbed wire and have never used it except 

 where every other strand was smooth. 



To return to my subject, it is careless to have a loose scut- 

 tle in a stable, or barn floor. By a loose scuttle I meau one 

 which is not hung on hinges, but is liable to be left out of place 

 or become misplaced by the foot of some animal, and result in 

 the loss of a cow or a horse. I have known of various instances 

 of this kind, and the loss is always laid to "bad luck." An- 

 other aid to bad luck is the storing of grain and feed in open 

 boxes, or in barrels without covers. Let your grain be kept in 

 a box or chest that cannot be upset, and have a lid hung on 

 hinges, and have it understood that that lid is to be kept shut 

 at all times, except when feeding or when putting in grain. 



And keep your stable doors shut, the year round. Provide 

 for ventilation, but not by way of the stable doors. One of my 

 neighbors has a meal room where he keeps his grain in open 

 boxes. The door to this meal room is usually open, and the 

 door from the barn floor to the stable is usually open. Since 

 my recollection he has lost two of his best cows, and spoiled a 

 third by their getting loose in the stable, going through two 

 doors, both of which ought to have been kept shut, and into the 

 meal box, which ought to have been covered up. All this was 

 laid to bad luck, and when the worms eat up his currants and 

 the bugs destroy his potatoes, or the crows pull his corn, or his 

 squashes freeze up, or his evaporator burns down, all this is 

 due to bad luck. All these things have happened to him and 

 others beside. He is worth less by at least $2,000 than he was 

 fifteen years ago, yet he has always worked hard, been strictly 

 temperate and not extravagant in any way. His lack of success 

 is due to carelessness and unbusinesslike methods. 



Carelessness and kerosene lanterns make a bad combina- 

 tion. You remember how the widow 0'L,eary set her lantern 

 down in the cow stall, and the cow kicked it over and burned 

 up a great part of the City of Chicago. Lanterns have caused 



