1882.] FARM LIFE. 289 



some paling, which relieved the green back ground with its coat of 

 white; woodpile and the pig's trough which had been the orna- 

 ments of the front yard, were banished. Even the old well-sweep 

 had surrendered to a modern pump and flaunting windmill ; in 

 pious wonder he viewed the scene, and then bent his footsteps to 

 the fields where he v/as wont to labor. But here, indeed, the 

 change was greatest of all. The sterile knolls where he remem- 

 bered to have fruitlessly urged even white beans to give reasona- 

 ble returns, were covered with verdure, or their burden of golden 

 grain glittered in the sunlight. The pasture fields where fennel 

 and sorrel had taken full possession to the exclusion of succulent 

 grasses were now thickly set in timothy, red-top, and clover, and 

 sleek, lusty cattle ruminated in the shade of vigorous trees, whose 

 branches gave little comfort to the small and scrawny herds of his 

 fathers. The meadows, where the swaths used to be little thicker 

 than the sunbeams that turned them into tough and wiry hay, 

 fairly groaned beneath the burden of rich and ripening grasses ; where 

 wheat had once refused to give back the seed the ripening cereal 

 gave token of rich returns. Indeed, all was changed as if touched 

 by a fairy's wand. But our pilgrim was not satisfied with figures 

 of speech nor flowery, flights of fancy. Gaunt poverty had been 

 driven from her primeval haunts, and new evidences of wealth 

 abounded. Where want had cut sharp lines in the faces of men,, 

 and in the forms of brutes, simple plenty was lost in absolute 

 abundance. A barren hard-pan, with the thin stratum of culti- 

 vated earth which it supported, had been changed into a rich and 

 friable soil. "What agency has been at work, he queried, to pro- 

 duce these remarkable results? have the elements been more pro- 

 pitious than of yore, or has the master-mind of man sought out 

 and applied the cause of so wonderful an effect ? As to all earn- 

 est questioning, so now to these queries did the answer come, 

 green manuring with plaster has done it. And what it has done 

 there it will do in hundreds of cases all over the land. 



The renovation of old farms is a question of time, forethought, and 

 experiment, not labor alone; but still labor is an essential element 

 in all farm management ; without it no great results are obtained. 

 And here let me say to every young farmer, when you awake in 

 the morning don't roll over, but roll out ; it will ditch every slough, 

 cut every bush, and make the farm shine. I do not wish it un- 

 derstood that we are to work every moment of our lives, by no 

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