FORAGE CROPS IN NEW ENGLAND. 181 



profit on it, " Why," said he, " you have not got my profit 

 within twelve dollars to the acre." Said I, "How is that?" 

 — " Why," said he, " you have only given me credit for eight 

 dollars a ton for the straw, and I get twenty dollars a ton for 

 every ton of straw I take down to Winchendon, where they 

 use it to pack tubs and pails." I went home feeling a little 

 more encouraged about Massachusetts agriculture, although 

 on a small scale. I had hardly got into my library, when I 

 saw an account of the productions of the great Dalrymple 

 Farm in Dakota. They had twenty bushels of wheat to the 

 acre on the virgin soil of Dakota; and, when they got it 

 to Buffalo, it netted them almost a dollar a bushel: I 

 was thankful that I lived in a country, where, if we could 

 not get at least forty dollars net to the acre, we should feel 

 it was poor business. My neighbor up in Royalston was get- 

 ting more money for the wastage of his crop than they were 

 getting for the whole production of an acre of land in Da- 

 kota. I thought, furthermore, of this great Dalrymple 

 Farm forty-five miles long, or so, without a schoolhouse 

 within a thousand miles of it, cultivated, — wwcultivated I 

 mean, — cropped, or, rather, robbed, by a lot of savages ; for 

 we know perfectly well that men living without homes or 

 families, without any women in the whole country to keep 

 them straight, are no better than savages. I don't suppose 

 there has been a clean shirt or a fine-toothed comb there 

 within a year. 



But to come to the matter of walls : I bought a neighboring 

 strip of land this year, partly because it was good land, and 

 partly because there was a lot of tumble-down wall between 

 me and the property. Then the question was, how to get rid 

 of it. I put it in the ground. The way to do it — the way I 

 would do it — is to contract with somebody to dig a ditch three 

 feet and a half deep and three feet and a half wide, and then 

 put the wall into it, setting the larger stones together, back- 

 ing them with the next largest ones, and then throwing the 

 small ones in to within about a foot and a half of the top. I 

 think I filled my ditch to within a foot of the top. I did not 

 dig it quite deep enough. I would rather have the stones 

 eighteen inches under ground. You can contract with 

 smart men to dig such a ditch as that of mine for about a 

 dollar and a half a rod ; and putting the stone in ought 



