340 Mr. John Thrift. [July, 



r. loljit %^xih. 



Mr. John Thrift is a farmer. He has a farm of one hundred acres 

 which he bought some years ago, of a man who could not get a living 

 off of it, and hence wanted to sell out cheap and go West. People said, 

 when Mr. Thrift bought this worn-out, g')od-for-nothing farm, that he 

 was a fool. He was told that pennyroyal would not grow on it ; a goose 

 would starve to death with the range of a ten-acre lot. One of his new 

 neighbors, who was accounted a wag in those parts, said that the fences 

 had got discouraged, standing up for no purpose ; and that there was not 

 timber enough on the place to repair them; "however," he added, "it 

 don't matter much, for what need will John Thrift have of fences around 

 fields so poor, that cattle instinctively run nway from them ; a single 

 jackass would breed a famine with the whole farm to range upon." But 

 Mr. Thrift heeded not what his neigh! )ors said. He moved his family 

 on to his new, or rather, old farm, and went to work. But he went not 

 to work on the same plan practiced by his predecessor and by most of 

 his neighbor farmers. There was a streak of progress in his nature. 

 He had strong arms and was willing to use them ; he had a strong mind, 

 too, and he saw no reason why he should not use that also. Indeed, he 

 had used that when he had bought his farm ; for his knowledge and the 

 deductions of his reason told him then, in plain terms, that he was get- 

 ting what would turn out to be a prize. He looked to the "lay of the 

 land ; " he took a spade, and, turning up some of the soil, satisfied him- 

 self that it was all right, save and except the surface of five or six 

 inches, which had been exhausted of some of its native richness ; he 

 saw that a ditch in a certain place would relieve several acres of low 

 land of a superabundance of water, and that this same water could be 

 so husbanded as to irrigate several acres of other land that frequently 

 suffered from drouth ; he observed that a portion of the soil which was 

 clayey, would be made immediately productive by means of a subsoil 

 plow, and a few thousand draining-tiles properly laid ; while several acres 

 of sandy ridge would be greatly relieved of its barrenness by the application 

 of a large quantity of manure, which he saw around the dilapidated barn, 

 and of a pile of leached ashes, which a man near by had thrown out of 

 his ashery and counted worth nothing. At a glance he saw that the whole 

 farm could be well watered by means of a water-ram placed at the 

 spring, which gushed out of the side hill on one corner of the premises. 

 The bad condition of the fences and buildings did not escape his notice ; 



