6 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 



of them to the West. Here, on your deep, virgin soils, they 

 renew their round of exercises in false husbandry, wasting their 

 manures because " this land is rich enough," and exhausting their 

 soils by one grain-crop after another, until they run down their 

 capacity from thirty bushels per acre of Wheat to ten of Corn or 

 five of Rye, when they will be off again for Iowa, Missouri or 

 Oregon. When they shall have got so far West as to find land 

 that doesn't need nor reward fertilizing, and will not be worn 

 out by their mode of farming, I trust they will come to a full 

 stop and send for all their relations. 



Let me be rightly understood : I do not condemn a man for 

 owning more land, in a new country, where land is cheap, than 

 he is now able or willing to cultivate. I know perfectly well that 

 the system of thorough culture that succeeds so admirably in 

 Belgium is not yet adapted to Indiana. Where good fenced pas- 

 ture may be bought for eight or ten dollars per acre, you cannot 

 afford to keep up your cattle and cut all their food, though that 

 is excellent policy in its place. It insures the keeping of a much 

 larger stock on a given area, beside enriching the land far more 

 rapidly. But it requires vastly more labor, and where a week's 

 work is worth an acre of arable land, it won't pay. What I in- 

 sist on is simply this : Land worth cultivating AT ALL is worth 

 cultivating WELL. Almost half the soil in my section never ought 

 to feel the touch of plow-iron, unless for the purpose of striking 

 fire on some of its abundant rocks. Such land should be kept 

 covered from too particular observation by growth after growth 

 of wood, giving variety and freshness to the landscape, and per- 

 sistence, if not stability, to the streams. But wherever an acre 

 is broken up. it should be with a fixed resolve to extract a good 

 crop from it, and to use all the means requisite to that end. A 

 field of spindling yellow corn, or stunted, straggling oats, or blos- 

 soming buckwheat that seems to have been compassionately sown 

 tor the accommodation of broken-winged bumble-bees, is a pal- 

 pable impeachment of the capacity of its owner to manage land 

 at all. If it can do no better than this, he ought never to have 

 broken it up. If he will do such a stupid thing, he ought at least 

 to keep his folly out of sight from the public highway. 



