18 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 



each successive application of Plaster the plants took up the Lime 

 only, leaving all the residue to lie inert in the soil ; and so the 

 old farmer had for years been feeding his soil, at the rate of 

 twenty to thirty cents per bushel, with the requisite Lime brought 

 from a distance in the form of Piaster, while there was far better 

 Lime burned all around him, and for sale in abundance at six 

 cents a bushel ! The loss thus incurred may have averaged fifty 

 dollars per annum all for want of an AnalvV that might have 

 cost ten to twenty dollars. And there are tens of thousands to- 

 day farming just as blindly as did this old farmer. 



Can there be any rational wonder that farmers seldom grow 

 rich by such Farming ? How is a wise and judicious economy of 

 means to be attained if ignorance and waste are to reap the re- 

 wards properly due only to intelligence and frugality 1 If I were 

 to buy paper and other materials used in my business as care- 

 lessly and blindly as this old farmer bought manures and fertilized 

 his land, I could not continue to print newspapers for a single 

 year. Wiser, more prudent, more intelligent publishers, would 

 undersell and supplant me, and I must fail and be driven into 

 some vocation where ignorance, heedlessness and unthrift secure 

 the rewards designed by Providence for intelligence, industry and 

 economy. 



IV. But- let' us pause at that word Industry. " By Industry 

 we thrive," is an old saw, which is very well in it's place ; but the 

 truth contained in proverbs is so curtly expressed that it often 

 misleads more than it directs. Industry is indeed essential to 

 thrift, and farmers, like other men, often need to be reminded 

 of it. When I note one who is overwhelmed with " business," 

 which calls him away from home two or three days in each week, 

 and keeps him hanging about the tavern or store while his boys 

 are at play and his potatoes crying for the hoe, I know whither 

 that farmer is tending, and can guess about how long he will have 

 any land to mismanage. And I think that, in the average, farmers 

 waste more hours than mechanics. They have more idle time 

 not necessarily, but quite commonly so regarded through bad 

 weather, severe cold, too much wet, &c. than falls to the lot of 



