152 HOW TO GET A FAKM, 



spected and appealed to by persons in every State of the 

 Union, he does not forget that it has been through much 

 tribulation that he has worked out this exceeding great 

 weight of glory. Mr. Johnston is a Scotchman, who came 

 to this country thirty-nine years ago, and purchased the 

 farm he now occupies on the easterly shore of Seneca Lake, 

 a short distance from Geneva. With the pertinacity of his 

 nation, he stayed where he first settled, through ill fortune 

 and prosperity, wisely concluding that by always bettering 

 his farm he would better himself, and make more money in 

 the long run than he could by shifting uneasily from place 

 to place in search of sudden wealth. He was poor enough 

 at the commencement ; but what did that matter to a fru 

 gal, industrious man, willing to live within his means, and 

 work hard to increase them ? And so with unflagging zeal 

 he has gone on from that day to this. 



&quot;His first purchase was 112 acres of land, well situated, 

 but said to be the poorest in the county. He knew better 

 than that, however, for although the previous tenant had all 

 but starved upon it, and the neighbors told him such would 

 be his own fate, he had seen poorer land forced to yield 

 large crops in the old country, and so he concluded to try 

 the chances for life or death. The soil was a heavy gravelly 

 clay, with a tenacious clay subsoil, a perfectly tight reser 

 voir for water, cold, hard-baked, and cropped down to about 

 the last gasp. The magician commenced his work. He 

 found in the barn-yard a great pile of manure, the accumu 

 lations of years, well rotted, black as ink, and as mellow 

 as an ash-heap. This he put on as much land as possible, 

 at the rate of seventy-jive loads to the acre, ploughed it in 

 deeply, sowed his grain, cleaned out the weeds as well as 

 he could, and the land on which he was to starve gave him 

 about twenty-five bushels of wheat per acre. The result 

 was, as usual, attributed to luck, and any thing but the real 



