WHEKE TO FAKM. 27 



mechanics worth $1,000 to $3,000 each combine to 

 select (through chosen agents) and buy ten or twenty 

 thousand acres in some Southern State, embracing hill 

 and vale, timber and tillage, water-power and miner- 

 als, and divide it equitably among themselves, after 

 laying it out with roads, a park, a village-plat, sites 

 for churches, schools, &c., and I am confident that 

 they can thus make pleasant homes more cheaply and 

 speedily there than almost anywhere else. 



Good farming land, improved or unimproved, is 

 this day cheaper in the United States, all things con- 

 sidered, than in any other country cheaper than it 

 can long remain. So many are intent on short cuts 

 to riches that the soil is generally neglected, and may 

 be bought amazingly cheap in parts of Connecticut 

 as well as in Iowa or Nebraska. When I was last in 

 Illinois, I rode for some hours beside a gray-coated 

 farmer of some sixty years, who told me this : " I 

 came here thirty years ago, and took up, at $1 per 

 acre, a good tract of land, mainly in timber. I am 

 now selling off the timber at $100 per acre, reserv- 

 ing the land." That seems to me a good operation 

 not so quick as a corner in the stock-market, but 

 far safer. And, while I would advise no man to incur 

 debt, I say most earnestly to all who have means, 

 " Look out the place where you would prefer to live 

 and die ; take time to suit yourself thoroughly ; 

 choose it with reference to your means, your calling, 

 your expectations, and, if you can pay for it, Twy it. 

 Do not imagine that land is cheap in the West or 



