30 WHAT I KNOW OF FAE1ONG. 



enable him to pay off. In my opinion, half our farm- 

 ers now living would say, if questioned, that they 

 might better have waited longer before buying or 

 hiring a farm. 



When I was ten years old, my father took a job of 

 clearing off the mainly fallen and partially rotten 

 timber largely White Pine and Black Ash from 

 fifty acres of level and then swampy land ; and he 

 and his two boys gave most of the two ensuing years 

 (1821-2) to the rugged task. When it was finished, 

 1 a boy of twelve years could have taken just such 

 a tract of half-burned primitive forest as that was 

 when we took hold of it, and cleared it by an expen- 

 diture of seventy to eighty per cent, of the labor we 

 actually bestowed upon that. I had learned, in clear- 

 ing this, how to economize labor in any future under- 

 taking of the kind ; and so every one learns by ex- 

 perience who steadily observes and reflects. He 

 must have been a very good farmer at the start, or a 

 very poor one afterward, who cannot grow a thousand 

 bushels of grain much cheaper at thirty years of age 

 than he could at twenty. 



To every young man who has had no farming ex- 

 perience, or very little, yet who means to make farm- 

 ing his vocation, I say, Hire out, for the coming year, 

 to the very best farmer who will give you anything 

 like the value of your labor. Buy a very few choice 

 books, (if you have them not already,) which treat 

 of Geology, Chemistry, Botany, and the application 

 of their truths in Practical Agriculture ; give to these 



