292 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



right men can still make money by farming this side 

 of the Susquehanna and the Genesee ; and I would 

 gladly incite some thousands more of them to try. 



XLIX. 



LARGE AND SMALL FARMS. 



THERE is fascination for most minds in naked mag- 

 nitude. The young colonel, who can hardly handle 

 a brigade effectively in battle, would like of all things 

 to command a great army; and the tiller of fifty 

 rugged acres has his ravishing dreams of the delights 

 inherent in a great Western farm, with its square 

 miles of corn-fields, and its thousands of cattle. Each 

 of them is partly right and partly wrong. 



There are generals capable of commanding 100,000 

 men. Napoleon says there were two such in his day 

 himself and another : and these generally find the 

 work they are fit for, without special effort or aspira- 

 tion. So there are men, each of whom can really 

 farm a township, not merely let a herd of cattle 

 roam over it unfed and unsheltered, living and d} r ing 

 as may chance : the owners expecting to grow rich 

 by their natural increase. This ranching is not 

 properly farming at all, but a very different and far 

 ruder art. I judge that the fanners who can really 



