310 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



In the foregoing essays, I have sought to establish 

 the following propositions : 



1. That good farming is and must ever be a paying 

 business, subject, like all others, to mischances and 

 pull-backs, and to the general law that the struggle 

 up from nothing to something is ever an arduous 

 and almost always a slow process. In the few in- 

 stances where wealth and distinction have been 

 swiftly won, they have rarely proved abiding. There 

 are pursuits wherein success is more envied and 

 dazzling than in Agriculture ; but there is none 

 wherein efficiency and frugality are more certain to 

 secure comfort and competence. 



2. Though the poor man must often go slowly, 

 where wealth may attain perfection at a bound, and 

 though he may sometimes seem compelled to till 

 fields not half so amply fertilized as they should be, 

 it is nevertheless inflexibly true that bounteous crops 

 are grown at a profit, while half and quarter crops 

 are produced at a loss. A rich man may afford to 

 grow poor crops, because he can afford to lose by his 

 year's farming, while the poor man cannot. He 

 ought, therefore, to till no more acres than he can 

 bring into good condition to sow no seed, plow no 

 field, where he is not justified in expecting a good 

 crop. Better five acres amply fertilized and thor- 

 oughly tilled than twenty acres which can at best make 

 but a meager return, and which a dry or a wet sea- 

 son must doom to partial if not absolute failure. 



3. In choosing a location, the farmer should resolve 



