4A INDIAN COEN. 



ble, and if lie allows himself to rest in the confidence 

 of securing the former, he will be quite apt to lose 

 sight of the possibility of the latter. 



A small or moderate crop is nearly always a mat- 

 ter of tolerable certainty. But a large yield is encir- 

 cled by elements of doubt. It is to some extent a 

 question of sun and rain, of dew and frost, of tillage, 

 fertilizers, etc. It is a question, too, about which 

 squirrels and mice, and greedy birds, and myriads of 

 voracious insects, have each a word to say. 



Yet amid all these contingencies, and in the face 

 of all these enemies, the intelligent husbandman re- 

 poses undismayed upon his conscious resources, reflect- 

 ing that the same Providence that has strewed diffi- 

 culties along his path has also endowed him with in- 

 tellect and skill sufficient to counteract them. He 

 goes into the cornfield with a clear head, a resolute 

 purpose, and a strong faith, well provided with seed 

 and implements, and with his favorite agricultural 

 journal, and lo ! the formidable host of obstacles and 

 enemies vanish from his presence ; and where a slov- 

 enly, unthrifty man, who never reads and never grows 

 wiser, would possibly produce a crop of twenty or 

 thirty bushels per acre, he, the intelligent farmer, 

 raises one hundred bushels or more. 



