CIRCUIT OF THE SUMMER HILLS 



fathers or grandfathers got two or three; and whose 

 plaint always is that farming does not pay. What 

 is the matter with our rural population? Has all the 

 good farming blood gone West, and do only the 

 dregs of it remain? 



It is the man who makes the farm, as truly as it 

 is the man who makes any other business; it is the 

 man behind the plough, as truly as it is the man 

 behind the gun, that wins the battle. A half-heart 

 never won a whole sheaf yet. The average farmer 

 has deteriorated. He may know more, but he does 

 less, than his father. He is like the second or third 

 steeping of the tea. Did the original settlers and 

 improvers of the farms, and the generations that 

 followed them, leave all their virtue and grip in the 

 soil? It is certainly true that in my section the last 

 two generations have lived off the capital of labor 

 and brains which their ancestors put into the land; 

 only here and there has a man added anything, only 

 here and there is a farmer who does not wish he 

 had some other business. If such men had that 

 other business, they would reap the same poor 

 results. In the long run, you cannot reap where you 

 have not sown, and the only seed you can sow, in 

 any business that yields tenfold, is yourself your 

 own wit, your own industry. Unless you plant your 

 heart with your corn, it will mostly go to suckers; 

 unless you strike your own roots into the subsoil of 

 your lands, it will not bear fruit in your character, 

 35 



