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THE DIVERSIFIED FARM. 



DRY IN SOUTH DAKOTA. 

 Recent news from South Dakota would 

 indicate that the serious drought experi- 

 enced there has not caused the settlers to 

 lose courage. The Huroni'e says: 



"It is dry in South Dakota. There is 

 no use denying it. A long unprecedented 

 drought has affected the entire north- 

 west, and South Dakota has not escaped. 

 But see how she stands up under it! 

 What other country could do it? A 

 drought like this in Egypt would mean 

 famine and appeals for help to keep peo- 

 ple from starvation. But in South Dako- 

 ta the people go right along eating three 

 spuare meals a day and four on Sundays. 

 They don't give up or cry out, but with 

 the blown in the bottle American grit go 

 right along just as though the water was 

 a foot deep and the crops three feet high. 

 It's the only country iu the world that 

 can stand floods and droughts and get 

 rich with either or nourish without them. 

 South Dakota will come out all right. 

 The year is not ended and the clouds 

 havn't all passed by. One of these days 

 a bunch of thunder heads will come up in 

 the east, the lightning will flash and the 

 thunder roll, and the rain pour down in 

 torrents, soaking things to a finish and 

 then these fields that today look so brown 

 will take on a new life, the prairie will 

 send forth its grasses and the harvest will 

 come on all right, the hay crop will be up 

 ' to the average, the cattle fill continue to 

 fatten, the flocks will increase and we 

 shall forget all about the drought of May 

 and June. One drought can't hurt us 

 permanently, one failure can't put us out 

 of the ring. We are here to stay and 

 prosper. It would seem better if we 

 could call on the rains to fall and the 



winds to cease just as AVC desire, but a 

 wiser hand than ours has a finger on the 

 button and knows better than we do what 

 we want and what is for our good. This 

 is His world and we are His people, and 

 it becomes us to go right along working, 

 hoping, praying and trusting. Not one 

 sparrow falls without His knowledge, and 

 this drought in the end will have some 

 good in it. Let us wait and trust "the har- 

 vest in His hands." 



VALUE OF DRAINAGE. 

 "We recollect," says the Genesee Far- 

 mer, "walking through a magnificent field 

 of corn on the thoroughly underdrained 

 farm of our friend, John Johnson. One of 

 the underdrains was choked up and there 

 the crop was a failure. Corn delights in 

 a loose, dry warm soil. If it is surcharged 

 with water, all the sunshine of our hottest 

 summers cannot make it warm, and all the 

 manure that can be put on it will not make 

 the corn yeild a maximum crop. In pass- 

 ing along the various railroads, we have 

 often felt sad to see thousands of acres 

 of land planted to corn, which, by a little 

 underdraiuing, would have produced mag- 

 nificent crops of this grandest cereals, but 

 which presented a miserable spectacle of 

 yellow, sickly, stunted, half-starved plants 

 struggling for very life. We have ever 

 been willing to apologize for the short- 

 comings of American farmers We know 

 the difficulities under which many of them 

 labor. We do not believe them to be, as 

 a whole, intelligent and enterprising. But 

 these sickly cornfields are well calculated 

 to create a very different impression. We 

 have frequently to repeat the German 

 proverb, To know is not to be- able. These 

 farmers know how to raise good corn, but 



