3 i6 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



an' tear comes on his head. It's all labor-savin' inventions 

 contraptions to save a feller hard work. It may be all right 

 to take life easy, but that ain't my notion of the way the 

 Lord intended us to live. I don't feel natural with a lot uv 

 machinery sawin' an' sowin' an' cultivatin' an' reapin' an' 

 huskin', an' marketing by gosh ! an' snortin' an' explodin' all 

 over the place. There ain't no satisfaction to me to do any- 

 thing if it's too blamed easy. I like to go up agin a hard 

 proposition an' beat it out. I don't want a machine depetized 

 to do my fightin' fu' me while I set back in a spring seat an' 

 see it done." 



But, after all, the mastery of machinery the transforma- 

 tion of the farm into a factory, with Nature serving now as 

 a partner to consult and now as a servant to command, forc- 

 ing from the soil a yield never before dreamed of and pre- 

 paring and getting it to market with a facility and celerity 

 never before approached, with all the acres plowed, planted 

 and tilled with a movement which permits no sense of mo- 

 notony, and all of these things done not so much by muscle 

 as by mind the old way of doing doubtless had its pleasures, 

 but the new gives a sense of mental superiority never before 

 found upon the farm, and the modern farmer would feel no 

 more pleasure in trudging after a pair of plow-handles day 

 after day than a general would feel in shouldering a musket 

 and marching with his men. And it is just this display of 

 mental power on the farm that has made American agricul- 

 ture the amazement of modern times, and is forcing a recogni- 

 tion that farm life offers as broad a mental scope as almost 

 any other occupation. Chemistry, biology, microscopy, en- 

 gineering, bookkeeping these and other accomplishments have 

 their place on the modern farm, and the wonderful flexibility 



