Farming with a Pen 9 



My own acres, now more than doubling the net 

 production, show that my estimate of the room 

 for improvement was not wrong, and while some 

 of the neighbours follow close in the ascent, there 

 is hardly a man within many miles who has not 

 gained something considerable from my agrarian 

 gospel. There is seldom a fine day at home 

 without some time spent to show somebody how 

 to do something, and they often come long 

 distances to see how easy we have made the 

 " impossible." Though the gratuitous interpreta- 

 tions are always various and often vicious, the 

 motives of my excursion into agriculture are as I 

 confess them here, and after our fourteen years, 

 not one man can complain that I have once 

 behaved contrary to the purpose. I am assured, 

 and can believe, that the good I have done for 

 the people, in their work and in their lives, is 

 admitted even by those who are known to have 

 attempted to murder me : I am guilty of showing 

 that, to live by the land, the Irish must think ; 

 but, to their masters, thought is " sin," and the 

 mastery is complete for the present. 



From the start, I simply felt that I could help 

 the people, thought that if I could I ought, and 

 saw that the attempt must count on no reward 

 of any kind, not even the emptiest of verbal 

 gratitude. I was in a position to give something 

 for nothing, having no less left, and expecting only 

 the liberty to do right. It is well for me that I 

 expected little. On the whole, and up to this 

 date, my reward has been in falsehood, slander, 



