44 My Little Farm 



I have grown great crops of many kinds, but my 

 half rood of heather is by far the most valuable 

 bit of the farm, though the total produce for ten 

 years of precious preservation would not make five 

 shillings an acre in the market. The heather 

 grows closer and closer, longer and longer, killing 

 out everything else ; and I am pleased, because I 

 feared that it might die in the shelter of the 

 plantations. This plot is the final proof as to 

 whether I am really a farmer or the most audacious 

 liar in Europe. Without the heather, nobody 

 could believe me about the reclamation. Even 

 with the heather, Mr. Russell cannot believe it, 

 and thus, through him, we have the authority of 

 the Agriculture Department exercised to dis- 

 courage the reclamation of the land, which is a 

 novel way of earning a salary from an Agriculture 

 Department, probably impossible in any country 

 but Ireland. 



I should be almost ashamed to admit how much 

 money I have made from my half rood of virgin 

 heather. When the liabilities were discharged for 

 possession here, I had not much ready cash, and 

 many a time in the past fourteen years have I been 

 rudely roused from my literary dreams by demands 

 for money ; but I had the heather plot always 

 there, surer than a milk cow, and more than twice 

 as prompt in yielding money. Time after time, 

 year after year, I " wrote up " my heather, this 

 aspect of it now, another next, each as " fresh " as 

 it could be made by the trick of the trade ; for 

 this editor in March, for the other in April, and 



