POTATO CULTURE. 83 



grocer insisted on my taking full pay and keeping the $50 as 

 a payment on the rest, so anxious was he to get them, then 

 did I laugh, friends, away down in my boots. It was sweet 

 to find that I wasn't so green and silly as some had thought. 



Another year, when I took my first load to a very particu- 

 lar grocer, but one w T ho would pay .well for an extra nice 

 thing, 30 bushels from 16 square rods, and there were bushels 

 of tubers that would weigh one pound each, and he gave a 

 low whistle and exclaimed, "If those are only as nice to eat 

 as they are to look at ! " and when he would not order any 

 more until he had tried them, and sent a mess home for din- 

 ner, you hardly see where my laugh came in, do you ? I will 

 tell you. When I got home and found the message which 

 had fl-'.shed past me, u Bring another load of those potatoes 

 as qivck as you can." I had nearly 2000 bushels of that 

 kind, and within three days they were all spoken for at my 

 price. 



When I met men drawing their potatoes back home, un- 

 even in stze, not the best quality, perhaps dirty-looking 

 things, unable to get a bid on them, at a time when we were 

 overworked, making two trips a day, 48 miles in all, to sup- 

 ply the demand, and these men would say, "Terry, you are 

 the luckiest man I ever knew," don't you suppose I laughed ? 

 And then a feeling of pity came over me for these poor 

 brothers; and as soon as they were out of hearing I said, 

 " There was no luck about it." Wasn't I right V 



From what 1 have written you will gather one advantage 

 of this way of cutting, this light seeding. If the seed has 

 not sprouted, few tubers in a hill ; and nearly all of them, if 

 they are not planted too close together, grow to a quite uni- 

 form large size. Of course, you understand this is with all 

 the necessary conditions of soil, etc., present. There are 

 almost no little ones. Some years we have not picked them 

 up at all, there were so few. It would not pay. If large po- 

 tatoes are worth $1.00 a bushel, or even 75 cents, we pick up 

 small ones, as they will then sell for enough to pay us. They 



