THE NEW EARTH 



living, to which he is bound by the chains of 

 debt. 



If he would only look a little deeper, if he 

 could only realize that it is no longer the old 

 world of his forebears but a new, vital, mar- 

 velously interesting earth, how easily might 

 all be changed, how might his interest be 

 heightened, and, in the newer light, how easily 

 may he break his chains and set himself up a 

 free man. Instead of the ancient earth, time- 

 worn and rapidly growing infertile, it is now a 

 rich, productive earth, adaptable to all needs; 

 not merely a thing to dig and plow and curse, 

 but a noble field, throbbing with life and 

 fraught with vast possibilities. 



But we need not too sharply lament the 

 ignorance of the farmer of the Old Earth, for 

 it is only within a generation or two that even 

 those who have studied it most closely have 

 begun to realize, — and even now but dimly, — 

 its character and its possibilities ; while to many 

 of the millions bred to the ways of the town it 

 is, in truth, far more deeply a terra incognita 

 than to the farmer of the ancient days. The 

 great German chemist Liebig in the century 

 just closed, recognizing from his vantage 



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