MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



There is not one in fifty who can tell with 

 anything approaching to accuracy, how much 

 his grain or roots cost him the bushel ; not one 

 in fifty who can show anything like a passable 

 balance sheet of a year's transactions. He may 

 put down all the money he receives in stumpy 

 figures, and all the money he pays out in other 

 stumpy figures, and set his oldest boy to the 

 Christmas reckoning. But his rent, his per- 

 sonal labor, the wear and tear, the waste, the 

 consumption, the unmarketed growth, assume 

 only a hazy indeterminate outline, within which 

 the sum of the stumpy figures is lost. Whether 

 he is raising corn at a price larger than the 

 market one, or selling potatoes for a third less 

 than they cost him, is an inquiry he never sub- 

 mits to the fatigue and precision of accurate 

 investigation. He thinks matters are about so 

 and so; his oxen are worth about so much; his 

 oats will turn about thirty bushels to the acre. 

 Nay, he carries this looseness of language into 

 matters of positive knowledge; the straightest 

 stick of timber in the world is only about 

 straight, and the tricky politicians are about as 

 dishonest as they well can be. 



Suppose we try him upon his corn crop; we 

 submit that it looks a little yellow. 



"Waal— yes, kind o' yaller; 't ain't fairly 



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