1898.] ANNUAL REUNION. 1 (;9 



adbrd to pay twenty cents per thousand gallons. He found 

 that by an expenditure of about three thousand dollars he could 

 get a sup})ly of eight million gallons. The first year he had five 

 acres of strawberries, and the drought in the month of May cut 

 off' the strawberry crop, and on that five acres of strawberries 

 he cleared three thousand dollars more than his neijjhbors on 

 the same ground. The next year was a repetition of the same 

 experience. Thus you see the importance of using water, 

 having it to control through various agencies in order to make 

 good the deficiency of nature. Now the farmers and gardeners 

 of New England are not aware of the means which they have 

 at their command. They do not fully realize how easy it is for 

 them from a neighboring brook or pond or by making artificial 

 reservoirs and using the natural supply of water to obtain the 

 necessary amount for the successful raising of crops. I find 

 men raising a crop for ten dollars when they might raise one 

 for one hundred dollars. 



Some years ago, perhaps ten, I boarded during one summer 

 with a farmer in the southeastern part of New Hampshire. 

 The land sloped to the south. It was a light, warm, sandy, 

 loamy soil, and that man was raising milk on his farm. He 

 was keeping seven or eight cows, raising potatoes and corn, 

 and that was farming ! I observed his operations and took 

 notes of what his business might be. One evening we had a 

 colloquy. "My friend," said I, "as near as I can make out all 

 you get for labor is a pile of compost in your barn-yard. What 

 you get for your milk at the station is just equivalent to the 

 value of } our hay on the cart when you put it into the barn. 

 And so all of your trouble in piling that hay into the barn, 

 cleaning the stock and milking them, and the whole work and 

 burden of your life, is thrown away, and all you have to show 

 for it is a pile of compost in the corner of your barn-yard. Is 

 that a practical way to look at it? Is that a valuable equiva- 

 lent to your life's labor?" He did not know. He knew no 

 better life, for he had been brought up in the old school. 



A quarter of a njile away was a pasture. A little brook 

 came down through it. It started on a side-hill and I had been 



