Other Points in Drainage. 105 



would see the greatest results. Whatever excess of crop, you feel 

 you can surely charge to your draining, save the money when 

 you sell it and invest in more tiles. I know one young man (I 

 have his letter now before me) who drained a few acres himself, 

 and raised twenty-eight bushels wheat per acre, the first crop, 

 where twelve was all that could be grown before. But such 

 results will not always come so soon. With your regular help, at 

 odd spells, you can manage to lay the tiles bought with the excess 

 crop money, or perhaps you can hire help a few days. I have 

 worked, friends, days when not one farmer in fifty would be out, 

 at just such work, because I was determined to get a start some 

 way. After two or three years, more crops will bring more tiles, 

 and more tiles more crops, and more crops more tiles and labor, 

 until, first you know you can drain the last acre, and then you can 

 take the money to build a new house, or replace the old overcoat, 

 or send the good wife on a trip. It will go hard at first, but 

 easier and easier. You have watched a heavy freight train start 

 on an up grade. You think at first it can never make it, but 

 slowly and surely it gains and gathers headway until it glides 

 along almost without effort, as it seems to you. This is the only 

 way to improve your farm, that I dare advise, and you are just as 

 certain to conquer as that locomotive, and you will be more of a 

 man for having done it. 



Why, I remember when I was draining, one cold, nasty day, a 

 a poor farmer came along and stood with his overcoat on and head 

 drawn down in it, and his hands in his pockets. I knew just what 

 he was thinking about me. There isn't a foot of draining done on 

 his farm, and never will be, if he has to work for it as I did. But 

 I slept sound and good that night, and ate all I could get. We 

 enjoy things by contrast. Work in bad weather makes home and 

 its comforts wonderfully pleasant, for the short time given to it. 

 But then I had got to conquer any way. Times are going hard 

 with that old friend now, while they are getting easier and easier 

 with us as we get less able to push things with so much vim. 



I am told sometimes that the hired men will not work at tile 

 draining ; that they think that is not proper work to set them at. 

 I do not know how this is, for I never set any at work. I just take 

 my tools and go right along with them, and never had one that 

 objected in the least. I suspect some of them would if set at the 

 job alone. Then I try to show them how to do the work neatly 

 and skillfully, so as to make it easy for them and to interest them 

 in the result. There is a good deal in management. 



