SOIL CULTURE AND SOUL CULTURE. 53 



gality in his manner of life, his profits on the year's work are 

 small, when compared with the great incomes of some of our 

 successful merchants. When we think, however, that about 

 ninety-eight out of every hundred of our merchants are unsuc- 

 cessful, and reflect how large the balances are on the wrong- side 

 of their cash books every year, the farmer's small but tolerably 

 sure accumulations look very respectable. His accumulations 

 are, at least in the beginning, quite small. He must count his 

 pennies carefully, or there would be nothing left. And so he 

 naturally enough comes to count his pennies rather too carefully ; 

 falls into peimrious and miserly ways. I do not know that this 

 vice of parsimony is any more frequent among farmers than 

 among other people ; but it is a vice into which all people are 

 liable to fall whose gains are slow and difficult. Yet the most 

 generous men I have ever known have been farmers, and the 

 best illustration I ever heard of the profitableness of generosity, 

 was given me by a farmer. The story was this : Two brothers, 

 one of whom was penurious and poor and the other generous 

 and rich, met one day in the barn of one of them, when the 

 poor man said to the other, " How is it that you being free and 

 bountiful in your gifts, are growing rich so fast — while I, who 

 give away very little, am always poor ?" "I will show you 

 why," replied the other. They were standing by a barrel of 

 flax -seed, and the prosperous brother thrust his hand into the 

 seed and grasped in his closed hand as much as he could of the 

 smooth and shining kernels. On opening his hand hardly any 

 remained ; the seed had slipped through his fingers. " That is 

 your way," he said, " but this is my way ;" and in his open hand 

 he scooped up a liberal handful of the seed. Remember that, 

 good friends ! The hand that is open to give will hold more 

 than the hand that is clenched to keep. 



There is another and more serious vice into which these slow 

 gains may lead the farmer. That is the vice of dishonesty. He 

 is obliged to work so hard, and his profits are so small, that 

 when he comes to sell his grain, and there are ninety-seven or 

 ninety-eight bushels of oats to dispose of, he is greatly tempted to 

 strike the measure quick enough to make the pile hold out an even 

 hundred bushels. He is just as much tempted to do that as the 

 small trader is to slip his thumb a little in measuring the calico ; 

 and he is just about as likely to yield to the temptation. I heard 



