COMMON SENSE IN FARMING. 35 



of others who went to the same city, or spread themselves over 

 the same West, from the same village, and have failed or have 

 never been heard from. Ever since Noah saw the first bow in 

 the cloud, men have been ready to start in a race for the pot of 

 money which the legend has buried at its foot. And this 

 universal passion of the race, seems to be especially intensified 

 in every one that has a drop of Yankee blood in his veins. 



But if any one would but stop and look around him, and 

 see who are the independent men of our country, and how tliey 

 became so, they would find that it was. not by sudden and great 

 gai-ns, but by slow accumulations, by husbanding small means, 

 by squaring one's expenses to his income, and laying the founda- 

 tion for personal comfort and independence, little by little, as 

 the oak grows into the monarch of the forest. 



The truth is, the farmers of New England are far more inde- 

 pendent than they are willing to confess even to themselves. 

 They measure their condition by a false standard, and cheat 

 themselves into being unhappy when there is no need of it. If 

 you do not want a house as large as Solomon's Temple to live 

 in, what is the use of contrasts with the one you have got, or 

 what is just as unreasonable, why suffer your hearts to burn as 

 you look upon the Elizabethan Castle that the carpenter has 

 built for your neighbor. 



Farming has always seemed to me to be like theories in 

 political economy. You may take your slate and pencil, and sit 

 down and cipher yourself into a good income, or no income at 

 all — you can demonstrate beyond contradiction, that the country 

 is going directly to ruin, by too high or too low a tariff, just 

 according to the data you assume at the start. And yet in the 

 face of these calculations, the country goes on prospering, and 

 the farmer finds himself better off at the end of the year than 

 at the beginning, thougli ruined, beyond retrieve, by figures 

 which, as it is said, " do not lie." 



The best way for a farmer, as it seems to me, to get what a 

 sailor would call his " reckoning," would be to sit down some 

 snowy day in the winter, after his crops are gathered, and his 

 grain sold or ready for the market, his hired man paid off, his 

 store account balanced, his taxes and his doctor's bill settled, 

 and after setting aside enough to keep his children at school, 

 pay the printer for his newspaper, which no good farmer can do 



