fourteen] cultivation 



i The every-day world, with a human soul in it, is 

 a garden, and a weed patch is beautiful; but the 

 glory of the world is that it can be improved, and 

 we are here to think it out, and feel it out, and work 

 it out. 



Intensive farming, which is the only farming that 

 we are now considering, has the advantage that it 

 involves the removal of all ugly waste spots. It 

 cannot afford sloughs, brush piles, and old heaps of 

 refuse — these are the very spots where the best 

 crops can be raised. "There," said a young 

 farmer, "that nasty puddle is worth thirty dollars 

 a year." Then, going farther, he said, *' That hor- 

 rible barnyard should be reduced one half in size, 

 and the rest of it drained. A row of twenty plum 

 trees would grow in the cut-off part, each worth 

 five dollars a year. Then over those barns vines 

 should be growing and bearing Wordens and Niaga- 

 ras and Lindleys, worth thirty or forty dollars a year 

 more." Down a ravine, full of stones and broken 

 crockery, he tramped with indignant steps. "A 

 splendid place here," he cried, "for strawberries or 

 for gooseberries, or, if you prefer, it could be a 

 valuable vineyard. Grow lilies in the rows with 

 the grapes, and set down this plot for fifty dollars a 



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