198 A Walk from 



These facts will measure the difference between the 

 amounts of capital invested in equal spaces of land in 

 England and America. It is as ten to one, assuming 

 a moderate average. Here a man would need 1,500, 

 or more than $7,000, to begin with on renting a farm 

 of 150 acres, in order to cultivate it successfully. In 

 New England, a man would think he began under 

 favorable auspices if he were able to enter upon the 

 occupancy of equal extent with 100, or about $500. 



On returning from the Fens, I passed the night and 

 most of the following day at Woodhurst, a village a 

 few miles north of St. Ive's, on the upland rising 

 gently from the valley of the Ouse. My host here 

 was a farmer owning the land he tilled, cultivating 

 it and the moral character and happiness of the little 

 community, in which he moved as a father, with an 

 equally generous heart and hand, and reaping a liberal 

 reward from both departments of his labor. He 

 took me over his fields and showed me his crops and 

 live stock, which were in excellent condition. Harvest- 

 ing had already commenced, and the reapers were at 

 work, men and women, cutting wheat and barley. 

 Few of them used sickles, but a curved knife, wider 

 than the sickle, of nearly the same shape, minus the 

 teeth. A man generally uses two of them. With the 

 one in his left hand he gathers in a good sweep of 



