FINDING THE PLACE 31 



vided they do not go out of call. The doctor, with 

 his telephone and automobile, can live one mile 

 farther from his patients without injury, and as for 

 pastoral calls, most of them had better be made over 

 the wires. The minister can do no better thing than 

 invite his hearers to a walk and a talk in the gardens 

 and fields as his Master did. 



If you buy an old or deserted homestead, consider 

 the reason for its being on the market. Is it wind- 

 swept? Was the soil exhausted by bad cultivation? 

 Or, on the other hand, are there some fine old orchard 

 trees that can be rehabilitated? Can the buildings 

 be renovated for use, at least temporarily? Are 

 there great masses of manure and fertilizers of other 

 sorts that can be immediately put to use ? Are there 

 shrubs and plants and plum trees and cherry trees 

 out of which one may begin a small fruit garden? 



Very frequently around these old places, which look 

 very rubbishy, you will find quite a mine of wealth. 

 In fact, you may set this down as a certainty, that 

 the oldest and most neglected of these deserted farms 

 are very far from being worn out or poverty stricken. 

 The owners did not know what they held, or in some 

 way were not up to date in land tillage. Connecti- 

 cut is now growing five bushels of wheat to the acre 

 more than Minnesota. I have known a man to live 

 for twenty years over a marl bed and not know it. 

 The new farming is the find-out farming, and it is 

 putting new valuations everywhere. 



Other things being somewhere near equal, buy 



