12 



done ; and so they go on, year after year, scattering their ener- 

 gies instead of concentrating them, a constant walking illus- 

 tration of the homely old maxim, that " a rolling stone gathers 

 no moss." 



But for another instance of the same kind. There was a 

 man in Marblehead who cultivated every year about fourteen 

 acres of onions. He made a business of it, devoted his time, 

 his thought and his energy to that crop as a specialty, raising, 

 on an average, about five hundred bushels per acre. He kept 

 the run of the crop in other sections, so as to be able to judge 

 of the price and how to take advantage of the market. Nearly 

 every year, when the crop was in a condition to admit of his 

 leaving, he would visit Wethersfield, or other sections where 

 the crop was largely cultivated, to learn the probable extent of 

 the yield. If it was likely to be large, he could hurry his crop 

 to market before it became glutted with onions ; if it was 

 likely to be small, he could hold over till spring, or till the 

 supply was exhausted, and then command his own price. With 

 six to eight thousand bushels, you see, he could afford to do 

 this, and he made a heap of money by it, while if he had only 

 a few hundred bushels, raised as a small part of a great mis- 

 cellaneous farm crop, it wouldn't pay. 



This same farmer made another specialty of squashes. He 

 built a squash room, with shelves arranged along the sides for 

 receiving squashes to ripen up, and a heating apparatus by 

 which he could regulate the temperature. Nearly every day, 

 after the squashes were stored there, he would pass through 

 this room, examining each one to see if any were beginning 

 to decay, and if they were, such specimens were hurried off 

 to market. The room being adapted expressly to preserve 

 squashes, the owner could keep them till the supply in the 

 market was exhausted, and then command his own price, and 

 so he made money on this crop. And this is so generally. If 

 a man makes a specialty of something, concentrates his thought 

 upon it, studies it till he is complete master of that one thing, 

 he does it better and makes more of it than if his attention 

 and his time are too much divided. 



Now the lesson which these illustrations ought to impress 

 upon us is, that good farming requires the condensation or 

 concentration of labor, rather than its diffusion. It puts the 



