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periment upon it, do with it and what you get from it as you 

 please, but keep a strict account with it, and from year to year, 

 see not only what you have learned of farming, but how stands 

 the matter of profit and loss. To say nothing of what an in- 

 centive this would be to effort, what a spur to youthful am- 

 bition, how better could the young man be taught prudence 

 and thrift, while at the same time he was gaining golden 

 knowledge of his art ? And thus from this one lot let the same 

 system be applied to all, to the whole farm, whenever he comes 

 to have one of his own. But I was referring to the subject in 

 a more limited view, to the accounts which a farmer should 

 keep of his pecuniary transactions — of his bargains, and pur- 

 chases, and sales, his dealings with the world. I feel that I 

 have a right to speak of this with some degree of confidence, 

 because it is a matter with which my own professional expe- 

 rience has made me somewhat familiar. I have known in- 

 stances, and they have not been infrequent, where a farmer, 

 forced to go into court, has been unable to prove an honest de- 

 mand, simply from his inability to produce an account-book 

 which would meet the easy requirements of the law, and who, 

 besides losing his case, and having to pay a heavy bill of costs 

 to his fraudulent debtor, has gone home mortified at the thought 

 that his neighbors would believe he was in the wrong and his 

 opponent in the right. The looseness which prevails in this 

 matter strikes every lawyer with astonishment. The usual 

 apology made is, that a farmer's dealings are mainly cash, and 

 that he has little occasion to be particular about his accounts. 

 This is comparatively true. But while a farmer is to be en- 

 couraged in never buying but for cash, there are times when in 

 selling he must accommodate his neighbor with credit. And 

 so, in this and other ways, it happens that there is not a week, 

 hardly a day in the year, in which there should not be some' 

 memorandum made, some charge, some credit, something in 

 the end involving dollars and cents. • It is no book-keeping by 

 double entry, no complicated system of accounts that is re- 

 quired. The law in this respect is liberal. An old barn door, 

 3 



