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than babies ; carrots, the length of tall men ; with cab- 

 bages of sufficient size to take the place of a farmer's 

 family dinner table ! What equally wonderful stories, 

 and all true — they told, a quarter of a century ago, of 

 Ohio, and the West ! And what wheat crops, what great 

 healthy potatoes were raised by our fathers here in New 

 England formerly, which we can't raise now ; and that, 

 at an era too, when they despised all manure, and that it 

 was poison to the land. And where is it gone, this land, 

 that yielded of yore the rich harvests of wheat ? Over 

 the back of old roan, or the bay mare, our grandsires car- 

 ried it in bags. It has all gone to mill, years and years 

 ago. Out of it have been manufactured the heavy oxen, 

 the bones and the bodies of milk-giving cows ; from it the 

 strong stalwart forms of our fathers were well knit to- 

 gether, and the rounded, seemly shapes and glowing 

 cheeks of fair matrons and gentle maidens ! Gone to 

 mill, ground and ate up has the land been, long ago ! — 

 those elements of it, at least, strong for wheat, and pro- 

 ductive of the rich full ears of heavy grain ; and none of 

 it was ever carried back and replaced. And the question 

 arises, how shall we bring back this scattered soil ? 

 Plainly by ascertaining what these lost elements are, that 

 have thus been carried away and consumed, and return- 

 ing them or their like again to the soil. An old farm is 

 like an old wagon, or an old house. I don't know that 

 it is ever quite so good as when it first comes from the 

 maker's hand. 



But we have got the old house, and what shall we do 

 with it ? Let us examine it thoroughly, and see. It is 

 strongly built, and the sills are still good, but the old roof 

 may have to come off, and the clapboards be renewed, or 

 perhaps a good coat of paint is all that is needed, to make 

 it quite as spruce and genteel as the little light framed 

 thing there over the way. Some grand old houses do I 



