46 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



PORTRAIT OF AN ANTI-BOOK-FARMER. 



WHENEVER our anti-book-farmers can show us better 

 crops at a less expense, better flocks, and better forms, and 

 better owners on them, than book-farmers can, we shall 

 become converts to their doctrines. But, as yet, we cannot 

 see how intelligence in a farmer, should injure his crops. 

 Nor what difference it makes whether a farmer gets his 

 ideas from a sheet of paper, or from a neighbor's mouth, or 

 from his own experience, so that he only gets good, practi- 

 cal, sound ideas. A farmer never objects to receive politi- 

 cal information from newspapers ; he is quite willing to 

 learn the state of markets from newspapers, and as willing 

 to gain religious notions from reading, and historical know- 

 ledge, and all sorts of information except that which relates 

 to his business. He will go over and hear a neighbor tell 

 how he prepares his wheat-lands, how he selects and puts 

 in his seed, how he deals with his grounds in spring, in har- 

 vest and after harvest-time; but if that neighbor should 

 write it all down carefully and put it into paper, it's all 

 poison ! it's book-farming ! 



" Strange such a difference there should be 

 'Twixt tweedledum, and tweedledee." 



If I raise a head of lettuce surpassing all that has been 

 seen hereabouts, every good farmer that loves a salad would 

 send for a little seed, and ask, as he took it, " How do you 

 contrive to raise such monstrous heads? you must have 

 some secret about it." But if my way were written down 

 and printed, he would not touch it. " Poh, it's bookish !" 



Now let us inquire hi what States land is the best man- 

 aged, yields the most with the least cost, where are the 

 sheep, the best cattle, the best hogs, the best wheat ? 

 It will be found to be in those States having the most agri- 

 cultural societies and the most widely-disseminated agricul- 

 tural papers, 



