CROPS AND PROFITS. 197 



<: To be sure, you're quite right ; " and I think he 

 admitted the observation, as many city people incline 

 to, as a new idea. " But," he added, with an awkward 

 inquisitiveness, " Do you ever get any money back ? " 

 My friend was not a reader of the Agricultural 

 Journals, or he could not have failed to notice the 

 pertinacity with which the profitableness of farming 

 is urged and re-urged. Indeed, with all considera- 

 tion for the calling, I think it is somewhat too per- 

 sistently pressed. It suggests rather too strongly 

 the urgence of the recruiting sergeant, in setting 

 forth the profitableness of soldiering. I do not 

 observe that army contractors magnify the gains of 

 their craft very noisily. The hens that lay golden 

 eggs never cackle ; at least, I never heard them. 



The question of my friend remains however, 



" Do you ever get any money back, eh ? " 

 What an odious particularity many of these city 

 people have ! What a crucial test they bring to the 

 delightful suroundings of a country home ! Have 

 they no admiration for such stretch of fields, such 

 herds, and the shrubberies, on whose skirts the flowers 

 are gleaming? Somebody has suggested that the 

 forbidden fruit with which the Devil tempted Eve, 

 and which Eve plucked to the sorrow of her race, 

 was money. A tree whose fruit carries knowledge 

 of good and evil, is surely not an inapt figure of 



