214 MY FARM. 



success in agriculture, as in other business pursuits. 

 This kind of enterprise is what farmers specially 

 lack ; and the lack is due to the secure tenure by 

 which they hold their property. The shopkeeper 

 who turns his capital three or four times in a year, 

 and who knows that -an old stock of goods will 

 involve heavy losses, is stimulated to constant 

 activity and watchfulness. The farmer, on the other 

 hand, inheriting his little patch of land, and feeling 

 reasonably sure of his corn and bacon, and none of 

 that incentive which attends risk, yields himself to a 

 stolid indifference, that overlays all his faculties. 

 Yet some of the Agricultural papers tell us with 

 pride, that bankruptcies among farmers are rare. 

 Pray why should they not be rare ? The man who 

 never mounts a ladder, will most surely never have a 

 fall from one. Dash, enterprise, spirit, wakefulness, 

 have their hazards, and always will ; but if a man 

 sleep, the worst that can befal him is only a bad 

 dream. This lethargy on the part of so many who 

 are content with their pork dinners and small spend, 

 ings, is very harmful to the Agricultural interests of 

 the country. Young America abhors sleepiness, and 

 does not gravitate, of choice, toward a pursuit which 

 seems to encourage it. The conclusion and the con- 

 viction have been, with earnest young men, that a 

 profession which did not stimulate to greater activity 



