242 MY FARM. 



into an exceedingly loose habit of thought in all that 

 regards his affairs. Notwithstanding his punctilious- 

 ness in moneyed details, and his sharpness at a bar- 

 gain, he has a more vague idea of his real where- 

 abouts in the world of profit and loss, than any man 

 of equal capital that you can find. If he has a little 

 pile in stocking-legs or in Savings that grows, it is 

 profit ; if he has a little debt at the grocer's or the 

 bank that groAvs, it is loss. 



There is not one in fifty who can tell with any- 

 thing approaching to accuracy, how much his grain 

 or roots cost him the bushel ; not one in fifty who 

 can show anything like a passable balance sheet of a 

 year's transactions. He may put down all the money 

 he receives in stumpy figures, and all the money he 

 pays out in other stumpy figures, and set his oldest 

 boy to the Christmas reckoning. But his rent, his 

 personal labor, the wear and tear, the waste, the con- 

 sumption, the unmarketed growth, assume only a 

 hazy indeterminate outline, within which the sum of 

 the stumpy figures is lost. Whether he is raising 

 corn at a price larger than the market one, or selling 

 potatoes for a third less than they cost him, is an 

 inquiry he never submits to the fatigue and precision 

 of accurate investigation. He thinks matters are 

 about so and so ; his oxen are worth about so much ; 

 his oats will turn about thirty bushels to the acre. 



