OF TENNESSEE. 21 



opened to our interests, is a question often asked, but diffi- 

 cult to answer. 



A capitalist invests his money in United States bonds, 

 and without risk or labor contentedly cuts off his coupons 

 and enjoys his ease, while the merchant, with the same cap- 

 ital, is harrassed to death meeting bills, collecting accounts, 

 and watching with unceasing vigilance the turn of the 

 markets. So it is with farmers. A prudent farmer will 

 invest his farm-capital in grass, and he contentedly watches 

 the growth of the grass and the browsing of his cattle, 

 while his neighbor raising corn and cotton, is busy all the 

 year in cultivating his crops, watching his laborers, buying 

 mules, bacon and hay from his more prudent friend, and 

 when he counts his receipts at the end of the struggle, he 

 will find his neighbor has absorbed the greater part of 

 them. Not only this, but a stranger appears in the coun- 

 try desirous of investing in land, and while he would turn 

 from the cotton plantation at ten or twelve dollars per acre, 

 he would gladly invest in the grass farm at forty or fifty 

 dollars per acre. 



Land that will yield ten or fifteen dollars per acre clear 

 of the expense of cultivation, cannot be supposed, and is 

 not entitled, to the same value with land that will produce 

 thirty to forty dollars on the same breadth. And yet the 

 farmers of Tennessee hesitate to pursue this course. Dr. 

 Gulliver, in the midst of his extravaganzas, uttered a 

 truism that will go down to all ages when he said " the 

 man who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew 

 before, is a great public benefactor; " and when the citizens 

 of Tennessee look at their own interest in a proper light, 

 they will realize this truth, and then by acting on it, double 

 or even quadruple the intrinsic value of the lands of the 

 State. 



Grasses mean less labor, less worry, fewer hands, more 

 enjoyment, finer stock and more charming homes, and as a 

 consequence, happier families, more education, more taste 



