FOURTEEN] CULTIVATION 
The every-day world, with a human soul in it, is 
a garden, and a weed patch is beautiful; but the 
glory of the world is that it can be improved, and 
we are here to think it out, and feel it out, and work 
it out. 
Intensive farming, which is the only farming that 
we are now considering, has the advantage that it 
involves the removal of all ugly waste spots. It 
cannot afford sloughs, brush piles, and old heaps of 
refuse — these are the very spots where the best 
crops can be raised. “There,” said a young 
farmer, “‘that nasty puddle is worth thirty dollars 
a year.” Then, going farther, he said, “That hor- 
rible barnyard should be reduced one half in size, 
and the rest of it drained. A row of twenty plum 
trees would grow in the cut-off part, each worth 
five dollars a year. ‘Then over those barns vines 
should be growing and bearing Wordens and Niaga- 
ras and Lindleys, worth thirty or forty dollars a year 
more.” Down a ravine, full of stones and broken 
crockery, he tramped with indignant steps. “A 
splendid place here,” he cried, “for strawberries or 
for gooseberries, or, if you prefer, it could be a 
valuable vineyard. Grow lilies in the rows with 
the grapes, and set down this plot for fifty dollars a 
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