THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



or in your bank account — all of which is simply 

 saying that thin, leachy land will not bear good 

 crops, and unless a man has the real farming stuff 

 in him, his farm quickly shows it. 



My neighbor makes smooth the way of the plough 

 and of the mower. Last summer I saw him take 

 enough stones and rocks from a three-acre field to 

 build quite a fortress; and land whose slumbers had 

 never been disturbed with the plough was soon knee- 

 high with Hungarian grass. How one likes to see a 

 permanent betterment of the land like that! — piles 

 of renegade stone and rock. It is such things that 

 make the country richer. If all New England and 

 New York had had such drastic treatment years 

 ago, the blight of discouraged farming never would 

 have fallen upon them, and the prairie States would 

 not have ho far distanced the granite States. A 

 granite soil should grow a better crop of men than 

 the silt of lake or river-bottom, though it yields less 

 com to the acre. 



The prairie makes a strong appeal to a man's 

 indolence and cupidity; it is a place where he can 

 sit at ease and let his team do most of his work. But 

 I much doubt whether the Western farms ever will 

 lay the strong hands upon their possessors that our 

 more varied and picturesque Eastern farms lay. 

 Every field in these farms has a character of its 

 own, and the farms differ from one another as much 

 as the people do. An Eastern farm is the place for 

 36 



