AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
77 
plements ? To-day, we saw a plow standing in 
the furrow, and yesterday one thrown up by the 
side of the fence where the Fall plowing ended. 
Last Fall, we saw cultivators and horse-rakes 
dragged up into the corner of a field among the 
bushes. Sometimes, the expensive horse-power, 
instead of being carefully housed, is left out in 
all weathers, from one thrashing season to 
another. Implements so used, seldom get their 
iron-work oiled to prevent rust, or their wood¬ 
work painted to prevent rot. It is the testimo¬ 
ny of all good farmers, that the time and money 
spent in painting their tools, is more than repaid 
in their increased durability. There are very 
few farmers who can afford to have such large 
holes in their pockets as this carelessness makes. 
One must be either very rich or be making mon¬ 
ey very fast to be able to support such extrava¬ 
gance. If it be true, as it is often said, that farm¬ 
ing, as a general rule, does not yield more than 
five per cent on the capital invested, we do not 
see how any body can afford such expensive 
habits. And besides, such a spendthrift style of 
living exerts a bad influence on one’s family and 
on the whole neighborhood in which he lives. 
Blinks from a Lantern — XXIX. 
VISITS RUNOUT ROGERS. 
Not a dozen miles from Higgin’s Rest (de¬ 
scribed in the Agricultwist last year), lies the 
farm of Runout Rogers, or what was his farm, 
before he sold it, for he is to vacate on 
the first day of April, 1862, according to the 
terms of sale. Just what his mother was think¬ 
ing of when she named him, I am not able to 
say. It is not a scripture nor classic name, or 
one belonging to the family. He was the young¬ 
est child in the family, perhaps seen to be the 
youngest and last from his birth, and on that 
account named thus, according to a custom 
that prevailed in the early history of this coun¬ 
try, of naming children from some circumstance 
attending their birth or infancy. At any rate, the 
name was appropriate and prophetic, for he has 
run out every thing left him by his father, and 
pretty much all that he has earned, so that at 
the age of fifty years, when a man ought to have 
a competence and to be looking forward to a 
comfortable old age, he is obliged to sell the 
homestead to pay his debts and square up with 
the world. When this little job is attended to, 
he will not be worth a red cent. He was left at 
the age of twenty three with a fine dairy farm 
of two hundred and sixty acres, with no incum¬ 
brance upon it except a debt of five hun¬ 
dred dollars due to a married sister, who had 
not received her portion by that amount. It was 
the homestead of the family, all tfie buildings 
were in good repair, and the land in good heart, 
capable of keeping thirty cows, with all the oth¬ 
er stock needed upon a dairy farm. It was 
judged to be worth, at the time of his father’s 
death, ten thousand dollars. He had made 
money upon the farm, paid for it and the stock, 
and left, at the time of his death, an estate worth 
twenty five thousand dollars, which made a rich 
man among farmers in the last generation. 
I was drawn to the place by a sale of cattle, 
the last remnant of the stock—thirteen cows, 
a yoke of oxen, and horse, being all that 
the farm is now capable of keeping. The sale 
was hastened on account of the short crop of 
hay, and the well founded apprehension that 
the crows might forestall a sale if it was put off 
until Spring, when such sales usually happen. 
The place has the neglected air of a slipshod 
farmer, where no repairs had been made for 
twenty years, beyond those which necessity 
compelled. Shingles will wear out, and paint 
will grow dingy, and fences become dilapidated 
in that time. The mortar had rattled out of the 
chimney, and the dozen displaced bricks from 
the top proclaimed alike the passage of time, 
and the breach that was made in the fortunes 
of the owner. The house had, originally, been 
painted red, and then white, in the last days of 
the elder Rogers. It had been innocent of oil 
and white lead ever since, and the red and 
white appeared in about equal proportions, ex¬ 
cept where the weather had effaced all traces of 
paint. Here and there a clapboard had entirely 
disappeared, and occasionally one hung by a 
single nail, rattling doleful music in the winter 
wind. The bars were generally down about 
the premises, and the gates unhinged. Many 
of the bar posts had been split and bound up 
temporarily with white birch withes. No walls 
had been re-set in the days of the present owner, 
and the foundations were badly hove with the 
frost, and the tops were full of gaps. The barn 
had no cellar, and no sheds; the practice of the 
former owner having been to winter the most 
of his cattle at the stack yard—a practice that 
the son had most faithfully followed. The cat¬ 
tle had been gathered in the yard for the sale, 
and presented a very hirsute appearance. They 
were exceedingly thin in flesh, the rib-bones 
prominent, and the back arched, probably from 
the habit of drawing up into the smallest possi¬ 
ble compass during the keen winter blasts. 
“What makes your cattle so fat Mr. Rogers ?” I 
asked courteously,to draw out his views on stock. 
“ The Fall feed was rather better than com¬ 
mon, and as I had not hay enough to keep them 
through the Winter, I intended to give them 
all they could eat, to get them ready to sell.” 
“And how long have they had full feed?” 
“Well, I guess about a week. I should have 
begun a little earlier but I did not calculate to 
have the sale so early. Hay was so high that 
some of my creditors thought it would be worth 
more to sell now than to feed out this Winter.” 
“ So you are in debt Mr. Rogers ?” 
“ I am in nothing else,” he replied sorrowfully, 
“ and never have been. You see I was in debt 
five hundred dollars when I begun, five and 
twenty years ago. But I had a large farm, and 
a good one, and it used to bring in crops and 
produce worth fifteen hundred dollars a year, 
so that I had enough of every thing, and did not 
pay any particular attention to the debt. I could 
have paid it then easy enough, in two or three 
years, but I let it run without paying the inter¬ 
est. Somehow the farm did not produce as it 
used to when father owned it, though I did 
every thing about as he did only I did not make 
so much manure, as I always thought it cost 
more than it came to, to cart dirt into the barn 
yard, and then cart it out again. After a few 
years I found I did not bring the year around 
without getting in debt, and I had to hire money 
to pay up my store bills. The seasons seemed 
to change, the Springs were backward, and the 
frost come early in Autumn, killing the corn 
and spoiling the after feed, and I have had to 
reduce my stock and get in debt, until every 
thing is mortgaged, and I have now had to sell 
out entirely to get square with the world. Don’t 
you think the land is running out round here?” 
“ I rather think men have run out.” I re¬ 
plied, bringing the glare of my lantern full in 
the face of Mr. Rogers. The man looked blank, 
probably not half comprehending my meaning. 
But here it is—the same old story over again— 
the soil ruined for the want of brains to till it. 
You talk a great deal in the modem age about 
improved implements of husbandry and im¬ 
proved tillage. The greatest want of all is im¬ 
proved men. A man in the place of Runout 
Rogers would have kept this old homestead im¬ 
proving, so that it would support a hundred 
head of cattle. The soil has run out for want 
of a man to till it. 
If I might trace the process by which he has 
lost his farm, I should say his first error was that 
he has paid no particular attention to his busi¬ 
ness. Farming is as much a business as buying 
and selling merchandize. The merchant that 
never takes account of stock and balances his 
books to see how he stands, soon fails. Mr. 
Rogers never did this, and so had no reason to 
suspect he was losing ground until half the val¬ 
ue of his farm was eaten up with debts. 
Then he has paid no attention to manure 
making, which is the sheet anchor of good farm¬ 
ing every where. With a stock of thirty cows 
when he took possession of the farm, he never 
made over a hundred loads, and it has been 
growing less ever since. He had all the facili¬ 
ties for making six hundred loads a year, and 
only lacked the enterprise to do it. There is a 
muck bed of seven acres, so deep that no bot¬ 
tom has ever been found, within a quarter of a 
mile of his barn. 
Again, he has sold grain and hay instead of 
feeding it out upon the farm, thus compelling a 
reduction of stock and smaller sales of butter 
and cheese, and of other animal products. His 
stock have had no shelter in Winter, thus cost¬ 
ing him ten dollars a head extra for feed, and 
diminishing their product of milk during the 
Summer. His fences have not been kept in re¬ 
pair, and he has lost some of his crops every 
year by unruly cattle. The result has been, a 
running out process all round—less grass in the 
pastures, less hay in the meadow, less stock in 
the yard, and fewer pigs in the sty, until a 
sheriff’s sale closes the scene. Is there not a 
moral in the life of Runout Rogers ? 
A Cheap, Strong Wind Mill. 
There are many kinds of half-hard labor to be 
done upon the farm, more fatiguing from their 
constancy, than their intensity, for which some 
cheap power is wanted. A few of these opera¬ 
tions are : churning, washing clothes, grinding 
apples for cider, mashing grapes, currants, and 
blackberries for wine, sawing wood, cutting 
hay, straw, and roots, shelling corn, etc. These 
are usually performed by hand labor, but it is 
tiresome to continue them steadily, and we see 
no reason why a good, cheap wind power may 
not be constructed, which shall take the place 
of manual labor. The power may be light, and 
even portable. It should be self-regulating, 
cheap, simple, and very strong in its ability to 
resist high winds and rough usage. Why such 
a mill is not in common use, is a question we 
refer to farmers of mechanical turn of mind, 
whose name is legion. We know of no such mill. 
