[ ,•*- - 
^Try h 
PRICE, FIVE CENTS 
$ 1.00 PER YEAR. 
NEW YORK, JANUARY 7, 1893 
VOL. LII. No. 
0 
A TUFTED TURKEY. 
What means the bunch of feathers on the head of 
the turkey, shown at Fig. 1 ? It is probably a freak, 
but quite a strange one. So far as I can learn nothing 
like it has ever been seen before. The bird, shown in 
the picture, was exhibited at the Dryden town fair, 
and was a center of attraction. “ Well, now ! I never 
get more than SI,500 a year out of his farm must be 
a very poor farmer. But Mr. Grundy’s man was not a 
farmer ; that is, he was not in love with his vocation. 
He simply robbed a piece of land to get some money 
on which to set up as curbstone broker. Is such a life 
worth the living ? 
Why, I know plenty of men on farms who are living 
why farmers shouldn’t do so than why any other man 
should, and the man who stints his body and mind to 
pile up money at interest, when he should keep it 
actively employed in his business, is simply a miser and 
not a farmer. The character Mr. Grundy describes 
evidently has had no children, and it is well that it is 
so, for children raised with such ideas, and trained to 
saw a wild turkey before,” was a remark I overheard vastly better than they could in town on $1,500 a year, regard money as the sole object of life will not be 
many times. “What breed is likely to make the best citizens. 
that ? ” came next. Four stakes 
were driven down, and poultry 
netting drawn around them and 
across the top, which made a coop 
where the gobbler could be seen to 
advantage as he stood on the 
ground, and had plenty of room. 
“ That is one of Chapman’s 
jokes,” said one. “ I’ll show you 
that plume is stuck on.” He 
reached through and caught ‘ ‘ Top- 
knot” by the neck, and began to 
pull the feathers. As he shame¬ 
facedly walked off, I heard him 
say : “ lly gum ! it’s real feathers.” 
This gobbler is a thoroughbred 
Bronze, hatched May, 1891, and 
weighs 30 pounds. He is a very 
handsome bird, and carries his 
head as if conscious of its peculiar¬ 
ity. Our turkeys have been treated 
so kindly by their mistress that 
they never wander from home or 
go to the woods to lay. The other 
gobbler has for several years taken 
the young under his care and hov¬ 
ered some of them, but this one 
has never deigned to notice his 
numerous family. When the young 
turkeys were taken from the nest, 
Mrs. C. called my attention to the 
little bunch of feathers on his 
head, and he at once became an 
object of curiosity and attention. 
At the present time the crest is 
four inches long extending along 
the skull. The feathers are five 
inches long. He was retained as a 
sire with the hope that this freak 
might be perpetuated, but none of 
the progeny shows any sign of it. 
I would like to know if any reader 
has ever seen anything like it be¬ 
fore. Can any one tell how to 
reproduce it ? c. e. chapman. 
WAS FRED GRUNDY'S FARMER 
“SUCCESSFUL?” 
IS IT ALE OF LIFE TO “SAVE MONEY?” 
How Farmers Get Rich. 
I hope Mr. Grundy (page 827) 
did not write that sketch as his 
idea of what a model farmer should 
be. Perhaps it was intended as an 
account of the hard-featured old 
A Top-Knot Bronze Turkey. Fig. 1. 
While not praising extravagant 
living, I want to protest against 
the practice of holding up miserly 
skin-flints as models to farmers. 
Let a farmer live just as well as 
he can, and gather as many beauti¬ 
ful things in and around his home 
as possible. Let him make it a 
home for his life and for his chil¬ 
dren after him, not a place from 
which after he has taken the fer¬ 
tility out, he will run away to town 
to live in idleness on a pittance, 
when he might live luxuriously on 
the farm. Let him have a home 
his children will look back to in 
after years as the sweetest spot on 
earth, and not a mean shelter from 
whose hard-wood chairs, rag car¬ 
pets and several meannesses they 
gladly escape. w. f. massey. 
Let Farmers have Cane-Seated 
Chairs. 
In The Rural of December 17 is 
given Mrs. E. E. White’s record of 
a year's work, and it is a remark¬ 
able one. In the same issue Mr. 
Grundy tells us how a man afflicted 
with Jay-Gouldism thinks farming 
should be conducted. What a con¬ 
trast ! 
Now, I would like to ask, who 
would care to follow the example 
of Mr. Grundy’s Man-who-sits-on- 
oak ? I, for one, would not. Is 
the dollar everything ? Is it neces¬ 
sary, or rather, is it a healthy con¬ 
dition of affairs, when to make 
money at farming, a man should 
do as Mr. G’s specimen did ? He 
sacrificed everything for the sake 
of the dollar; he got the dollar 
and, it is safe to say, that is all he 
has got. Mrs. White says she lived 
“ very close to The R. N.-Y., and a 
few good magazines” ; didithe man 
who calls tea, coffee and cane- 
seated chairs luxuries that farmers 
cannot afford, read The Rural 
“and a few good magazines ?” Of 
course not, he could not afford to. 
Mr. Grundy should have given us a 
few particulars as to that man’s 
family life. Did he have any sons 
and daughters, and did they stay 
fellow whose picture is on the 
same page. As an example of miserly penuriousness, 
it may be good. A rag-picker can make money in the 
same way, and make just as good use of it. There is 
nothing in the sketch to show that this man was ever 
anything of a farmer. Indeed we may infer that he 
simply got all he could out of the land, and saved what 
he got by stinting himself, and as soon as he had his 
“ pile” of $10,000, he at once abandoned the farm and 
set up to live on his income. He boasts that his in¬ 
come is over $1,500 per annum. Now, any man with a 
good farm and a cash capital of $10,000 who could not 
and they have no $10,000 lent out either. I have in 
my mind a man who has made his fine farm from the 
start, has lived well, raised a large family, sent his 
sons and daughters to college, and all the while kept 
an unstinted table, who, when asked to be a candidate 
for Treasurer of his State, replied that he could not 
afford to go to the capital and leave his farm in hired 
hands for $2,000 a year, for he would lose more 
than that. 
Neither a farmer nor any other man should live in a 
style beyond his means, but there is no more reason 
on the farm ? Did the family ever 
have doughnuts, or cookies, or cakes, or pies ? Did 
they eat any eggs or chickens? Did they have “ as 
paragus and vegetables of all kinds to use and give 
away ” ? Did that man ever give away anything that 
he could possibly sell ? Did he ever go to church, or 
did he amuse himself Sundays looking at his big 
manure piles and wishing it was Monday so he could 
spread them ? Of course he had no piano, or organ, 
or other musical instrument in the house; they were 
luxuries he could not afford. And now, after he has 
made his pile, how does he employ himself ? He evi- 
