726 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
October 28 
THE DRAMA OF AGRICULTURE. 
AX ACTOR TURNS FARMER. 
In The R. N.-Y. of October 7, I read 
an article on young men from the city 
who want to become farmers. Now my 
experience may be of some use to such, 
so I submit it to you : In the first place 
I am a professional man, an actor; not 
a star, but one of the rank and file, and 
when I can get an engagement can draw 
from 850 per week up to $125 per week. 
Now this may seem big money, but trav¬ 
eling expenses, such as railroad fare, 
hotel bills, laundry, baggage, wardrobe, 
agent’s percentage, and the unreliability 
of steady employment (last season I was 
employed but 18 weeks out of 52), bring 
the average down pretty low. Being of 
a saving disposition, and having two 
very good seasons of 40 weeks each in 
succession, I had accumulated a little 
over 81,000 in cash, and I decided to in¬ 
vest it; for had I not, while traveling 
through the country, passed mile after 
mile of pretty little cottages, with fio :ver 
gardens in front, and fields all laid out 
in rows with all the different kinds of 
produce which go to feed the city folks ? 
Thinking from the prices my wife had 
to pay for this produce in Brooklyn, 
where I lived in a flat at 825 per month, 
I said: “A farmer’s life for me ; I will 
be independent.” So I took to reading 
all the papers, and “ Farms for Sale” 
was the heading to which I always 
turned when I opened my daily paper. 
Finally this one caught my eye and 
fancy at the same time : 
FOR SALK. 
A beautiful country home; a farm of 66 acres, 
seven-room house, barn 40x10, carriage house, wagon 
sheds, corn crib, granary In good order, 56 apple 
trees, plenty of small fruit, 11 barrels of cranberries 
every year; will cut 40 tons of hay; borders on beau¬ 
tiful lake; line Ashing and hunting; just the place 
for a poultry farm; will keep 20 cows and four 
horses. Dont miss this chance. 
A Cunning Real Estate Agent. 
I handed the paper to my wife and 
said, “ What do you think of that ? ” She 
said, “ Let us write the agent at once.” 
I said, 4, No need to do that; we will 
play the town on to-morrow evening, 
and we will go and see it.” This was 
about March 15. We saw the agent ; we 
saw the place. Like all other agents, 
he was cunning, and he did not get out 
of his wagon, but he drove to the spot 
where the place showed to the best ad¬ 
vantage, and he pointed out the beauti¬ 
ful lake, and it was beautiful then, for 
it was one unbroken sheet of water 
fringed with a high bank covered with 
cedar and pine. And he pointed out one 
spot and said : “ Ten acres of it is in 
woodland, and you will not have to buy 
coal, but can burn wood, or have it cut 
for 90 cents a cord and sell it at 80. The 
more he talked, the more we wanted that 
place, and we at once upon reaching the 
agent’s house paid a deposit of 8100 on 
the farm and proceeded to have the title 
examined. It was satisfactory, and we 
paid the balance. When we got the deeds 
we were so proud we would not conde¬ 
scend to notice any one. 
On June 11 we moved up, bag and bag¬ 
gage, to our new home, and then we dis¬ 
covered that the beautiful lake had dis¬ 
appeared, gone entirely, and in its place 
was a meadow of water grass; in the 
spring and winter it was a lake, in sum¬ 
mer a swamp. The house which looked 
so cozy from the wagon seat, we discov¬ 
ered had been fixed up to sell; the front 
and sides had been painted, the back had 
not been touched. The roof was like a 
sieve, all right while the sun shone, but 
when it rained one could let out shower 
baths without number if one could only 
get the customers. The barn was simply 
a frame, no cellar, the manure to be 
thrown out and exposed to the weather, 
the flooring rotten and dangerous for an 
animal to walk on. We discovered these 
things by degrees, and of the 56 apple 
trees, all but 12 were natural fruit, over¬ 
grown with wild grape vines and poison 
ivy. The 11 barrels of cranberries dwin¬ 
dled down to about 11 quarts. The plenty 
of small fruit we found to be a pasture 
overgrown with wild huckleberries and 
blueberries, one solitary gooseberry 
bush and a poor, forlorn, little Red cur¬ 
rant bush down in a fence corner. The 
“ will cut 40 tons of hay ” is all right; it 
will cut 40 tons of hay, providing we get 
out 40,000,000 tons of rock, and put the 
same amount of good green cow manure 
on the land after the rock and brush are 
taken off and the land is well cultivated 
for a few years. The “ fine fishing and 
hunting ” is all right. You can hunt and 
fish to your heart’s content, but you can¬ 
not get anything but a few horned pout, 
and the old fellows around here have the 
woods so full of snares that a partridge 
or rabbit which could go 50 feet without 
getting hung up by the neck would be a 
curiosity. 
No Back Out Though. 
But for all this we did not get discour¬ 
aged. We said : “ The taxes here are 
only 818 per year on our farm, and we 
paid 825 a month rent for a flat and had to 
go up four flights of stairs. Here we have 
no stairs, for everything is on the first 
floor. The rent of the flat in Brooklyn 
would be 8300 a year, here the taxes 
(same as rent) 818, which equals $282 a 
year earned theie ; that is good big in¬ 
terest on the money invested for the 
farm. We will not go with a traveling 
company any more ; we will simply play 
engagements in the near vicinity to our 
home, no farther away than Washington, 
so if we are out of an engagement a 
couple of weeks or more we can come 
home and save our hotel bills of $24 per 
week.” We have found that it pays us, 
for we can live on the farm for groceries, 
feed ar.d help (a few days during haying 
or planting) for about $300 a year, with 
our own vegetables, salt pork, preserves, 
milk and butter. 
I am gradually getting the land into 
good condition two or three acres at a 
time. I plow up a little every fall, hire 
a man and team to do it at $4 a day, and 
while he is plowing take out every rock 
that can be moved by a team of horses 
and cart them off the land to a place 
where the soil is all an outcropped ledge 
of rock, and p.le them theie for future 
use. They may come handy for build¬ 
ing purposes. The lake that disappeared 
I also utilized. I put two men on in 
August for two days to mow and one day 
to pole the hay out, and I got all the 
good clean bedding I can use under the 
cattle. I have two fine butter cows and 
an 18-months-old heifer, and I find the 
cattle eat considerable of it, so much so 
that I have to replenish the bedding every 
day. The horse will also eat it, in spite 
of the fact that he gets plenty of good hay 
and eight quarts of grain a day. I had 
a $21 ditch dug through the cranberry 
meadow and drained it, and now I cut 
with a Buckeye one-horse mower enough 
swale hay to keep my cows nearly all 
winter. The pasture I am letting grow 
up into sprout land for timber or fire¬ 
wood, and as a run for the cattle in sum¬ 
mer, for I have found it profitable to 
feed grain all summer and put in plenty 
of fodder corn to feed from the time the 
pasture begins to shrink. I feed it cut 
up green with a Victor hay cutter. 
When I am away on business, I pay my 
next-door neighbor $3 per week to do my 
chores for me and allow him the milk, 
with the exception of a little for my dog 
and cat. In four years’ time, I have 
learned to plow, swing a scythe, run a 
mowing machine, plant, cultivate, etc. 
I have started with a bare farm and 
entirely repaired the house, refitted the 
barn, painted, built a bridge for horses 
and wagon, cut a ditch the length of the 
farm, seeded down about five acres to 
grass, and taken out about 80 tons of 
rock. I have a farm wagon, one horse, 
three cows (two in milk and one heifer), 
a one-horse mowing machine, a seed 
drill, cultivator, one-horse swivel plow, 
one-horse Morgan spading harrow (saves 
lots of plowing), and, in fact, almost 
everything in the way of tools needed to 
run a farm. I have also discovered that 
I am quite a carpenter, locksmith and 
harness maker, and I think the farm has 
developed quite a genius in yours truly. 
As for the city, never again wifi I pay 
rent. My aim is in a very few years to 
have a couple more cows and a henhouse 
about 106 feet long, and when the public 
tire of us as actors, we can sell butter 
and eggs, and fowls, and perhaps some 
garden sass. I guess that we will get 
along 0. K. without having to go over 
the hills to the poor-house, where so 
many seem to get for the want of a little 
ginger in their makeup. w. w. 
North Bellingham, Mass. 
Hunting for Relatives. —Mr. B. T. 
Washington, Principal of the Tuskegee 
Normal School says that the newspapers 
printed in the South by the colored 
people often contain notices like the fol¬ 
lowing : 
INFORMATION WANTEI).-Of my mother and 
brothers. Mother's name was Louisa Banks, she was 
sold to a speculator named Nelson, at Winston, 
Hertford County, N. C-. In 1842, with two children : 
Feddo and Ellen Gatling. Mother was known as the 
wife of Stephen Manly who was drowned in Mahar- 
rlng River between Murfreesboro and Winston. My 
name Is Jane Har on now, but was Jane Gatling. I 
married a Harton. Since my brother Benjamin left 
here during the war I have not heard from him once. 
He was then a soldier In t^e army. Any Informa¬ 
tion of their whereabouts will be gladly received by 
Mrs. Jane Harton, In care of Rev. J. E C. Bar¬ 
ham, pastor of Murfreesboro Circuit *f the A M. E. 
Church: 
Address Box 6, Murfreesboro, N. C. 
What a sad re nembrance of slavery 
that is. The idea of people in this age 
being obliged to hunt for parents through 
the records of old slave sales. Is it not 
to the credit of the Negro race that such 
people are anxious to learn of the where¬ 
abouts of those who have sunk out of 
sight in this way ? 
The correspondent of a daily piper 
has this bit of wisdom explaining why 
the hay crop of the West is not larger : 
“ Since the introduction of the auto¬ 
matic binder, wheat has been the fash¬ 
ionable crop in the West. Farmers in 
this country prefer crops that can be 
planted, cultivated and harvested by ma¬ 
chinery. Of late they ha ye almost en¬ 
tirely neglected those crops that require 
a considerable amount of manual labor. 
All the work of preparing the ground 
for a crop of wheat, of placing the seed 
in the ground and of harvesting the ri¬ 
pened grain could be performed by a 
person who sat on a cushioned spring 
seat under a canopy and limited his ex¬ 
ertions to holding the reins that guided 
a pair of matched horses.” With loaders, 
hay slings, mowers and rakes there is 
now less hand work about the hay crop 
than with any other. 
LEARN “PIANO 
RICHARDSON’S NEW 
METHOD. 
Over 500.000 copies sold. 
Price, American Angering, *3. 
Foreign Angering, #3. 
NIason & Hoadley’s System 
for Beginners. 
With either American or For¬ 
eign Angering. Price, either 
Angering, #3. 
N. E. Conservatory Method 
In three pirts; price, each, 
!#L.50; complete. #3. Two 
editions, American and Foreign 
Angering. 
Peter’s Eclectic Piano 
Instructor. 
Over 300,000 copies sold; #3. 
BELIAK’S ANALYTICAL METHOD. 
Price, In paper, 75 cents: In boards, 1# 1. 
Winner’s Eureka Method. 
The latest book issued with Illustrations of band 
positions. Paper. 75 cents. 
Any book mailed postpaid on receipt o) price. 
Oliver Ditson Company, 
453-463 Washington St., Boston. 
C. H. Ditson & Co., N. Y. J. E. Ditson & Co., Phlla. 
. ' SMALL FRUITS, GRAPES, SHRUBS, ROSES, 
HARDY PLANTS. BULBS. 
Tip £* ms m FOR FAIL PLANTING. 
M t ^ pi p Immense Stock. 160 page Catalogue Free. 
* / \ ^ ELLWANGER &. BARRY, 
FRUIT and ORNAMENTAL 
THE TUBULAR CARRIAGE LAMP. 
No further need for the inconvenient and inefficient lantern when driving on 
dark nights. The Dietz 
tubular lamp is convenient, “ will not blow out, ” 
gives a clear, white 
light; its power¬ 
ful reflector, like a 
locomotive headlight, 
throws all the light 
straight ahead 200 to 
400 feet. It burns kero¬ 
sene. It has a strong 
spring attachment for 
attaching to the dasher 
at any point, in an in¬ 
stant. Price $2.50, by 
express, not prepaid ; 
with a year’s subscrip¬ 
tion, $3.25 ; with a renewal and a new subscription, 
Given free for a club of nine new subscriptions. 
We will send a book fully describing the lamp on application. 
PRICE, 
$ 1 . 00 . 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER POCKET KNIFE. 
So many knives are called for by subscribers 
that we have made a careful search 
and believe that we have found as 
good a farmer’s knife as there 
is made. It is so good 
that we have named it 
the “ Rural New- 
Yorker” knife. 
It is brass- 
lined, with 
German 
silver hol¬ 
ster, han¬ 
dle buck- 
horn, blade 
of fine ra¬ 
zor steel. Price, by mail, prepaid, $1. With a year’s subscription only $1.85. With 
a renewal and a new subscription, $2.60. Free, for a club of four new subscriptions. 
THE RURAL NEW-YDRKER, Cor. Chambers and Pearl Sts., New York. 
