It will pay to thoroughJy understand your 
business and make a business of what you 
understand ; it does not pay to go into farm¬ 
ing and know nothing about farming. 
It will pay to take and read good news- 
papere ; it will not pay to whine that you 
can't afford to take a paper and that you 
have not time to read one. 
It will pay to know something, and use 
icommon sense in your farming opperations, 
but it will not pay to be ignorant. 
agents who go traveling around the country 
—not even if they will trust you. 
It will pay to buy what you really need in 
the shape of seeds and implements or home 
comforts ; it will not pay for any man, com¬ 
munity or nation to buy more than they 
sell. 
It will pay to raise tine fruit and vegeta¬ 
bles, fine stock, to keep sheep and cows and 
hogs and fowls, to keep bees ; it will pay to 
make your home pleasant and attractive, to 
setting forth the needs of the “ sick wife and 
eight small children,” but instead, the most 
gorgeous Floral Guides and Seed Catalogues 
that ever enticed a body into spending 
money. 
You intend to just glance at the novelties 
and buy only a few packets of choice (lower 
seeds, but alas ! for prudential resolves. The 
love of the beautiful triumphs over the love 
of gold. Almost before you know it, your 
name is down for Asters, Balsams, Candy¬ 
tuft, Coxcomb, Antirrhinum, Dianthus He- 
diwigii and Laciniatus, Calliopsis, Pansies, 
Petunias, Phlox Drummondii, Portillacca, 
Flowering Peas, Larkspurs, Whttlavia, Zin¬ 
nias, and last, though not least, Canary Flow¬ 
ers and Scarlet Tropeolum, to twine their 
tendrils together around the nhl porch. Quite 
a goodly company, but then they are all old 
and tried friends whom we have known for 
years. With generous treatment they will 
never disappoint your hopes, and if you must 
scrimp somewhere, we are glad you did not 
begin with them. It cost you a spasm of 
self-denial to leave so many other beautiful 
things out of the list, yet it had to be borne, 
so you dismiss your floral beggars for the 
present; but the day of your temptation is 
not yet over ! 
Emboldened by the success of the seeds¬ 
men, in come the Dahlia men, the Rose men, 
and men with plants to sell, from every clime 
under the sun. To buy of them all would 
surely leave you bankrupt, so you again turn 
sadly away. To crown the climax of your 
troubles, some of the flower gardeners be¬ 
longing to the Ruhal family get together 
and recount their own wonderful successes ; 
which fill your soul, uot with envy, but a 
laudable ambition to possess some rare and 
beautiful flowers yourself. 
One has 40 Roses which you have not; an¬ 
other has curious Gourds trailing their blos¬ 
soms over stony beds, and a third fortunate 
lady has a Dahlia that measures 37 inches at 
the root. If by that she means the stalk, 
you are left in despair, for by no possibility 
oan you hope to reach such grand, tree-like 
proportions ; but if she included the circum¬ 
ference of the entire branches, why, that is 
another affair, and your Dahlias—well, never 
mind, they are large enough to overshadow 
every tiny flower round about them ! 
Now you see how unwise it is to try to 
outdo anybody in the floral world ; just be 
content with what you have, and wait pa¬ 
tiently for seed time, which is tardy this 
year. With the snow covering all the ground, 
and a fierce northern gale piling it against 
the windows, well nigh to the middle of 
April, you need not he In the least hurry 
about gardening. If you get your seeds into 
the cold frame by the first of May, and into 
the open ground by the first of June, you 
ought to be thankful ; but after that, we 
shall expect to hear good reports from your 
garden. Ruth Lee. 
MARKETING EGGS 
Thehe is so good a lesson in the following 
story told by a correspondent of the Ameri¬ 
can Farm Journal, of the manner in which 
lie made a market for his eggs, that we give 
it space here. It contains the secret of suc¬ 
cess in marketing any class of produce. 
Have something good to sell, have it uni¬ 
formly and reliably good aud get a reputa¬ 
tion therefor and there is no danger but one 
can sell at good prices all he can produce. 
But here is the story : 
My old hens laid plentifully during July 
and August, and though the price was not 
large, there was a good market for all the 
eggs I could spare. I did not care to hawk 
around anything I had for sale, and I sought 
a dealer who had a good trade, and proposed 
to him that he should take all the eggs I 
would have, 
“At what price do you propose to sell?’* 
he asked. 
“At the market price,” I answered. 
“ Who’s going to decide ? ” 
“We’ll both decide. I will have a pass¬ 
book and enter in it the number of dozen I 
send you. When you have counted them 
you can add the price on the book, and in 
that way there can be no mistakes or mis¬ 
understanding.” 
“ All right,” said he, “ I’ll do it.” 
“ I would like to have you bear one thing 
iu mind,” 1 added, “and that is, that I 
guarantee you shall never And a bad egg 
among these I send you. If you will keep 
them separate and ever find me wrong in 
this, I will give two eggs for every bad one 
you find in my baskets.” 
“Do you mean all that 1 ” he asked, some¬ 
what doubt,ingly. 
“ Every word of it,” I answered. 
“All right ; see that you do it, for I shall 
warrant every egg.” 
The merchant must have told of our bar¬ 
gain, for the next time 1 met our neighbor, 
he reined up his homes as if he had something 
important, to communicate. 
“Say, Tim!” he began, “gone into the 
egg business on a big scale ain’t you ? ” 
“ Why, no ; not on any larger scale than a 
good many others.” 
“ But you wurrant your eggs, don’t you 
I saw the twinkle in his eye, but I was not 
going to back down. 
* l Yes,” I answered; I don’t intend to 
carry any but good eggs to the market.” 
" Jcs’ so ! So 1 heerd. ’Pears to me you 
must have a mighty sight of confidence in 
your hens.” 
“ Not so much confidence in my hen3 as in 
my care of the eggs.” 
"Jes’ sol It’s as good as thread; war¬ 
ranted 300 yards ! Why don’t you put your 
name on each egg, Tim ?” 
“ I may, by-aud-by.” 
“Jos’ so ! 1 don’t see why you shouldn’t.” 
And lie drove on. 
But after all I had not done so foolish a 
thing as you may think. My twenty hens 
averaged fifteen eggs a day, and I made it a 
rule to send the eggs to market every third 
morning. I used Chiua nest eggs, so there 
was no possibility of any egg being over 
throe days old. It was not long before the 
merchant began to appreciate the fact that 
here was a constant supply of eggs that he 
might depend upon as being all right. 
I carried a basket of eggs to him one 
morning, and, after he had taken them, he 
said: 
“ Tim, supposing I should agree to give you 
one cent a dozen more than the market 
price, what effect would it have on you 3 ” 
“The best effect in the world,” I answered. 
“ Well, it is just like this ; when you told 
me to warrant your eggs all sound,.! thought 
you was a confounded fool. But I warranted 
the eggs and found they were always good. 
Now I have a class of trade that would will- 
ingly pay more for eggs if they could be sure 
they were good, and I propose to ask two 
cents a dozen more for the eggs you bring 
me, and this 1 will divide with you.” 
This was certainly encouraging, and our 
arrangement holds to this day. I habitually 
receive one cent a dozen for my eggs more 
than my neighbors do. It is an insignificant 
sum, but it counts up at the end of a year. 
Fig. 1—Charlotte Corday. [f 
It will not pay to Invest all you are worth 
in land and then attempt to farm with no 
working capital ; but it will pay to employ 
more labor oil less land. 
It may pay to sell wheat at $1 per bushel; 
it will not pay to raise ten bushels per acre. 
It may pay to raise twenty, but it wifi pay 
better to raise thirty. 
It will pay to buy labor-saving machinery 
and use if. ; but it will not pay to spend more 
money for machinery than all the crops you 
raise will sell for. Neither will it pay to 
leave your farm machinery and tools stand 
ing in the field over winter. In going to 
Appleton, the other day, 1 saw three plows 
standing iu the furrow, a seeder and a sulkey 
rake stauding in the field where last used, 
besides several harrows and cultivators. (I 
hope that none of them belong to members 
of our club.) 
It pays to study the wants of the market 
and to raise those products which will find 
quick sale and at a fair price nearest home ; 
at least, do not attempt to send bulky arti¬ 
cles to a distant market. It may pay tosliip 
wool and cheese while it will not to ship 
potatoes ; yet with a good home market po¬ 
tatoes may pay the best. 
It will pay to get a name for producing and 
selling a first-class article of any kind ; but 
it will not pay to sell a poor article for 
first-class. 
It pays to keep good stock ; it will not pay 
to buy "improved” stock at fancy prices 
and then neglect to take proper care of it— 
better improve the stock you already have. 
It does not pay to go with a rush from one 
thing to another. If G. happens to make a 
good thing out of cabbage don’t atl go to 
raising cabbage the next year ; if you do you 
will be very apt to have more cabbage heads 
than you can dispose of. 
It will pay to be thorough and workman¬ 
like in all you undertake to do—to have a 
plan and work to it, doing your work in the 
right way and at the right time. I saw a 
man plowing liis corn ground last fall, but 
before he could plow he hud to mow the 
weeds and grass, rake them into piles and 
burn them. Now, although that man was 
fulfilling the Scripture, which says “the 
tares shall be gathered i u heaps and burned,” 
yet would it not have paid better if he had 
employed that labor with the hoe and culti¬ 
vator iu June ? 
It pays to carry something to sell every 
time you go to market ; it will not pay to 
growl and grumble about hard times aud the 
scarcity of money when you have nothing to 
sell. 
It does not pay to patronize lightning rod 
perambulators, gift enterprises pop any other 
American Manufactures in Germany.— 
“Iron,” published in London in the interest 
of the metal manufacturers, says :—“ Amer¬ 
ican hardware and machinery are being im¬ 
ported largely into Germany. The handy 
shape, the new contrivances, and generally 
good workmanship, are features in their 
manufacture which find many friends in 
Germany and in Russia.” 
PERENNIAL PEAS, 
Whatever else you do in the garden this 
spring, do not forget to plant a few seeds of 
Perennial Peas. They do not flower the first 
season, but with ordinary care in hoeing and 
manuring, the plants increase iu beauty each 
year. They are perfectly hardy, though a 
slight covering of coarse stable manure, put 
on in the fall, gives them a good start in the 
spring. 
One variety in our garden is very pretty, 
and its clusters of bright, rose-colored flow¬ 
ers are borne in great profusion in early sum¬ 
mer. If no seed is allowed to mature, you 
can be sure of finding some flowers for bou¬ 
quets throughout the season. 
The plants are easily trained in any desired 
form, but a cheap and favorite mode of ours 
is to surround them with hemlock brush four 
feet high and set in the ground so closely as 
to form a sort of circular hedge. This can 
be trimmed evenly on the top, and at first, is 
rather ornamental of itself ; but the leaves 
soon fall off, leaving a fine network of 
branches to support the vines, which are 
soon covered with a mass of rosy bloom. 
R. L. 
-- 
Starting Dahlias. — Among the many 
things to be done as the season advances, is 
the starting of Dahlias. We start ours in 
boxes by the kitchen fire, keeping very 
moist ; as soon as danger from frost is over, 
put them in open ground in a warm situa¬ 
tion ; separate the tubers ; do not have more 
than one in a hill, Have a good strong stake 
to each plant aud begin tieing it when quite 
THE FLOWER MANIA 
What a deal of mischief the flower people 
are doing nowadays, scattering the seeds of 
discontent broadcast throughout the land ! 
The old, brown farm-house, with its moss- 
grown eaves, never looked so bare and grace¬ 
less in the olden time, when restless, child¬ 
ish feet danced iu and out beneath the vine¬ 
less porch. Then, the Peonies and Sweet 
Williams by the door, the Lilacs and Syringa 
by the gate, left a lingering sweetness to last 
you all the year ; but now, what a change ! 
Somehow the lawn, lookingiu early spring¬ 
time like shorn velvet, has lost its simple 
charm. In spite of Mr. Vick’s advice, to let 
the front yard rejoice in its unbroken green¬ 
ness, you think how much nicer it would be 
dotted here aud there with pink and scarlet 
bloom ; so down goes the ruthless spade into 
the greensward, till circular and triangular 
beds are all ready to invite the house plants 
out for a summer airing, alongside of other 
pretty things you have in your “ mind’s eye.” 
You don’t mean to be extravagant. Oh, 
no ! but in defiance of the bolts aud bars of 
retrenchment and economy, forged by last 
year’s “panic,” there enters your door a 
troop of cunning beggars, who do not depart 
till they have coaxed the last spare dime 
fropi your pocket,—nor do they belong to the 
common order of mendicants who ask alms 
without returning some equivalent. They 
seem to be deaf, dumb aud blind, yet thrust 
ifitq your hand not the regular soiled paper, 
TO MAKE FARMING PAY 
Remarks before the. Freedom , IVis,, Farm¬ 
ers 1 Club. By John Rasticm, 
You ask me to tell you how to make 
farming pay ; I will tell you of some things 
that will pay, and others that will not, 
