JAN 27 
a 
abuse the animal and make themselves poorer 
by owning it. 
Success in any branch of farming will de¬ 
pend more upon the amount of brains than 
the amount of capital which the man brings 
into the business. Some men who are so poor 
that they cannot clothe themselves comfort¬ 
ably will somehow manage to get ahead 
a little every season and in a few years be¬ 
come rich, while their next-door neighbor, 
who had a good start to begin with, will 
sink it all in the soil and become poor in the 
same length of time. As an example of what 
may be accomplished by good health and hard 
work, let me briefly relate a case which came 
under my own observation: 
A few years before the War an acquaint¬ 
ance of mine settled in Minnesota and took up 
some wild land. He had $8 000 in gold and 
had been raised on a farm. During the second 
year of his residence there a German came 
along ope day whose earthly possessions con¬ 
sisted of what clothes he bad tied up in a 
large red handkerchief, and a fifty-cent piece. 
The only English he could command was to 
ask the question: “Next house, Dutchman’s 
house ?” (It was in a large German settle¬ 
ment, and he had learned this sentence in 
order to inquire his way along ) He happened 
to have a brother who owned an adjoining 
farm, and to him he was directed. On the 
day following the brother returned with the 
green immigrant and asked the American 
farmer (whom we will call Mr. Smith, for 
short), if he could not give the stranger work. 
He stated that he was a raw band and did 
not understand a word of English, but that 
he was willing to work and wanted to learn, 
steady employment being more of an object 
than wages. So Mr. Smith employed the 
German for $15 a month, by the year. He 
was paying common hands $20, bu his in¬ 
ability to speak English was considered a 
disadvantage of $5 a month. Herman stayed 
with Mr. Smith three years, and during that 
time the sun never caught him in bed. He 
came over to thi3 country to make money 
and he expected to work. When he hired out 
he sold his time, and he endeavored to work 
for his employer just as he would have worked 
for himself. At the expiration of the first six 
month-) he had made himself so valuable to 
his employer that his wages were raised to 
$20. The country was new and Government 
land being abundant, he filed on a pre-emp¬ 
tion near his place of work, and during hay¬ 
ing season would “ lay off ” long enough to 
put up a few tous of hay for himself and 
make some improvements on the place. (At 
that time, 1S56-7, pre emptors had five years 
in which to pay for their land.) As soon as 
he would get a little money ahead, he in¬ 
vested it in calves, and made arrangements 
with his brother to let them run in his pas¬ 
ture duriog the Summer, and in the Winter 
he ted them on the hay which he had put up 
during the haying season. At the end of the 
three years he went to work for himself, hav¬ 
ing managed to get about 40 acres broken 
during his last year's residence with Smith. 
His oldest heifer calves were now young 
cows, and his oldest steers were broken 
into work oxen. In the early history of Min¬ 
nesota oxen were used extensively for farm 
work and almost exclusively for breaking the 
large tracts of prairie. In 10 years' time he 
wa3 worth between $10,000 and $15,000, and 
to day he owns the old farm that he began 
working on, while Smith is a poor man. 
You ask, “ What was the oause of Mr. 
Smith's failure I” Well, there were several 
things woich led to it. In the first place, 
Smith went bo Minnesota to raise wheat, and 
he raised it. He continued on the same piece 
of land without any fertilizer or any rotation 
of crops, uutii his yield decreased from 25 
bushels, in 1856, to eight or ten bushels, in 
1865. Then he was opposed to early rising. 
He had enough money so that he was not 
compelled to work hard himself, and he would 
lie abed in the morning and let the hired men 
get up and see to things. (Stick a pin there.) 
Then again, although he kept a number of 
cows, he never seemed to think that the calves 
were of much importance. He also had sev¬ 
eral mares, but ail the value hecouid see in a 
colt was what it would bring in the Fall, or 
when a year old. He did not realize that if 
the calf or the colt was turned into his forty- 
acre pasture in the Summer, and let loose tvo the 
straw-pile or hay-stack in the Winter, he 
would soon have another cow and another 
horse. He paid no attention to these little 
things, and the “ little things” kept accumu¬ 
lating until they made too heavy a load to 
carry. This is one case among hundreds, and 
is assuredly “a story with a moral.” 
During a somewhat recent journey through 
Arizona, I met a young Californian in the 
stock business, who was on the “royal road 
to fortune,” and he related to me the particu¬ 
lars of his beginning. 
“ Before 1 began this business,” he said, “I 
was running a dray in California, and I 
couldn’t lay up a cent; so I determined to try 
something else—anything for a change. I 
was acquainted with a young fellow who 
knew something about the stock business, and 
we concluded to go onto a ranch. But the 
trouble was, we had no money ; couldn’t 
scrape up $15 between us But we made up 
our minds to begin somehow. I had an old, 
broken-down express horse, and a light spring 
wagon, and my partner bad a saddle pony. 
We picked out a spot about 15 miles from 
town, that had a good spring of water and 
was nearly surrounded by a natural fence, 
where we could keep a few head of stock. We 
got a groceryman to trust us for about $50 
worth of provisions, and I went over to a far¬ 
mer, a few miles away, who was an old friend 
of my father, and askfd him if he would 
let us have a little seed and wait until we could 
harvest a crop. He just threw open the gra- 
ary door, and said : Help yourselves, hoys.’ 
He had an abundance of beans and barley, 
and we were careful to take enough seed. We 
fairly lived on beans for several months after 
that. The land had no sod to it; it was as 
mellow as old ground, back in the States, that 
had been worked for years, but the trouble in 
plowing was with the team. We fired up a 
pad for collars and made tugs out of rope; 
but the broncho didn’t propose to plow for a 
living. She was willing to go in the saddle, 
but when it came to working double, in har¬ 
ness, she positively declined; so we had to fall 
back on old Bill for a plow team. We bor¬ 
rowed a small plow and scratched over 
enough ground with the one horse for all the 
garden we needed, and quite a patch of beans 
and barley. Then, in a few weeks, we began 
to take horses and ponies from town to herd, 
at one dollar per month. We soon got up a 
band of 25, and this brought us in a little 
money, while one of us went to work on a 
dairy ranch for $30 a month, and the other 
looked after the stock and the ranch. 
Then we began to buy calves of the dairy¬ 
men. The first one we raised on flour and 
water, because we didn’t have any milk. It 
was a pretty tough pull for the little rascal 
until he got big enough to eat grass, but by 
the time he was a year old you couldn’t see 
much difference between him and the others. 
Then we bought of the dairyman an old cow 
that was a good milker but had a hole on the 
Bids of her teat, and we got her for a song. 1 
She gave lots of milk and so we gave her three 
young calves. She thought they were all her 
own. Then we got an old sow that soon had a 
big litter of pig*, and we fattened them on the 
barley. In a little over a year we had about 
$1 000 worth of stock, and sold our claim for 
$400. That was over five years ago, and 
that’s the way I got my start.” These are 
simply illustrations that show what may be 
done by starting with nothing, and may give 
some idea of the possibilities that await the 
future. 
In conclusion, let me offer a few sugges¬ 
tions to the young farmer, and to those who 
are not “to the manner born.” 
If you have no taste for farming do not go 
on to the farm; aud if you dislike the busi¬ 
ness, get out of it as soon as you cau. A man 
should have a liking for his calling if he ex¬ 
pects to succeed. Have some order and sys¬ 
tem about your work. Lay out your plans 
beforehand, and do not plan more than you 
can accomplish. Better not lay out enough 
work than to plan too much. If you perform 
yoffr work really better than it need be done, 
you are learning a valuable lesson; if you are 
trying to do so much that yon fail to do any¬ 
thing right, you are learning carelessness, 
and you are pretty sure to have the lesson well 
learned. 
Farmers are accustomed every year to re¬ 
ceive a public lecture upon the importance 
of frugality' and economy' and sobriety, and 
their kind advisers usually wind up by telling 
them never to get drunk and not to steal. 1 
shall offer no rules for the daily guidance of 
life, but I believe that any energetic, intelli¬ 
gent man that has good judgment and a taste 
for farming, who will make it a rule to get 
np at four o’clock every morniug and never 
break that rule, cau, in ten years’ time, be 
a rich man, no matter how little he had 
to start with. Of course, if his family spend 
all he makes, or he is burned out, or the man 
dies, this rule will not hold good:— 
Get up in the morning, and do not run 
in debt. 
«♦» — 
Ripening op R. B. Sorghum Seed in Wis. 
—You may tell your Georgia correspondent 
that the Rural Branching Sorghum ripened 
seed in my garden in latitude 43 N. 
St. Croix Co., Wis. Chas. Davib. 
fklir Crops, 
THE RURAL PRIZE 00RH REPORTS. 
How the Crops were Raised, etc. 
THE 13th, TO 15th PRIZE REPORTS, INCLU¬ 
SIVE. 
Tama Co., Iowa.—I planted 153 grains of 
the Rural corn on a piece of ground 83 feet 
square; of these 120 grains germinated, but 
the wind broke some of the stalks down in 
July, so that there were but 112 standing 
when I had the corn husked on the 14ih of 
October. On Nov. 1 the ears weighed 216 
pounds and the shelled corn 144 pounds. 
Mrs. M. W, Varner. 
[Yield is at the rate of 123.4 bushels shelled 
corn per acri.J 
-m- 
Indiana Co , Pa.— I planted the Rural 
Flint Corn May the 18th on sandy soil, where 
a Timothy sward was plowed under 8ept. 
18. Put a two-horse load of horse and cow 
manure on one fortieth of an acre, plowed it 
under on May 9th, harrowed on the 17th; 
planted in five rows 64 feet long and three 
feet three and one-half inches apart; one 
grain at a place, 21 inches apart, 37 graius in 
a row, 184 in all. Of these 189 grains grew, 
leaving 46 vacancies. Dusted it with air- 
slaked lime to keep off worms, and worked 
flat with hand hoe often enough to keep the 
weeds down aDd the ground loose until 1c was 
half grown. Put a bushel of fine horse- 
manure on two hills, but cannot say they 
were any better than the others. When fully 
tasseled the stalks averaged nine feet high. 
Corn ripened in the first part of October. 1 
had a good many ears 15 inches long and 
more, but none 16. Weight of ears Nov. 1st, 
281 pounds. Weight of ahelled corn Nov. 3d, 
171% pounds. Jos. M Lydick. 
[Yield at the rate of 122.4 bushels per acre.] 
-- 
Lucas, Co., O.—1 planted the Rural Dent 
Corn on a plat 45x23 feet, or a total of 1,035 
square feet of ground. The soil was a grav¬ 
elly, clay loam, manured with common barn¬ 
yard manure plowed under. The previous 
season I grew melons, beets, peas and garden 
truck in general on the patch. The land was 
harrowed, and after the drills were made and 
the corn planted I covered them with a very 
little chip-dirt, ashes and hen-manure. The 
kernels were dropped about 17 inches apart. 
Number of grains p’anted was 165, of which 
137 grew. The tallest stalk measured 18 feet, 
the average was 11 feet. I cut the stalks Oct. 
13. Number of ears was 261, their weight 
2o7 pounds. Shelled corn weighed 168 pounds. 
One kernel produced 10 ears bearing 3,670 
grains. The ears weighed five pounds and 
the shelled coin four pounds. O'ris Ford. 
[Yield about 119 bushels shelled corn per 
acre. 
iiUsrtUanfxms. 
CATALOGUES, ETC,, RECEIVED. 
Note.—Rural readers must apply for cat¬ 
alogues, to the seedsmen offering them, not to 
the Rural New-Yorker. 
W. Atlek Burpee & Co., Nos. 475 and 477 
North Fifth Stieet, and Nos, 476 and 478 York 
Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa. Illustrated cata¬ 
logue of 90 pages, sent free to applicants. 
This firm is full of enterprise, and the cata¬ 
logue shows it. They offer $775, in cash, as 
prizes for the best vegetables grown from 
their seed. There are so many novelties of¬ 
fered that we cannot mention them here. The 
“ Golden Grains Wheat” is offered, with $75 
in premiums for the best yields. The list of 
new potatoes is very full. Among peas, we 
note “ Prideof the Market,” just tested in this 
country in the Rural Experiment Grounds, 
the report of which was presented in our 
Fair Number. Many different kinds of new 
oats, com, toinutoes, forage plants, flowers, 
etc., will also be found. Mr. Burpee is the 
introducer of the Cuban Queen Watermelon. 
The catalogue is not so showy as many oth¬ 
ers, but we have seen none that shows more 
real enterprise. 
Ellwangria & Barry, Mount Hope Nur¬ 
series, Rochester, N. Y. This is the 26th 
edition of a catalogue that should be in the 
hands of all who have ornamental trees, 
shrubs, or hardy perennial plants to order. It 
gives a colored plate of the new white wei- 
gela W. Candida, and many wood-cut illustra¬ 
tions of favorite or new plants. The book in¬ 
deed serves not merely as a priced catalogue, 
but also as a useful band-book,containing brief 
WHEATS TESTED AT THE RURAL EXPERIMENT GROUNDS (Continued). 
Pringles No. 4— Fio. 41. Wysor’s Euueka, 2 Feet High— Rural Cross, Velvet Chaff 
Early—Fig. 4a and Unknown, & Feet—Fio. 89. 
