36 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
January 21 
Short Stories. 
An Anti-Cider Man. —That’s right! 
Bear down on the cider ! It’s a greater 
curse to the farmer than the rum. Com¬ 
ing home late one cold, rainy night last 
Fall, I stumbled on the dead body of a 
young man, with a gallon jug of cider 
clinched in his right hand—drowned, 
dead, in the horsepath, in less than two 
inches of water, too full of the cider to 
get out of the road. As no one happened 
along, he had been there nearly four 
hours. I wish that the people who think 
cider all right could have heard his 
poor, heartbroken mother’s cry against 
it, as she walked back and forth in the 
mud, wringing her hands, crying, 
“ David, my boy ! my only boy ! ” k b. s. 
Dynamite in a Weld. —In digging our 
well last Fall, when we reached the leJge, 
the water came in so rapidly that we 
decided not to excavate farther, but 
drilled a hole six feet deep in the center 
of the well to throw out whatever we 
could with one blast. The hole was 
loaded with dynamite, but it failed to ex¬ 
plode. Our neighbor who loaded it is an 
expert, and he took a piece of tin con¬ 
ductor, and fitting a piston by wrapping 
a cloth around a stick, he pumped out 
the sand tamping down to a point as 
near the cartridges as he thought it safe 
to go. The hole was full of water 
flowing freely into the well. Taking 
another piece of tin pipe, he plugged one 
end, and then loaded it with one cart¬ 
ridge, carefully tamping and having the 
waterproof fuse project about two feet. 
This was dropped into the hole, and when 
the second charge exploded, it caused 
the first one to do likewise, and the re¬ 
sult was very gratifying. E c CURTIS. 
Fertilizer Analyses. —The suggested 
change in fertilizer law, page 832, suits 
me. It surely is an important matter. 
The great splurge of words and figures 
applied to them means nothing at all to 
farmers who are not good in figures. 
What do we care, and what a blind to 
us, to have an array of words printed on 
the package or tag, such as equivalent, 
soluble, reverted, insoluble, with a set 
of figures attached to them ! I am sure 
we want the available to each ingredient 
contained in each ton, and these ingre¬ 
dients are nitrogen, phosphoric acid and 
potash. With three ingredients, we can 
get figures set to them, and can tell very 
nearly what the ton ought to cost us. 
Bat it is surprising to know how many 
farmers have no conception, or cannot 
even figure the cost, of different grades 
of fertilizers. o. h smith. 
R, N.-Y.—Our State fertilizer laws 
are often responsible for this. Different 
States require different guarantees, and 
the result is that manufacturers try 
to make a tag that will cover all. A 
simple national fertilizer law would set¬ 
tle it. 
An Illinois Institute. —We have the 
programme of a McLean County, Ill., 
farmers’ institute recently held at Bloom¬ 
ington. If this is a fair sample of the 
way these institutes are held, our east¬ 
ern people might well copy from them. 
The institute lasted three days, and the 
programme is stuffed full of good things. 
They make much of music and recita¬ 
tions at these western institutes. Pre¬ 
miums and prizes are offered for farm 
products and for essays. $7.50 in cash 
are offered for the best essays on the 
best and most numerous ways of prepar¬ 
ing corn and its products for the table. 
These are to be written by young women 
under 25 years of age, living on a farm 
in that county. A similar sum is given 
for articles on how the saloon injures 
the farmer, by young men under 25 
years. Premiums are offered for best 
samples of wheat, rye, oats, corn, seeds 
and potatoes, bread, cakes, butter, in 
fact, almost anything that may be pro¬ 
duced on an Illinois farm. Prizes are 
even offered for the best dozen dough¬ 
nuts, and the best dozen cookies. We 
will guarantee that these institutes, 
managed in this way, are popular and 
well attended. This feature of interest¬ 
ing the home talent, and calling out 
these timely competitions in farm prod¬ 
ucts, might well be copied in New York, 
New Jersey, and New England, for they 
would add much to the general interest 
of the institute. It seems too bad that 
we should let the West monopolize the 
homely methods that used to make our 
eastern meetings so successful. Are we 
not getting a little bit too high-toned ? 
“Fighting the Desert.” — Harper’s 
Weekly speaks of the richest man in 
Australia, Jas. Tyson, who recently died, 
leaving a fortune of $25,000,000. Mr. 
Tyson made his money out of what he 
called “ fighting the desert This is 
what he said about it: 
Fighting the desert. That has been my work. 
I have been fighting the desert all my life, and I 
have won! I have put water where was no water, 
and beef where was no beef. I have put fences 
where there were no fences,and roads where there 
were no roads. Nothing can undo what I have 
done, and millions will be happier for it after I 
am long dead and forgotten. 
In other words, this man took waste 
land, which had little or no value, im¬ 
proved it, gave it earning capacity, and 
then held the earnings. On a smaller 
scale, almost any man in this country 
may do the same thing. There are 
abandoned lands and fields in almost 
every old community, called worn-out 
and worthless because their earning 
capacity has been destroyed Let some 
wise and skillful man take hold of them 
and increase their productiveness by 
economical measures, and on a smaller 
scale, he may carry on the work of Jas. 
Tyson. 
A Short Agricultural Course. —I am 
spending the Winter attending the short 
course in agriculture at the Indiana Col¬ 
lege. Fifty-two students comprise, I 
believe, the largest class ever held here. 
As I looked over our class of over 50 
strong, bright young men, and saw how 
eagerly they took notes, I felt that, more 
than ever, we have forgotten our preju¬ 
dice against book farming and are, as a 
class, coming rapidly into line with the 
spirit of the age. One cannot fail to see 
this in marked degree, also, in the insti¬ 
tutes. Their average has gradually in¬ 
creased. I attended one this year where 
the attendance for eight years had not 
averaged over 30. This year there weie 
150 the first session, and the average was 
326. Why shouldn’t farmers wake up 
and join the ranks of progress ? It is 
surely impossible to estimate the sweep¬ 
ing good being done by the farmers’ in¬ 
stitute movement. The greatest curse 
now resting on the farmer’s home is 
isolation. But the telephone and the 
free mail delivery are in sight; both are 
now being tried in many places. It 
is surprising to see how generally 
these experiments are proving a suc¬ 
cess. The expense is much lighter 
than usually expected. Even good 
roads can now be built very much 
cheaper than only a few years ago, our 
rock crushers and road graders are so 
much improved. With good roads and 
trolley cars, free mail delivery and tele¬ 
phones, the farmer’s home may be the 
ideal home ; we may expect to see just 
such a revolution in the near future. 
E. H. COLLINS. 
SCIONS. 
That was a very remarkable interview 
with Gov. Roosevelt. I think it will tend 
to inspire him to better things. c. 
The Californians are taking great 
pains with their roads. In some coun¬ 
ties, taxes are raised to pay for sprink¬ 
ling the roads in dry weather. Tanks 
or hydrants are distributed through the 
country,where water carts may be filled. 
In Iowa, it is reported that crude petro¬ 
leum is used on the roads. It is claimed 
that the petroleum makes a dirt road 
water-proof, so that it will stay dry and 
hard in wet weather. Harper’s Weekly 
states that one barrel of petroleum will 
treat 100 feet of road 12 feet wide. The 
Pennsylvania Railroad, and perhaps 
others, has used oil for sprinkling its 
roadbed. The average farmer may well 
ask, “ What next”? 
Sugar from beets retails at 5 % cents 
at Ithaca, N. Y., and makers pay $5 per 
ton for the beets. We can grow them for 
$3, and make as much as from other 
crops, i. e., get pay for labor and a little 
more. This would make sugar retail at 
3% cents on the same basis of cost. Do 
you think Cuba can produce sugar which 
can be sold here at three cents ? We 
must have more diversity in our crops, 
and need this crop. e. 
One of our readers in Kansas writes 
that he was much interested in the inter¬ 
view with Gov. Roosevelt. His brother 
was one of the Rough Riders who claims 
that he ran up the hill just ahead of the 
Colonel. He says : “ Col. Roosevelt did 
run up that hill, panting like a Norman 
horse.” So that we were probably right 
in saying that he could not possibly 
have done both the running and the 
swearing. 
J. L. Lavake, of Florida, talks of eat¬ 
ing cow peas. In that country, they 
prefer the Whippoorwill variety. He 
had five acres of Velvet beaDs. They 
grind the beans in a corn mill, and find 
them good feed for horses and cows. 
From one vine, he picked half a bushel 
of pods, with single clusters containing 
22 pods With us in New Jersey, the 
Velvet bean made a fair growth, but we 
do not consider it equal to the Early 
Black cow pea. 
The New England Farmer states that, 
last week, the key was turned in a door 
of a New Gloucester (Me.) house for the 
first time since the original house was 
built, at least 125 years ago. For the 
first time in its history, the place was 
closed and left deserted. The owner is 
74 years old, and has lived most of his 
life on the old place. His children have 
scattered, and now the old folks leave 
the farm. The house on the next farm 
has also been closed, so that two great 
farms, once productive and profitable, 
are now deserted. 
W. A. Richter, of Whitefish Bay, 
Wis., sowed cow peas during the first 
week of June, 1898, between Wilder cur¬ 
rant bushes. The cow peas made a good 
growth in hot weather, and produced a 
fair crop of seed, large enough to war¬ 
rant further trials. We can assure Mr. 
Richter that the currant bushes will 
speak for themselves wherever the cow 
pea vines went into the ground. He 
says that he can obtain plenty of wood 
ashes, and this with cow peas will make 
a balanced ration for his fruit. We often 
think that cow peas and Crimson clover, 
while perhaps reaching greater perfec¬ 
tion in the South, will, after all, prove 
most useful in the North. 
Pains and Aches 
Of Rheumatism Make Countless 
Thousands Suffer. 
But this disease is cured by Hood’s Sar¬ 
saparilla, which neutralizes the acid in 
the blood. If you have any symptoms of 
rheumatism, take Hood’s Sarsaparilla at 
once and do not waste time and money 
on unknown preparations. The merit 
of Hood’s Sarsaparilla is unquestioned, 
and its record of cures unequalled. 
Hood’s Sarsaparilla 
Is America’s Greatest Medicine for rheumatism. 
Hood’s Pills cure all liver ills. 25 cents. 
Seeds! Seeds! 
75th Anniversary Catalogue of 
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Rural New Yorker. 
WM. HENRY MAULE, 
1711 Filbert St., Philadelphia, Pa. 
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