1C..O 
Y'1-IE KUriAL NEW-YORKER. 
“ Two Blades of Grass” 
By Harry Ayres 
Charles Randolph Vandergriff, ex-As- 
semblyman, ex-State Senator, ex-chair¬ 
man of the committee on agriculture and 
ex several other things of distinction, cast 
a patronizing glance over the surround¬ 
ing scenery. His air seemed to say. “It 
is well, scenery. J am here! You are 
very well in your way, but compared with 
other views I have seen—pshaw.” 
Mr. Yandergriff’s own appearance was 
such as might well inspire humility in 
any rural scene and the inhabitants there¬ 
of. His expansive front was hidden from 
the vulgar gaze by a chastely striped 
silk shirt; his neck—that might have 
been termed bovine in a less distinguished 
person—was decorated by a necktie of 
startling beauty; bis immaculately 
creased trousers showed never a wrinkle; 
and his pedal extremities were gorgeous¬ 
ly arrayed in striped silk stockings and 
tan shoes. Upon the back of his large 
and capable-looking head reposed a straw 
hat—price $5. From his full-lipped 
mouth projected a cigar—large, fat, and 
honestly worth 25 cents. His large, fat 
bauds, freshly manicured, white and soft, 
each bore a solitaire diamond worth a 
small farm. 
There! It is out! I can no longer 
hide from the reader that Charles Ran¬ 
dolph Vandergriff was a farmer. Any¬ 
way, you would have found it out, for the 
Legislative Manual for 1!)12 is out at 
last, and in it the fact is proclaimed. 
The rattling of a wagon caused Mr. 
Vandergriff to look toward the road that 
ran in front of his farm. An overalled 
m mber of his own profession was com¬ 
ing along with a load of sand. He 
sauntered carelessly in that direction. 
“Ah—how—do, Barnes”—patronizing¬ 
ly. 
“’Lo, Vandergriff.” 
A slight movement of impatience from 
the great man. 
“Ah—just a moment, Barnes. I want 
to speak to you.” 
“Whoa! All right—let her go." 
“My manager tells me you advised him 
not to cultivate my corn again—that you 
predict a drought or some such fool 
thing. Now I’m fully competent to furn¬ 
ish all the advice he needs.” 
“All right, neighbor. Giddap !” 
“Ah—one minute, Barnes.” 
“Whoa! Well, what’s on your mind 
now ?” 
“No hard feelings? I—’’ 
“None at all—this is a free country. 
You got* a right to hoe your own row. 
If you happen to hoe up crops as well 
as .weeds it’s none o’ my funeral.” 
Another shrug of impatience from Van¬ 
dergriff. 
“I wish I could get you fellows to drop 
your old-fashioned notions and adopt 
modern methods of farming. Now Pro¬ 
fessor Stacy assured me that corn should 
be cultivated at least once in every 10 
days, rain or no rain. It is absurd for 
you to pit your judgment against the 
professor’s.” 
“I don’t.” 
“Yet you advise my man not to cul¬ 
tivate !” 
“I do.” 
“Well, hang me if I see just what 
you’re getting at.” 
“I’m getting at that drought. It 
hasn’t rained for two weeks, and I’m 
willing to bet you a cookie that we don’t 
get any in twice «that time. We had a 
long spell of wet weather, and now it’s 
broken we’ll have a long spell of dry. 
You’ve got the most of that moisture 
shut in with a dry, mellow surface, now 
let it alone.” 
“You’re bound to have a drought 
then? You people have the most absurd 
notions! But I’m glad to see you are 
taking my advice and are going to put a 
concrete floor in your cow-stable.” 
“Well,” observed the other drily, “see¬ 
ing that I’ve been planning to put one 
in for 10 or 12 years and have just got 
to where I can afford to do it, I s’pose 
you’re entitled to the credit—you been 
here three years, haven’t you?” 
“Perhaps if you put more brains into 
your farming you’d have some surplus to 
put into improvements. You people 
would spoil a dollar ax trying to get a 
25-cent piece out of a liard-wood tree!” 
“Yes, we’re certainly a lot of old fo¬ 
gies up here. Yet I notice we manage 
to squeeze a living out of our farming— 
to say nothing about educating our chil¬ 
dren. and a few other things. You’ve 
been here three years—how much have 
you run behind in that time, if it’s a fair 
question V" 
“There you go again ! I expect to get 
that all back, with pretty good interest, 
before very long.” 
“Uh-liuh. Well, I hope you will, 
though I’m blest if I can see where 
you’ve got any show. Won’t make much 
difference to you, though ; you can stand 
it. Well, time’s a scarce article with me 
—so long! Giddap!” 
At dinner, that evening, after the Hon. 
Charles Randolph had ministered to his 
somewhat capacious appetite, he pro¬ 
ceeded to monopolize the conversation 
which he had previously ignored. He 
brought his wife’s dissertation on the 
latest in fashions to a premature close, 
and nipped in the bud a story one of his 
guests had begun. 
“The people around here are disgust¬ 
ingly bucolic,” he proclaimed. “I had a 
few minutes’ conversation with the fel¬ 
low on the next farm this afternoon. 
Barnes has more fool notions than an 
ignorant washerwoman. Thinks we’re in 
for a prolonged drought, and advised my 
manager to stop cultivating the corn for 
awhile, but to keep right on with the po¬ 
tatoes for ‘a spell’—as he puts it. Now 
all the authorities say, ‘Cultivate, culti¬ 
vate.’ You bet I told him to mind his 
own business and I’d attend to mine. The 
idea of that hayseed pitting his limited 
knowledge against the scientific attain¬ 
ments of those I have consulted! You 
ought to interview him, Slattery. He’d 
make quite a character for one of your 
funny stories.” 
“I had a half-hour’s conversation with 
him myself, yesterday,” said the young 
author. “He struck me as a very intelli¬ 
gent fellow—told me a lot <*f things I 
never dreamed of. One thing that par¬ 
ticularly impressed me was his descrip¬ 
tion of the way the potato plant stores 
up starch in its leaves by day and car¬ 
ries it down to the tubers at night. 
Mighty interesting, I thought it, al¬ 
though I don’t know enough about pY lt- 
life to understand half he says. Ie 
found me right where I live on t out- 
fishing. though—showed me where the big 
fellows hang out, and I got quite a 
String.” i 
“Just had a streak of luck, that’s all!” 
said Vandergriff, with an air of finality. 
“I thought he knew enough to come in 
out of the wet when I first came here, 
but I soon found out differently—why, 
I tried to get him to plant and cultivate 
his potatoes according to the plan of 
Prof. Doolittle. Think he would? The 
chump said he had neither the time nor 
capital! I’d make time and borrow the 
capital! 
“The thing I’m trying to beat into the 
empty brain-pans of these people,” he 
resumed, after the ladies had withdrawn 
and the cigars had been passed, “is to 
make two blades of grass grow where 
but one grew before. When I told Doo¬ 
little I had acquired this farm, he said, 
‘Great! Vandergriff, you’re to be a 
missionary. Your task is to lead those 
benighted heathen out of the darkness of 
hit-or-miss farming into the light of 
scientific agriculture.’ I haven’t succeed¬ 
ed very well yet, but you wait until I 
harvest my corn and potatoes this Fall. 
I’ll show ’em a thing or two. Prof. 
Stacey came up here purposely to su¬ 
pervise the planting of the corn, and I’ve 
planted five acres of potatoes and cul¬ 
tivated them in strict conformity with 
Prof. Doolittle’s idea—got the finest seed, 
fertilized them heavily with a 2—8—10 
mixture, and Doolittle says he’ll guar¬ 
antee me not less than 500 bushels to the 
acre. If one of these fellows got 200 
bushels he’d drop dead.” 
“How about a game of billiards ?” 
asked Slattery. 
“I’m game—just as soon as I’ve tele¬ 
phoned my manager to keep right on cul¬ 
tivating that corn.” 
II. 
The State Agricultural Society had 
brought to a close its most brilliantly 
successful convention with a banquet 
pronounced by all the most enjoyable 
they had ever attended. Professors 
Stacey and Doolittle were especially ju¬ 
bilant, for their addresses had been pro¬ 
nounced masterpieces of scientific thought 
by everyone present—or at least by every- . 
one but the Hon. Charles Randolph Van¬ 
dergriff. This usually optimistic—not to 
say cocky-gentleman was carrying around 
a colossal halo of gloom. The appearance 
of each course had added one more stratum 
to his profound pessimism, and every 
toast had increased the size and gloomy- 
ness of his halo. When he at last corn¬ 
ered Prof. Doolittle, that cheerful person 
accosted him with*. 
“Why hello! Vandergriff. Just the 
man I want to see. Want to congratu¬ 
late you. Bet you had the finest crops 
ever heard of up there.” 
August 28, 1915. 
The Hon. Charles shook his head 
gloomily. 
“Doolittle,” said he. “there’s some¬ 
thing wrong about your methods—and 
Stacey’s too. I had fine crops, yes; but 
a half dozen of ’em would make me a 
candidate for the poor house. I’ve got 
some figures to show you—you’re great 
on figures. I put in eight acres of corn 
according to Stacey and five acres of po¬ 
tatoes according to Doolittle—there’s 
Stacey now. Stacey, come over here— 
I’ve got a bone to pick with you. There! 
You fellows run ofer those figures, bear¬ 
ing in mind that we followed your meth¬ 
ods to a T.” 
“Hum!” said Prof. Stacey, after a 
scrutiny of the paper handed him. “If 
your figures are correct, you expended for 
labor, seed and fertilizer, $536.31. Too 
much ! Entirely too much !” 
“Too much?” exploded Vandergriff. 
“Why, hang t it, man! I paid only the 
prevailing rates, and followed your di¬ 
rections to the letter.” 
“Hum. Cutting and filling. $210. 
Why Senator, your eight acres of corn 
cost you in the silo $746.21. I can’t 
conceive how you managed to spend all 
that money on that corn patch.” 
“By doing it according to Stacey. Now 
look at the returns.” 
“Ah, by 256 tons silage at $3. $768— 
but silage is worth more than that.” 
“Not up there it isn’t. My next-door 
neighbor, a fellow named Barnes, would 
be glad to sell me a hundred tons at $3. 
In fact, he would have been glad to sell 
me some at $2, in the Fall. That hay¬ 
seed stopped cultivating as soon as the 
drought struck us, and he couldn’t 
crowd his corn into his two silos; while 
I kept right on against his advice, and 
mine weren’t more than two-thirds full 
after they settled. I felt so cheap you 
could have bought me for 10 cents!” 
“Well, you made $22 on the deal, any¬ 
way, and last season was a bad one. 
You—” 
“Is that so? I could have sold my 
teams at a good profit, last Spring, and 
the land would have rented at $7.50 an 
acre. Subtract $22 from $60, and you’ll 
find I paid $38 for the privilege of work¬ 
ing my men and horses from early Spring 
until late Fall, besides the interest on 
my money and the wear and tear of ma¬ 
chinery. You’re a corn doctor, all right! 
I’d advise you to open a pedicure estab¬ 
lishment in New York City—you’d make 
a fortune in no time. But now for the 
potatoes. How about it. Doolittle?” 
“Er-ah. You’re sure there is no mis¬ 
take in these figures?” 
“Absolutely!” 
“Most extraordinary—but the last sea¬ 
son was a very disappointing one. Long 
dry spell, followed by an equally long wet 
one. Then the potato market has been 
anything but normal—you couldn’t ex¬ 
pect one to foresee that. Anyway, it 
seems to me that $802.10 was an abnorm¬ 
ally large expenditure on five acres of 
potatoes!” 
“That’s what Barnes said from the 
first. Said he, ‘Mebbe you could get that 
money back if you was down on Long 
Island, but you never will up here— 
you’re too far from the market.’ But 
go ahead.” 
“M-m, 1260 bushels at 30 cents, $378. 
You lost $424 on the deal—well, my dear 
Vandergriff, agriculture is at best a gam¬ 
ble ; you must expect to lose once in a 
while.” 
“Besides the rent of my land and the 
interest on my money. Yes, I notice that 
agriculture is a gamble—or rather, a 
shell gaipe. You come up to my place, 
and I’ll introduce you to a man named 
Barnes. He’s no agriculturist—just a 
plain farmer of the hayseed variety. 
That fellow made money on his potatoes 
this last year. Heaven knows how much 
he would have made had there been a 
good market. If you’ll go up with me 
tomorrow, I’ll give you an exhibition of 
an agriculturist squatting down before a 
farmer and beseeching said farmer to 
kick him. Say, you fellows, that hay¬ 
seed knows more about farming in five 
minutes than you would in a thousand 
years! lie’s a walking weather report, 
a perambulating crop-calendar, a jack-of- 
a 11-trades, and a pretty fair veterinary 
surgeon. In short, he’s a farmer—while 
we’re agriculturists. Let’s go get a 
cigar and then apply for a job shovelling 
dirt on the barge-canal.” 
S-i p/ * ** •* « 
,/vyvissw's 
CM 
The long, long journey of the Apple—a sort of “ Pilgrim’s Progress,” past bug and 
blight, to a good market. 
