486 
American Agriculturist, June 9,1923 
Other sizes equally low priced. 
Over 5,000 dealers carry these 
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M.anufacturers Chicago 
Eastern Branches 
New York Baltimore Boston 
• HAY 
PRESS 
40styles and sizes 
for every purpose. 
Catalog free. 
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111!! Hampshir*St.,Quincy,III. 
VCrCTADIC DI AMTC all varieties OF follow- 
\CiULi1AdLL iLAIllo ING PLANTS READY NOW 
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$30.00 per 1,000. 5.000,000 Cabbajre and Tomato Plants (Field 
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tlowcr (Field Grown! Snowball $4.60 per l.ooo. Transplanted 
T<iniatoes, $8.00 per 1,000 ; $1.00 per too. 
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P. FORD ROCHELLE, Mendbam Road. Morristown, NewJersey 
MILLIONS “FROSTPROOF” CABBAGE PLANTS 
Copenhagen, Wakefiehls, Succes.sioii, Aic., BOO, $1.00: 500, $l.25j 
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Buy Your Cigars Direcri?.n^o^'’'’‘& 
HAVANA SMOKEHOUSE, Homeland, Oeorgia, 
The Home of His Fathers 
The Story of the Man Who Would Not Sell His Farm 
‘‘And Ahab spoke unto Naboth say¬ 
ing: ‘Give me thy vineyard that I may 
have it fof' -a garden of herbs because 
it is near unto my house and I tvill give 
thee for it a better vineyard than it, 
or if it seem good unto thee, I will give 
thee the worth of it in money.’ 
“And Naboth said unto Ahab: ‘The 
Lord forbid it unto me that I should 
give the inheritance of my father’s 
unto thee.’ ” 
W E made a little group who sat 
around the fire one winter day 
between sessions of the Farmers’ In¬ 
stitute and talked of cattle and, crops 
and neighborhood happenings and 
human - interest 
affairs. Then it 
was that I heard 
the story of “the 
Man who would 
not. Sell his 
Farm.” I am 
setting it down 
as I heard it in 
outline from one 
who lived neigh¬ 
bor to the hero. 
If I have tried to 
embellish it in 
some details or 
have in any way 
availed myself of 
the story-teller’s 
unquestioned 
J. VAN WAGENEN, JR. right to fill OUt 
the picture or to 
add to the colors—nevertheless I insist 
that I am repeating the story as it was 
told to me. 
. The place was out in the lovely 
Finger Lake Country of Western 
New York by the side of one of those 
noble lakes which are the outstanding 
physical feature of that fat land. I do 
not know who first hit upon that happy 
phrase—“The Finger Lakes”, but it is 
a descriptive inspiration for all these 
lakes are long and narrow and all run 
north and south and all lie parallel to 
each other like the 
fingers of a man’s 
hand. It is a phrase 
so apt—so fortunate 
—that through all 
time to come, that 
region can never be 
known by any other 
term. 
I trust that I am 
loyal to the old 
counties of Eastern 
New York, to the 
Hudson Valley, the 
Catskills and the 
Hill Country. W'e 
have more of history 
—^more of tradition. 
We are richer in 
stories and folk¬ 
lore for we were an 
old settled region,' 
in many cases for a 
full century before 
the first settlers (to 
use a quaint phrase 
of the Ithaca pio¬ 
neers) “cast seed” in the fertile soils 
of Western New York. Romance and 
legend cling to the Eastern Counties. I 
do not suppose for example that Wash¬ 
ington Irving could ever have found 
in Western New York any such fertile 
soil for story-telling as he cultivated so 
fruitfully in the Hudson Valley. But 
agriculturally the Finger Lake Country 
together with the Ontari 9 Shore is the 
best of our State—less rugged, with a 
more uniformly fertile soil and with a 
kindlier climate than the Eastern plat¬ 
eau and in addition made beautiful 
forever by those long reaches of deep, 
clear, cold water filling ancient glacial 
valleys. The Red Man knew and loved 
the Finger Lakes, for among them was 
the site and capitol of the Iroquoise 
Confederacy which ethnologists are 
agreed represented the highest develop¬ 
ment of Indian culture to be found in 
the United States. All in all, to possess 
a farm in this fair and favored region 
is a birth-right not easily equalled. 
The Story of the Settler 
But the simple tale that I began to 
'tell is this: 
Down by the shore of one of the 
largest of these lakes is an old farm- 
By J.VAN WAGENEN, JR. 
house that stands under old, wide 
spreading trees. The trees were old 
when the first comer began to chop out 
of the forest a spot for his cabin and 
he spared them because he was a man 
who took thought for the future, who 
knew how beautiful is a great ti'ee, and 
how many genei*ations of men. must 
pass away before an oak or hemlock or 
pine attain their full lusty prime. This 
Puritan pioneer and his young wife 
were a part of that great wave of New 
England emigration which flooded into 
Western New York during the first two 
or three decades following the close of 
the Revolutionary War. To men 
accustomed to the stone-strewn, thin 
New England fields it must have seemed 
another Promised Land—a new Canaan 
—when they came into the country of 
which I write. 
The old house by the lake was built 
by the son of the man who spared the 
roof tree and it covered the cellar hole 
of the first cabin. He reared it when 
the rigors of the pioneer period were 
giving place to a secure and substantial 
civilization. In size it was generous and 
it was built upon honor by a master- 
craftsman dit of the oak and pine that 
grew about it. The years had dealt 
very kindly with the house and farm 
and it had gathered to itself what only 
the years can purchase—tradition. On 
it everywhere was graven the record 
of the passing generations. 
Down Through the Generations 
Through the rear door that looked 
toward the farmyard and barns had 
passed all the flooding traffic of those 
years—the simple, homely traffic of the 
fai’m. Thi'ough it had passed the heavy, 
rasping feet of man with milk pails 
and food-stuffs for the cellar—the feet 
of generations of men faring forth for 
the plowing or the harvest and return¬ 
ing again eager for the abundant tables. 
Through that door had gone the lighter 
footfalls of busy—0 so busy—^women 
going for the hanging of clothes or the 
feeding of poultry—the bringing of 
wood for the fire or the gathering of 
vegetables from the garden—the multi¬ 
tudinous, overflowing, crowding tasks 
of the'women of our farms. 
The Doorstone Worn Smooth 
Through it passed a long proces¬ 
sion of the eager, restless storming 
feet of children who played around that 
door or entered it to be comforted in 
their little griefs by a mother’s kiss or 
went noisily trooping through it with 
dinner pails as they set out for school. 
What a long, long pageant it had 
been—sometimes gay, sometimes grave, 
but always ready for the day’s work 
and the set task. No wonder the door- 
stone was worn smooth and hollowing 
beneath all those thronging feet. 
The other side of the house looked 
toward the highway and the lake and 
here was the front door with its fan¬ 
light above it. This door opened into 
a hall with a big room on either side 
and here was the sanctuary of the more 
formal, less intimate life of the farm. 
Here in the old days—much more fre¬ 
quently than* now—had been held the 
old time country merrymakings. Here 
in the room on the right hand the 
daughters of the house had stood side- 
by-side with the chosen lover to re¬ 
ceive the sanction and approval of the 
church. Here men and women of the 
farm had at length had homage done 
them as they held court in the austere 
dignity of death. Through that same 
door in the thrilling days of ’61 a son 
of the farni had gone bravely forth in 
a uniform of fine blue cloth and with 
pride in his eye and step. And up in 
the family burial plot beneath the pine 
tree a tiny faded flag waved in the 
breeze and a stone was set up in loving 
memory of Captain -of the —th 
Company, Infantry, New York Volun¬ 
teers, but the Boy himself slept well in 
the sandy field of the Battle of the 
Wilderness outside of Richmond. 
The House Still as of Old 
And the grandSon of the pioneer had 
kept the house outwardly as of old— 
plain and severe with white walls and 
green blinds, but within he had brought 
to it modern conveniences and comforts 
for God had blessed and established 
the work of his hands. Around the 
house was the well-kept farm with 
orchards and corn fields and acres of 
wheat and generous gambrel roofed 
barns and a wind breah of evergreens 
on the north and west and in front the 
smooth highway and just beyond the 
shore line of the lake and the water 
which took on all the moods of the 
sky above it—sometimes motionless and 
glassy on breathless summer days— 
sometimes flashing and sparkling when 
the heavens above were blue and the 
breezes ruffled its surface—sometimes 
dark and gloomy and sorrowful under 
leaden November skies. Seventy years 
and more the man had lived by the 
side of the lake. He knew it in all its 
moods and changes and its face was to 
him the face of a loved, familiar friend. 
Now it chanced one perfect, summer 
day that a most imposing car came 
rolling leisurely 
along the highway 
and just on the top 
of the rise of ground 
by the house it drew 
to the side of the 
road and the occu¬ 
pant stepped out 
and for a consider¬ 
able length of time 
carefully studied 
the landscape and 
the surroundings. It 
was early July “the 
prime of summer 
time.” A few tow¬ 
ering clouds were 
serenely sheparded 
on a field of deepest 
blue. A pleasant 
summer breeze was 
blowing out of the 
northwest and the 
lake, blue as the sky 
above it, was wrink¬ 
ling and flashing 
and here and there 
a tiny white cap broke broke on the 
blue, and here and there were acres of 
purple where the shadows of the drift¬ 
ing clouds swept swiftly over it. Now 
and then the graceful form of the un¬ 
resting lake gull sailed across the field 
of vision. And from where he stood 
the man could catch the regular, rhyth¬ 
mical swish-swash plash of the little 
waves breaking on the pebbly shore. 
Three miles away on the other side of 
the lake stood out the swelling hillside 
with country roads etched on a green 
background and with patches of wood¬ 
land and white walled farmhouses and 
big barns and the church spire of the 
hamlet on the hill. 
All that Could be Desired 
Then he turned and his eye took in 
the old, well-kept farmhouse under its 
mighty ti'ees. He knew little of crops 
but he saw the beauty of the bronzing 
wheat that rippled and bowed to the 
breeze and he felt the charm of the 
young corn rows getting tall enough 
so that each plant danced and gleamed 
in the sunshine. But after all, crops 
did not greatly interest him. He had 
money—money enough so that he was 
{Continued on page 491) 
“The Pinger Lake Country—Through all time to come that region can 
, never be known by any other term” 
