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it brings a low price ; a greater wonder that it sells at all. No wonder, 
that such management, or rather mismanagement, leads to hard times, 
especially when pursued from year to year without variation. The differ¬ 
ence between such negligent, careless, want-to-sell-out, sort of farming, 
and that which is done as it should be, is as great as is the difference 
between folly and poverty, and prosperity and wealth. 
But as it is not pleasant, nor perhaps profitable, to dwell too long 
upon the dark side of things, let us turn for a moment and look at the 
bright side. Wisconsin can show a few good farms, and a few good farmers 
who do every thing as it should be done, and whose farming yields a 
pleasure and a profit. 
I have such a picture in my mind at the present moment—let us look 
at it, and if perchance it proves the picture of the farm of any member of 
this Society he may of right feel a pride in it; but if on the other hand, 
he is one of ‘ the farmers’ whom I have described, let him be ashamed, 
and mend his course at once. The farm in question, is in no respect 
better situated naturallv than thousands of others scattered all over the 
* 
State; nor is its owner a stronger or a more intellectual man than many 
of his neighbors, but fortunately what talent he has is enough, and of 
the right kind, to adapt him to his situation. His farm is his home to 
all intents, and he does not propose to sell it the very first time he is 
offered a few dollars more than it is worth. Fortunately for him, he is 
not cursed with the wandering Tartar spirit of most western Yankees, 
who at every prospect, of making a sixpence, will sell their homestead 
and their all; bid good-bye forever to proven and cherished friends, to 
established comforts and blessings; taking their wives and their children, 
and starting again, like the savage, to bury themselves anew amid the 
deeper shades of the wilderness. Content with his own good homestead, 
though it does not contain quite all the good land in the neighborhood, 
yet he covets no adjoining ‘eighty,’ nor feels, as many are wont, that it 
is his duty to provide farms for all his children and grand children. In¬ 
stead of buying more land, which he does not need, or putting his sur¬ 
plus money out at high, and perhaps illegal rates of interest, he uses it 
in improving, adorning, and beautifying the homestead. 
\ 
A new house is erected, upon a pleasanter site than was occupied by 
the log cabin; a shady lawn comes gracefully down to the street, to which 
