o back to the farm and earn his living by tilling the soil.

He studied the wants of the farmer, knew the value of good roads, of
fertilizers and drainage, and would argue long and vigorously as to the
saving in plowing with three horses instead of two, or on the use of
mules versus horses. He had positive views as to the value of
Clydesdales compared with Percherons.

So did he love the Clydes that for many years he drove a half-breed,
shaggy-legged and flat-tailed plow-horse to a buggy, and used to declare
that all a good Clyde really needed was patience in training to make him
a racehorse. He used to declare the horse he drove could trot very
fast--"if I would let him out." Unhappily he never let him out, but the
suspicion was that the speed-limit of the honest nag was about six miles
an hour, with the driver working his passage.

Ayrshire cattle always caught his eye, and he would stop farmers in the
field and interrogate them as to their success in cattle-breeding. When
told that his love for Ayrshire cattle was only a prejudice on account
of his love for Robert Burns, who was born at Ayr, he would say, "A
mon's a mon for a' that."

He declared that great men and great animals always came from the same
soil, and where you could produce good horses and cattle you could grow
great men.

Mr. Oliver loved trees, and liked to plant them himself and encouraged
boys to plant them.

For music he cared little, yet during the Seventies and the Eighties he
had a way of buying "Mason and Hamlin" organs, and sending them as
Christmas presents to some of his farmer friends where there were
growing girls. "A sewing-machine, a Mason and Hamlin organ, and an
Oliver Plow form a trinity of necessities for a farmer," he once said.

When Orange Judd first began to issue his "Rural American," the
enterprise received the hearty interest and support of Mr. Oliver and he
subscribed for hundreds of copies.

He thought that farmers should be the most intelligent, the most healthy
and the happiest people on earth--nothing was too good for a farmer.
"Your businessmen are only middlemen--the farmer digs his wealth out of
the ground," he used to say.

He quoted Brigham Young's advice to the Mormons: "Raise food-products
and feed the miners and you will all get rich. But if you mine for gold
and silver, a very few will get rich, and the most of you will die
poor."

* * * * *

So there is the point: Jam