itance
of struggle and despair. George Hope's mother tried for years to
squeeze out of her butter and eggs the price of a table large enough for
all her family to sit round at once, but died without obtaining it.

At the age of eighteen years, George Hope took hold of this unpromising
farm, his parents being in declining health, nearly exhausted by their
long struggle with it. He brought to his task an intelligent and
cultivated mind. He had been for four years in a lawyer's office. He had
read with great admiration the writings of the American Channing; and he
now used his intelligence in putting new life into this old land.

The first thing was to acquire more capital; and the only way of
accomplishing this was to do much of the work himself. Mere manual
labor, however, would not have sufficed; for he found himself baffled by
the soil. Part of the land being wet, cold clay, and part yellow sand,
he improved both by mixing them together. He spread sand upon his clay,
and clay upon his sand, as well as abundant manure, and he established a
kiln for converting some of the clay into tiles, with which he drained
his own farm, besides selling large quantities of tiles to the
neighboring farmers. For a time, he was in the habit of burning a kiln
of eleven thousand tiles every week, and he was thus enabled to expend
in draining his own farms about thirteen thousand dollars, without going
in debt for it.

He believed in what is called "high farming," and spent enormous sums
in fertilizing the soil. For a mere top-dressing of guano, bones,
nitrate of soda, or sulphate of ammonia, he spent one spring eight
thousand dollars. These large expenditures, directed as they were by a
man who thoroughly understood his business, produced wonderful results.
He gained a large fortune, and his farm became so celebrated, that
travelers arrived from all parts of Europe, and even from the United
States, to see it. An American called one day to inspect the farm, when
Mr. Hope began, as usual, to express his warm admiration for Dr.
Channing. The visitor was a nephew of the distinguished preacher, and he
was exceedingly surprised to find his uncle so keenly appreciated in
that remote spot.

It is difficult to say which of his two kinds of land improved the most
under his vigorous treatment. His sandy soil, the crop of which in
former years was sometimes blown out of the ground, was so strengthened
by its dressing of clay as to produce excellen