To Plow is to Pray--to Plant is to Prophecy,
and the Harvest Answers and Fulfills.

I AM not an old and experienced farmer, nor a tiller of the soil, nor
one of the hard-handed sons of labor. I imagine, however, that I know
something about cultivating the soil, and getting happiness out of the
ground.

I know enough to know that agriculture is the basis of all wealth,
prosperity and luxury. I know that in a country where the tillers of the
fields are free, everybody is free and ought to be prosperous. Happy
is that country where those who cultivate the land own it Patriotism is
born in the woods and fields--by lakes and streams--by crags and plains.

The old way of farming was a great mistake. Everything was done the
wrong way. It was all work and waste, weariness and want. They used
to fence a hundred and sixty acres of land with a couple of dogs.
Everything was left to the protection of the blessed trinity of chance,
accident and mistake.

When I was a farmer they used to haul wheat two hundred miles in wagons
and sell it for thirty-five cents a bushel. They would bring home about
three hundred feet of lumber, two bunches of shingles, a barrel of salt,
and a cook-stove that never would draw and never did bake.

In those blessed days the people lived on corn and bacon. Cooking was
an unknown art. Eating was a necessity, not a pleasure. It was hard work
for the cook to keep on good terms even with hunger.

We had poor houses. The rain held the roofs in perfect contempt, and
the snow drifted joyfully on the floors and beds. They had no barns. The
horses were kept in rail pens surrounded with straw. Long before spring
the sides would be-eaten away and nothing but roofs would be left. Food
is fuel. When the cattle were exposed to all the blasts of winter, it
took all the corn and oats that could be stuffed into them to prevent
actual starvation.

In those times most farmers thought the best place for the pig-pen was
immediately in front of the house. There is nothing like sociability.

Women were supposed to know the art of making fires without fuel. The
wood pile consisted, as a general thing, of one log upon which an axe or
two had been worn out in vain. There was nothing to kindle a fire with.
Pickets were pulled from the garden fence, clap-boards taken from the
house, and every stray plank was seized upon for kindling. Everything
was done in the hardest way. Everything about the farm was disagreeab