sowed clover and herdsgrass seed
for a hay crop the following year. This we termed "seeding down;" and
the Old Squire liked rye the best of all grain crops for this purpose.
"Grass seed 'catches' better with rye than oats, or barley, or even
wheat," he was accustomed to say.

When we harvested the grain, he would be seen peering into the stubble
with an observant eye, and would then be heard to say, "A pretty good
'catch' this year," or, "It hasn't 'caught' worth a cent."

It was not on more than half the years that we secured a fair wheat
crop. Maine is not a State wholly favorable for wheat; yet the Old
Squire persisted in sowing it, year by year, although Addison often
demonstrated to him that oats were more profitable and could be
exchanged for flour. "But a farmer ought to raise his bread-stuff," the
old gentleman would rejoin stoutly. "How do we know, too, that some
calamity may not cut off the Western wheat crop; then where should we
be?"

It is a pity, perhaps, that Eastern farmers do not generally display the
same independent spirit.

But the Old Squire himself finally gave up wheat raising. Gram and the
girls found fault with our Maine grown wheat flour, because the bread
from it was not very white and did not "rise" well. The neighbors had
Western flour and their bread was white and light, while ours was darker
colored and sometimes heavy, in spite of their best efforts.

No farmer can hold out long against such indoor repinings, but the Old
Squire never came to look with favor on Western flour; he admitted that
it made whiter bread, but he always declared that it was not as
wholesome! The fact was that it seemed to him to be an unfarmerlike
proceeding, to buy his flour. For the same reason he would never buy
Western corn for his cattle.

"When I cannot raise fodder enough for my stock, I'll quit farming," he
would exclaim, when his neighbors told him of the corn they were buying.
As a matter of fact, the old gentleman lived to see a good many of his
neighbors' farms under mortgage, and held a number of these papers
himself. It was not a wholly propitious day for New England farmers when
they began buying Western corn, on the theory that they could buy it
cheaper than they could raise it themselves. The net result has been
that their profits have often gone West, or into the pockets of the
railway companies which draw the corn to them.

Another drawback to wheat raising in Maine is the uncertain weath