success--of heavy crops
and large returns for care and labor invested. These are mostly on a
small scale; as for instance, one man produces from at the rate of 200
to 300 bushels of strawberries per acre, on a few rods of ground.
Another, his neighbor, gets about as many quarts. The conditions of soil
and climate are about the same. Now is Providence to be charged with
this disparity? Certainly not. The same care, the same intelligent
management, and the same amount of labor bestowed, would have produced
as favorable results in the one case as in the other.

And so, as to larger tracts. I hold that what my neighbor can do on a
dozen square rods, he and I both ought to be equally able to do on five
or ten, or twenty times as large a tract. But, you say, these large
yields are the results of extraordinary care. True, they are; and that
proves my theory--that extraordinary care will produce extraordinary
results. What one man can do once, he can do again and all the time; and
we all can do the same. Extraordinary care may be defined as the care
necessary to produce good results, and if that care were always applied
it would cease to be extraordinary.

I myself saw in my neighbor's field a crop of strawberries, on two rows,
which at the safest and closest calculation I could make, yielded at the
rate of over 300 bushels per acre. He had but the two rows; had given
them extraordinary care--had kept them clear of grass and weeds--and the
ground mellow--and had mulched them with forest leaves. Those two rows
were in a field of several acres in size. The same care in planting, in
cultivating, in mulching, and the whole tract would have produced
corresponding results. That same year, my crop, on soil equally as good,
reached a yield of less than one-fifth in amount. Why this difference?
Providence favored him and didn't favor me, I might say, if I felt
disposed to make a scape-goat of Providence for my misdeeds. But I do
not believe that Providence did anything of the sort. The fault was my
own; and I have no right to attempt to shift the responsibility. And it
was not want of knowledge either. We, none of us, do as well as we know
how. Our failures are mostly the results of sheer neglect. Mistakes, we
incline to call them. Let us call them sins, and repent of them; and not
endeavor to do as Aaron did, pack them off into the wilderness. When we
bring ourselves to thus correct our mistakes, our crops will be
increased threefold,