d to do this to advantage we must have improved stock. There
is no profit in farming without good tillage, larger crops, improved
stock, and higher feeding. The details will be modified by
circumstances, but the principles are the same wherever agri-_culture_
is practised.

CHAPTER IX.

HOW TO RESTORE A WORN-OUT FARM.

I have never yet seen a "worn-out" or "exhausted farm." I know many
farms that are "run down." I bought just such a farm a dozen or more
years ago, and I have been trying hard, ever since, to bring it up to a
profitable standard of productiveness--and am still trying, and expect
to have to keep on trying so long as I keep on farming. The truth is,
there never was a farm so rich, that the farmer did not wish it was
richer.

I have succeeded in making the larger part of my farm much more
productive than it ever was before, since it was cleared from the
original forest. But it is far from being as rich as I want it. The
truth is, God sent us into this world to work, and He has given us
plenty to do, if we will only do it. At any rate, this is true of
farming. He has not given us land ready to our hand. The man who first
cleared up my farm, had no easy task. He fairly earned all the good
crops he ever got from it. I have never begrudged him one particle of
the "natural manure" he took out of the land, in the form of wheat,
corn, oats, and hay. On the dry, sandy knolls, he probably got out a
good portion of this natural manure, but on the wetter and heavier
portions of the farm, he probably did not get out one-hundredth part of
the natural manure which the land contained.

Now, when such a farm came into my possession, what was I to do with it?

"Tell us what you did," said the Doctor, "and then, perhaps, we can tell
you what you ought to have done, and what you ought to have left
undone."

"I made many mistakes."

"Amen," said the Deacon; "I am glad to hear you acknowledge it."

"Well," said the Doctor, "it is better to make mistakes in trying to do
something, than to hug our self-esteem, and fold our hands in indolence.
It has been said that critics are men who have failed in their
undertakings. But I rather think the most disagreeable, and
self-satisfied critics, are men who have never done anything, or tried
to do anything, themselves."

The Deacon, who, though something of an old fogy, is a good deal of a
man, and possessed of good common sense, and much experience, took these
remark