erpetual motion machine; it was
an attempt, if not to get something for nothing, at least to get
something at the lowest cost, regardless of the future. But nature
cannot be cheated, and the modern farmer has learned or is learning
rapidly, that he must rotate and diversify his crops if he would succeed
in the long run. Consequently he has begun rotation. He also replenishes
his soil with nitrogen-producing legumes, along with corn planting and
with summer fallowing. He engages in the raising of chickens, hogs,
cattle, and horses. This diversification saves him from total loss in
case of a bad year in one line. The farmer does not carry all his eggs
in one basket. A bad year with one kind of crops may be a good year with
some other. Diversification also makes farming an all-year occupation,
every part of which is bringing a good return, instead of being a job
with an income for the summer and an outlay for the winter. Live stock,
sheep, hogs, and cattle grow nights, Sundays, and winters as well as at
other times, and so the profits are accumulating all the year round.

=The Best is the Cheapest.=--The modern farmer also realizes that it
takes no more, nor indeed as much, to feed and house the best kinds of
animals than it does to keep the scrub varieties. In all of this there
is a large field for study and investigation. But one must be interested
in his animals and understand them. They should know his voice and he
should know their needs and their habits. As in every other kind of work
there must be a reasonable interest; otherwise it cannot be an
occupation which will make life happy and successful.

=Good Work.=--The good farmer has the _feel_ and the habit of good work.
The really successful man in any calling or profession is he who does
his work conscientiously and as well as he can. The sloven becomes the
bungler, and the bungler is on the high road to failure. It is always a
pleasant thing to see a man do his work well and artistically. It is the
habit, the policy, the attitude of thus doing that tell in the long run.
A farmer may by chance get a good crop by seeding on unplowed stubble
land, but he must feel that he is engaged in the business of trying to
cheat himself, like the boy playing solitaire--he does not let his right
hand know what his left hand is doing. The good farmer is an artist in
his work, while the poor farmer is a veritable bungler--blaming his
tools and Nature herself for his failures.

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