Good Seed and Trees.=--The successful farmer knows from study and
experience that only healthy seed and healthy animals will produce good
grain and strong animals after their kind. He does not try tricks on
Nature. He selects the best kinds of trees and shrubbery and when these
are planted he takes care of them. He realizes that what is worth sowing
and planting is worth taking care of.

=A Good Caretaker.=--The successful and intelligent farmer keeps all his
buildings, sheds, and fences in good repair and well painted. He is not
penny-wise and pound-foolish. He knows the value of paint from an
economic and financial point of view as well as from an artistic and
aesthetic one. Knowing these things, and from an ingrained feeling and
habit, he sees to it that all his machinery and tools are under good
cover, and are not exposed to the gnawing tooth of the elements. This
habit and attitude of the man are typical and make for success as well
as for contentment. As it is not the saving of a particular dollar that
makes a man thrifty or wealthy, but the _habit_ of saving dollars; so it
is not the taking care of this or that piece of machinery, or that
particular building, but the habit of doing such things that leads him
to success.

=Family Cooeperation.=--Such a man will also enlist the interest and the
active cooperation of his sons and daughters by giving them property or
interests which they can call their own; he will make them, in a
measure, co-partners with him on the farm. There could be no better way
of developing in them their best latent talents. It would result in
mutual profit and, what is better, in mutual love and happiness. One of
the greatest factors in a true education is to be interested,
self-active, and busy toward a definite and worthy end. Under such
circumstances both the parents and the children might be benefited by
taking short courses in the nearest agricultural college; and a plan of
giving each his turn could be worked out to the interest and profit of
all the family. Such a family would become local leaders in various
enterprises.

=An Ideal Life.=--It would seem that such an intelligent and successful
farmer and his family could lead an ideal life. Every life worth while
must have work, disappointments, and reverses. But work--reasonable
work--is a blessing and not a curse. Work is an educator, a civilizer, a
sanctifier.

A family like that described might in the course of a few years poss