TEN ACRES ENOUGH

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For nearly twenty years I had been hampered with having notes of my own or of other parties to pay. But of all the farmers I had visited, only one had ever given a note, and he had made a vow never to give another. My wife was shrewd enough to observe and remark on this fact at the time, it was so different from my own experience. She admitted there must be some satisfaction in carrying on a business which did not require the giving of notes.

Looking at the matter of removal to the country in a practical light, I found that in the city I was paying three hundred dollars per annum rent for a dwelling house. It was the interest of five thousand dollars, yet it afforded nothing but a shelter for my family.

I might continue to pay that rent for fifty years, without, at the end of that time, having acquired the ownership of either a stone upon the chimney, or a shingle in the roof. If the house rose in value, the rise would be to the owner's benefit, not to mine. It would really be injurious to me, as the rise would lead him to demand an increase of his rent.

But put the value of the house into a farm, or even the half of it and the farm would have a dwelling house upon it, in which my family would find as good a shelter, while the land, if cultivated as industriously as I had always cultivated business, would belie the flood of evidence I had been studying for many years if it failed to yield to my efforts the returns which it was manifestly returning to others.

We could live contentedly on a thousand dollars a year on the farm and we should have no landlord to pay. My wife, in pinching times, has financiered us through the year on several hundred less. I confess to having lived as well on the diminished rations as I wanted to. Indeed, until one tries it for himself, it is incredible what dignity there is in an old hat, what virtue in a time worn coat, and how savory. the dinner table can be made without sirloin steaks or cranberry tarts.

Thus, let it be remembered, my views and aspirations had no tinge of extravagance. My rule was moderation. The tortures of a city struggle without capital, had sobered me down to being contented with a bare competency.

I might fail in some particulars at the outset, from ignorance, but I was in the prime of life, strong, active, industrious, and tractable, and what I did not know I could soon learn from others, for farmers have no secrets. Then I had seen too much of the uncertainty of banks and stocks, and ledger accounts, and promissory notes, to be willing to invest any thing in either as a permanency. At best they are fluctuating and uncertain, up today and down tomorrow. My great preference had always been for land.

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