The 500,000 tuns of Hay thus realized would have saved 200,000 head of cattle from being sent to the butcher while too thin for good beef, while every one of them was required for further use, and will have to be replaced at a heavy cost. Shall not these things be considered? Shall not all who can do so at moderate cost resolve to test on their own farms the advantages and benefits that may be secured by Irrigation?

6

When Mr. Greeley removed to his later farmhouse,—which continued to be his home during the remainder of his life,— the Chappaqua property had been vastly improved, and very much of the work had been done under his direct supervision, not a little, especially in the woods and orchard, by his own hands. The residence itself was a large, plain mansion, with wide piazzas extending along the entire front of the building. It is an exceedingly comfortable home, and, with few trees to shut out the sun, has an air of cheerfulness unknown to the house in the woods.

Mr. Greeley's orchard became quite famous in the country, and in 1870-a great fruit year-he produced more cider apples than he could sell to the vinegar-makers at fifty cents a barrel. He built a fine barn on his farm, wholly of stones gathered or blasted from the slope near the summit of which it stands. He built it in such manner that the walls are nearly solid rock, the roof being of Vermont slate. "I drive," he says, "into three stories,—a basement for manures, a stable for animals, and a story above this for hay,-while grain is pitched into the loft or scaffold' above, from whose floor the roof rises steep to a height of sixteen to eighteen feet. There should have been more windows for light and air; but my barn is convenient, while impervious to frost, and I am confident that cattle are wintered in it at a fourth less cost than when they shiver in board shanties, with cracks between the boards that will admit your hand."

Thus the general facts in respect of Mr. Greeley's farmerlife were: He found healthful exercise for both body and mind in the labour which he there performed. He succeeded admirably in making a considerable tract of what in many portions of the country would be thought "waste land" not • Ibid. pp. 76-7-8.

"WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING."

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only cultivable but a highly valuable portion of his farm. He raised good crops. Year after year, his practical success herein was as good as that of his neighbours. He made an exceptionally good orchard, waging constant and exterminating warfare against the caterpillars. "I lay down the general proposition," he once said, "that no man who harbours caterpillars has any moral right to apples-that each grower should be required to make his choice between them." He had fine success in drainage, and practically established the value of irrigation on a small scale. He made it clear that he could make farming reasonably and steadily profitable.

We shall have occasion hereafter to speak at some length of Mr. Greeley as the author of books, and there to make special mention of the volume entitled "What I Know of Farming." It will suffice here to say that the essays which compose the work were originally contributed, in weekly installments to a public journal, under the heading which forms the title of the volume. About this time a vast deal of game was made of Mr. Greeley by the wits and wags of the press in all parts of the country. Scarcely a journal appeared that did not have some jest at his expense. One, I recollect, gravely asserted that Horace Greeley preferred the hydraulic ram to the Merino. Another asserted that for the cultivation of sardines he preferred uplands to lowlands. Still another asseverated that he undoubtedly produced the best turnips in the United States, and at the trifling cost of two dollars and eighty-seven cents apiece. There was scarcely an absurdity, indeed, but he was charged withal, and it may well be doubted whether any other topic ever served for so many newspaperial jests as Mr. Greeley's "What I Know of Farming." Singularly enough, not a few persons received these jokes as solemn facts; and it may safely be affirmed that there are to this day thousands of American citizens who think that Mr. Greeley, instead of the reasonably successful farmer he was, was in that regard only fit to be laughed at.

The effect of these constant jests upon Mr. Greeley was sometimes extremely laughable. The good wit or the passable waggery were amusing to him; but when he received letters

propounding preposterous inquiries, as he sometimes did, he manifested less amiability. In truth, as we shall presently see, the essays which were made the cause of so much mirth and so much unintended misrepresentation, came to form a volume of exceeding practical value to farmers, and a notable illustration of Mr. Greeley's hearty devotion to the elevation of Labour and the welfare of the people.