George E. Waring

“ If the work is insecurely done, and is liable, in five years or in fifty, to become worthless; the increase of the crops resulting from it, must not only cover the yearly interest on the cost, but the yearly depreciation as well. Therefore what may seem at the time of doing the work to be cheapness, is really the greatest extravagance. It is like building a brick wall with clay for mortar. The bricks and the workmanship cost full price, and the small saving on the mortar will topple the wall over in a few years, while, if well cemented, it would have lasted for centuries. ”

“ Nature, as he knows it, shows at times an unattractive side; and he fails to recognize precisely what is meant by Mother Earth as a source of dignity. To him Mother Earth is an exacting parent, calling for constant and regular toil, and whipping him on day by day with weeds to be hoed, dry gardens to be watered, snowdrifts to be shovelled, and an almost endless round of embarrassments to be overcome. As for the purity and simplicity of the farmer's life, he knows very much better than to pin his faith to it. ”

“ Perhaps for the last time in my life I was taking the breath of an English twilight,—sweetest to those whose childhood and youth have fed on the rhyme and tale the green old land has sent to her world-wide brood, and who come, in riper life, to find the fancies of early years warm and living on every side, in hedge and field, in cowslip and primrose, in nightingale and lark. ”

“ In the early prosecution of the study, you will find, perhaps, nothing to relieve its tediousness; but, when the foundation of agricultural knowledge is laid in your mind so thoroughly that you know the character and use of every stone, then may your thoughts build on it fabrics of such varied construction, and so varied in their uses, that there will be opened to you a new world, even more wonderful and more beautiful than the outward world, which exhibits itself to the senses. Thus may you live two lives, each assisting in the enjoyment of the other. ”

“ Why is it that the farmer believes, why should any one believe, in these modern days, when the advancement of science has so simplified the industrial processes of the world, and thrown its light into so many corners, that the word "mystery" is hardly to be applied to any operation of nature, save to that which depends on the always mysterious Principle of Life,—when the effect of any combination of physical circumstances may be foretold, with almost unerring certainty,—why should we believe that the success of farming must, after all, depend mainly on chance? ”

“ If this foundation is laid thoroughly, the learner will regard plants and soils as old acquaintances, with whose formation and properties he is as familiar as with the construction of a building or simple machine. A simple spear of grass will become an object of interest, forming itself into a perfect plant, with full development of roots, stem, leaves, and seeds, by processes with which he feels acquainted. The soil will cease to be mere dirt; it will be viewed as a compound substance, whose composition is a matter of interest, and whose care is productive of intellectual pleasure. ”

“ Just as the citizen feels the attractions of the country, which are so novel to his town-bred taste, so the countryman finds a charm in the novelty of the town. As one is led toward the quiet and solitude of the fields and woods, so the other is drawn by the life and interest of the community.
As a rule, at least in America, where the facilities for pleasant country living are far less than in England, the countryman who goes to town is less likely to wish himself back on the farm than is the town-bred farmer to long for the comforts and conveniences of his former condition. ”

“ It can hardly be a cheerful sight, in March, for a thrifty man to see a crowd of mad horsemen tearing through his twenty acres of well-wintered wheat, filling the air with a spray of soil and uprooted plants. ”

“ Ask nineteen farmers out of twenty, who hold strong clay land, and they will tell you it is of no use placing deep four-foot drains in such soils—the water cannot get in; a horse's foot-hole (without an opening under it) will hold water like a basin; and so on. Well, five minutes after, you tell the same farmers you propose digging a cellar, well bricked, six or eight feet deep; what is their remark? 'Oh! it's of no use your making an underground cellar in our soil, you can't keep the water out!' Was there ever such an illustration of prejudice as this? ”

“ Farming is in a certain sense the basis of all individual and national prosperity; but the case would be more fairly stated were we to say that farming happens to be the first step in an industrial process, many steps of which are alike essential to civilization. The farmer produces raw material, and without raw material the world must come to a stop; but the butcher, the baker, the spinner, the weaver, and every artisan, render as essential service in the development of this raw material into the forms demanded by modern life, as does the farmer in growing it. ”

“ By the word gas, we mean air. Oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, when pure, are always in the form of air. Oxygen has the power of uniting with many substances, forming compounds which are different from either of their constituents alone. Thus: oxygen unites with iron and forms oxide of iron or iron-rust, which does not resemble the gray metallic iron nor the gas oxygen; oxygen unites with carbon and forms carbonic acid, which is an invisible gas, but not at all like pure oxygen; oxygen combines with hydrogen and forms water. All of the water, ice, steam, etc., are composed of these two gases. ”

“ He would walk like a cart-horse at the head of a marching column, would step like a lord in passing in review, would prance down the main street of a town as though vain of all applause, would leap any fence or ditch or fallen timber to which he might be put, would fly as though shot from a gun in passing along the line ”

“ The way in which an analysis should be used is a matter of much importance. To a man who knows nothing of chemistry (be he ever so successful a farmer) , an analysis, as received from a chemist, would be as useless and unintelligible as though it were written in Chinese; while, if a chemist who knew nothing of farming, were to give him advice concerning the application of manures, he would be led equally astray, and his course would be any thing but practical. It is necessary that chemical and practical knowledge should be combined, and then the value of analysis will be fully demonstrated. ”

“ Especially should the use of cast iron be avoided, as being from every point of view, and under all circumstances, whether in the shape of cast-iron dogs or deer, or attempts at the divine human form, absolutely and entirely inadmissible for artistic uses. Better a dug-out log horse-trough, overflowing through a notch in its side, as an ornament to the best-kept village green, than the most elaborate pitcher-spilling nymph that was ever cast in an iron-foundry. ”

“ An open ditch cut by the most skillful workman, in the summer, affords the best illustration of this underground mischief. Nothing can look smoother and more even than the bottom, until that uncompromising test of accurate levels, the water, makes its appearance: all on a sudden the whole scene is changed, the eye-accredited level vanishes as if some earthquake had taken place: here, there is a gravelly scour, along which the stream rushes in a thousand little angry-looking ripples ”

“ It was the glorious day of her life, and, as we dismounted at the Jersey ferry, she was trembling still with the delightful excitement.
At Washington we were encamped east of the Capitol, and for a month were busy in getting settled in the new harness. Mr. Lincoln used to drive out sometimes to our evening drill, and he always had a pleasant word—as he always had for every one, and as every one had for her—for my charming thoroughbred, who had made herself perfectly at home with the troops, and enjoyed every display of the marvellous raiment of the regiment. ”

“ Where we are to look for relief, is the most serious problem. Relief must be found, or the character of our farming class must assuredly degenerate. In one way or another we must change, in a radical degree, the conditions of the farmer's life. We can perfectly understand why it should be distasteful to any young person of ordinary ambition or intelligence; and we know, from the constant flocking of farmers' sons and daughters to even the least attractive employments of the town or village, that this distaste is everywhere a controlling one. ”

“ The changes which nitrogen undergoes, from plants to animals, or, by decomposition, to the form of ammonia in the atmosphere, are as varied as those of carbon and the constituents of water. The same little atom of nitrogen may one year form a part of a plant, and the next become a constituent of an animal, or, with the decomposed dead animal, may form a part of the soil. If the animal should fall into the sea he may become food for fishes, and our atom of nitrogen may form a part of a fish. ”

“ The rude work of an unthinking farmer, who scratches the surface soil with his plow, plants his seed, and trusts to the chances of a greater or less return, is unmitigated drudgery,—unworthy of an intelligent man; but he who investigates all of the causes of success and failure in farming, and adapts every operation to the requirements of the circumstances under which he works ”

“ I had not laid down my life in the war, but during its wonderful four years I had laid down, so completely, the ways of life of a sober and industrious citizen, and had soaked my whole nature so full of the subtile ether of idleness and vagabondism, that it seemed as easy and as natural to become the Aladdin I might have dreamed myself to be as the delver I had really been. ”

“ One might go on through the long range of incidental arguments—such as lighted streets, well-kept sidewalks, winter snow-ploughs, and good drainage, and a wholesome pride in a tidy, cosey village, until even the most close-fisted of all our class would confess that the extra cost would bring full value in return, and until he would recognize the fact that the attractions of such a home as the village would make possible would be likely to insure his being succeeded in his wholesome trade by the brightest and best of his sons,—a result that would surely be worth more than all it would cost. ”

“ If any single fact connected with tile-drainage is established, beyond all possible doubt, it is that in the stiffest clay soils ever cultivated, drains four feet deep will act effectually; the water will find its way to them, more and more freely and completely, as the drying of successive years, and the penetration and decay of the roots of successive crops, modify the character of the land, and they will eventually be practically so porous that,—so far as the ease of drainage is concerned,—no distinction need, in practice, be made between them and the less retentive loams. ”

“ From Batesville we commenced our memorable march to join the fleet that had just passed Memphis, following down the left bank of the river to Augusta, and then striking across the cotton country to Helena,—a march on which we enjoyed the rarest picturesqueness of plantation life, and suffered enough from heat and hunger and thirst, and stifling, golden dust to more than pay for it. ”

“ But if we take the case of the average farmer with average human weaknesses, we cannot fail to see, that, however well he may have borne up against the more obvious requirements of his work, he has been warped and cramped, and often made in many ways unlovely, by the hard and anxious toil through which his halting success has been attained.
In nearly every other occupation than farming, the hardest worker finds a daily relief from his toil, and from the suggestion of toil, in a home that is entirely apart from his industry. ”