CHAPTER XXVI
ANOTHER LESSON ON TOBACCO

THE old man had stuck his cob pipe in a pocket and filled his mouth with a chew of tobacco.

He walked by Percy's buggy with the tobacco juice drizzling from the corners of his mouth, and turned down the road toward the house.

Percy finished boring the hole and then returned to the buggy.

"Christ, that old man eats tobacco like a beast!" exclaimed the driver as Percy approached.

"Are you speaking to me?" asked Percy.

"Why, certainly."

"That is not my name, please," admonished Percy, " but I can tell you that I know Him well and that He is my best friend."

"What, old Al Jones?"

"No,--Christ," replied Percy, with a grieved expression plainly discernible.

"Oh," said the driver.

They drove past the Jones residence and out into the field beyond. The house one might have thought deserted except for the well-beaten paths and the presence of chickens in the yard. It was a large structure with two and a half stories. The cornice and window trimmings revealed the beauty and wealth of former days. Rare shrubs still grew in the spacious front yard, and gnarled remnants of orchard trees were to be seen in the rear. A dozen other buildings, large and small, occupied the background, some with the roofs partly fallen, others evidently still in use.

"How old do you suppose these buildings are?" asked Percy of the driver.

"About a hundred years," he replied, "and I reckon they've had no paint nor fixin' since they was built, 'cept they have to give some of 'em new shingles now and then or they'd all fall to pieces like the old barns back yonder."

Percy examined the soil in several places on the Jones farm and on other farms in the neighborhood. They lunched on crackers and canned beans at a country store and made a more extended drive in the afternoon.

"It is a fine soil," Percy said to the driver, as they started for Leonardtown. "It contains enough sand for easy tillage and quick drainage, and enough clay to hold anything that might be applied to it."

"That's right," said the driver. "Where they put plenty of manure and fertilizer they raise tobacco three foot high and fifteen hundred pounds to the acre, but where they run the tobacco rows beyond the manured land so's to be sure and not lose any manure, why the stuff won't grow six inches high and it just turns yellow and seems to dry up, no matter if it rains every day. Say, Mister, would you mind telling me if you're a preacher?"

"Oh, no," replied Percy, "--I am not a preacher, any more than every Christian must be loyal to the name."

"Well, anyway, I've learned a lesson I'll try to remember. I never thought before about how it might hurt other people when I swear. I don't mean nothing by it. It's just a habit; but your saying Christ is your friend makes me feel that I have no business talking about anybody's friend, any more than I'd like to hear anybody else use my mother's name as a by-word. I reckon nobody has any right to use Christ's name 'cept Christians or them as wants to be Christians. I reckon we'd never heard the name if it hadn't a been for the Christians.

"But I don't have so many bad habits. I don't drink, nor smoke, nor chew; and I don't want to. My father smoked some and chewed a lot, and I know the smell of tobacco used to make my mother about as sick as she could be; but she had to stand it, or at least she did stand it till father died; and now she lives with me, and I'm mighty glad she don't have to smell no more tobacco

"She often speaks of it--mother does; and she says she's so thankful she's got a boy that don't use tobacco. She says men that use tobacco don't know how bad it is for other folks to smell 'em. Why, sometimes I come home when I've just been driving a man some place in the country, riding along like you and I are now, and he a smoking or chewing, or at least his clothes soaked full of the vile odor; and when I get home mother says, 'My! but you must have had an old stink pot along with you to-day.' She can smell it on my clothes, and I just hang my coat out in the shed till the scent gets off from it.

"No, Sir, I don't want any tobacco for me, and I don't know as I'd care to raise the stuff for other folks to saturate themselves with either; and every kid is allowed to use it nowadays, or at least most of them get it. It's easy enough to get it. Why, a kid can't keep away from getting these cigarettes, if he tries. They're everywhere. Every kid has hip pockets full; and I know blamed well that some smoke so many cigarettes they get so they aren't more than half bright. It's a fact, Sir,--plenty of 'em too; and some old men, like Al Jones, are just so soaked in tobacco they seem about half dead. Course it ain't like whiskey, but I think it's worse than beer if beer didn't make one want whiskey later.

"But as I was saying, I feel that I have no business saying things about,--about anybody you call your friend, and I think I'll just swear off swearing, if I can."

"You can if you will just let Him be your friend."

"Well, I don't know much about that," was the slow reply. "That takes faith, and I don't have much faith in some of the church members I know."

"That used to trouble me also," said Percy, "until one time the thought impressed itself upon me that even Christ himself did all His great work with one of the twelve a traitor; and this thought always comes to me now when self-respecting men object to uniting with organized Christianity because of those who may be regarded as traitors or hypocrites, but not of such flagrant character as to insure expulsion from the Church?"

"Do you believe in miracles?" asked the driver.

"Oh, yes," said Percy, "in such miracles as the growth of the corn plant."

"Why, that isn't any miracle. Everybody understands all about that."

"Not everybody," replied Percy. "There is only One who understands it. There is only one great miracle, and that is the miracle of life. It is said that men adulterate coffee, even to the extent of making the bean or berry so nearly like the natural that it requires an expert to detect the fraud; but do you think an imitation seed would grow?"

"No, it wouldn't grow," said the driver.

"Not only that," said Percy, "but we may have a natural and perfect grain of corn and it can never be made to grow by any or all of the knowledge and skill of men, if for a single instant the life principle has left the kernel, which may easily result by changing its temperature a few degrees above or below the usual range. The spark of life returns to God who gave it, and man is as helpless to restore it as when he first walked the earth.

"What miracle do you find hard to accept?" asked Percy.

"How could Jesus know that Lazarus had died when he was on the other side of the mountain?"

"I don't know," Percy replied; "perhaps by some sort of wireless message which his soul could receive. I don't know how, but it was no greater miracle than it would have been then to have done what I did last week."

The driver turned to look squarely at Percy as though in doubt of his sanity, but a kindly smile reassured him.

"Our train coming into Cincinnati ran in two sections," Percy continued, "and the section behind us was wrecked, three travellers being killed and about fifteen others wounded. I was sure my mother would hear of the wreck before I could reach her with a letter, and so I talked with her from Cincinnati over the long distance 'phone, with which we have always had connection since I first went away to college. Yes, I talked with her, and, though separated by a distance three times the entire length of Palestine, I distinctly heard and recognized my mother's voice. Oh, yes, I believe in miracles; but that is a matter of small consequence. The important thing is that we have faith in God and faith in Jesus Christ, his Son."

"Well, that's what troubles me," said the driver. "How's one to get faith?"

"There are two methods of receiving faith," replied Percy. "Faith cometh by prayer." "Yes, Sir, I believe that." "And, faith cometh by hearing." "Hearing what?" "Hearing by the Word of God; hearing those who have studied His Word and who testify of Him; and hearing with an ear ready to receive the truth."



CHAPTER XXVII
EIGHTEEN TO ONE

TWO days later Percy was in Rhode Island visiting a farm owned by Samuel Robbins, one of the most progressive and successful farmers of that State.

Mr. Robbins' farm lay in what appeared to be an ancient valley, several miles in width, although only a small stream now winds through it to the sea seven miles away.

"So you are from Illinois," said Mr. Robbins, after Percy had introduced himself and explained the nature of his visit. "The papers have a good deal to say about the corn you grow in Illinois; but have you noticed that the Government reports show our average yield of corn in New England is higher than yours in Illinois?"

"Yes, Sir," Percy replied, "I have noticed that and I have come to Rhode Island to learn how to raise more corn per acre. I have noticed, however, that New England corn does not occupy a large acreage."

Well, now, we count corn as one of our big crops, next to hay. You'll see plenty of corn fields right here in Rhode Island."

"Would you believe that we actually raise more corn on one farm in Illinois than the total corn crop of Rhode Island?"

"You don't tell!"

"Yes," said Percy, "the Isaac Funk farm in McLean County grows more corn on seven thousand acres a year, with an average yield certainly above fifty bushels per acre, and surely making a total above 350,000 bushels; while the State of Rhode Island grows corn on nearly ten thousand acres with an average yield of thirty-two bushels, making a total yield of about 320,000 bushels."

"Well, I'll give it up; but I'd like to know how much corn you raise in the whole State of Illinois."

"Our average production," said Percy, "is about equal to the total production of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi."

"Eighteen of us! " exclaimed Mr. Robbins, who had counted on his fingers from New York to Mississippi. "And you come to Rhode Island to learn how to raise corn?"

"Yes, I came to learn how you raise more than thirty-five bushels of corn per acre as an average for New England, while we raise less than thirty-five bushels as an average in Illinois, and while Georgia, a larger State than Illinois, raises only eleven bushels per acre as a ten year average. Illinois is a new State, but I call to mind that Roger Williams settled in Rhode Island in 1636 and that he was joined by many others coming not only from Massachusetts but also from other sections. I assume that much of the land in Rhode Island has been farmed for 250 years, and the fact that you are still producing more than thirty bushels of corn per acre, as an average, is, it seems to me, a fact of great significance. I suppose you use all the manure you can make from the crops you raise and perhaps use some commercial fertilizer also. I should like to know what yield of corn you produce without any manure or fertilizer?"

"We don't produce any," said Mr. Robbins; "at least we know we wouldn't produce any corn without fertilizing the land in one way or another. If you will walk over here a little ways you can see for yourself. I didn't have quite enough manure to finish this field and I had no more time to haul seaweed so I planted without getting any manure on a few rods in one corner, and the corn there wouldn't make three bushels from an acre. I didn't bother to try to cut it, but the cows will get what little fodder there is as soon as I can get the shocks out of the field and turn 'em in for a few days to pick up what they can."

Percy examined the corn plants still standing in the corner of the field. They had grown to a height of about two feet. Most of them had tassels and many of them appeared to have little ears, but really had only husks containing no ear. In a few places where the hill contained only one plant a little nubbin of corn could be found.

"I don't mean to let any of my land get as poor as this field was," continued Mr. Robbins, "but I just couldn't get to it, and I left it in hay about two years longer than I should have done. Last year was first class for hay but this field had been down so long it was hardly worth cutting."

"About what yield do you get from the manured land?" inquired Percy.

"In a fair year I get about forty bushels, and that's about what I am getting this year from my best fields. You see there's lots of corn in these shocks. There's about an average ear, and we get five or six ears to the hill."

"Eight-row flint," said Percy, as he took the ear in his hand and drew a celluloid paper knife from his vest pocket with a six-inch scale marked on one side.

"Yes, Sir, our regular Rhode Island White Cap."

"Just five inches long. Weight about three ounces?"

"Perhaps. We count on about four hundred ears to the bushel. If we get four thousand hills to the acre one ear to the hill would give us ten bushels per acre, so you see we only have to have four ears to the hill to make our forty bushels. A good many hills have five to six ears, but then of course, some hills don't have much of any, so I suppose my corn makes an average of four ears about like that."

"I suppose you feed all of the corn you raise in order to produce as much manure as possible."

"Feed that corn! Not much we don't. Why, corn like that brings us close on to a dollar a bushel. No, Sir, we don't feed this corn. It's all used for meal. It makes the best kind of corn meal. No, we buy corn for feed; western corn. Oh, we feed lots of corn; three times as much as we raise; but we don't feed dollar corn, when we can buy western corn for seventy-five or eighty cents.

"I sell corn and I sell potatoes; that's all except the milk. I keep most of my land in meadow and pasture and feed everything I raise except the corn and potatoes. And milk is a good product with us. We average about sixty cents a pound for butter fat, and it's ready money every month; and, of course, we need it every month to pay for feed."

"Then you produce on the farm all the manure you use," suggested Percy, " but I think you mentioned hauling seaweed."

"Yes, and I haul some manure, too, when I can get it; but usually there are three or four farmers ready to take every load of town manure."

"You get it from town for the hauling?"

"Well, I guess not," said Mr. Robbins emphatically and with apparent astonishment at such a question. "I don't think I would haul seaweed seven miles if I could get manure in town for nothing. Manure is worth $1.50 a ton Iying in the livery stable, and there are plenty to take it at that right along. I'd a little rather pay that than haul seaweed; but the manure won't begin to go around, and so there's nothing left for us but seaweed; and, if we couldn't get that, the Lord only knows what we could do."

"How much seaweed can you haul to a load, and about how many loads do you apply to the acre?"

"When the roads are good we haul a cord and a quarter, and we put ten or twelve loads to the acre for corn and then use some commercial fertilizer."

"Do you know how much a cord of the seaweed would weigh?"

"Yes, a cord weighs about a ton and a half."

"Then you apply about twenty tons of seaweed to the acre for corn?"

"Yes, but some use less and some more; probably that's about an average. Hauling seaweed's a big job and a bad job. We have to start from home long before daylight so as to get there and get the weed while the tide is out, and then we get back with our load about two o'clock in the afternoon; and, by the time we eat and feed the team, and get the load to the field and spread, there isn't much time left that day, especially when you've got to pile out of bed about two o'clock the next morning and hike off for another load."

"Then you use some fertilizer in addition to the seaweed? May I ask how much fertilizer you apply to the acre and about how much it costs per ton?"

"Where we spread seaweed for corn, we add about four hundred and fifty pounds per acre of fertilizer that costs me $26 a ton, but I have the agency and get it some cheaper than most have to pay. Then for potatoes we apply about 1500 pounds of a special potato fertilizer that costs me $34 a ton."

"The fertilizer costs you about $6 an acre for the corn crop and $25 for potatoes," said Percy; " and then you have the cost of the seaweed. I should think you would need to count about $25 or $30 an acre for the expense of hauling seaweed."

"Yes, all of that if we had to pay for the work, but of course we can haul seaweed more or less when the farm work isn't crowding, and we don't count so much on the expense. It doesn't take the cash, except may be a little for a boy to drive one team when we haul two loads at a time; and we don't use seaweed for potatoes. The corn crop will generally more'n pay for it and the fertilizer too; and the seaweed helps for three or four years, especially for grass. There's good profit in potatoes, too, when we get a crop, but they're risky, considering the money we have to pay for fertilizer."



CHAPTER XXVIII
FARMER OR PROFESSOR

AFTER leaving Rhode Island, Percy spent two days in and about Boston, and then returned to Connecticut for a day. The weather had turned cold; the ground had frozen and the falling snow reminded him that it was the day before Thanksgiving.

From New London he took a night boat to New York, and then took passage on a Coast Line vessel from New York to Norfolk.

The weather had cleared and the wind decreased until it was scarcely greater than the speed of the ship.

Whether or not the dining room service was extraordinary because of the day, Percy was soon convinced that the only way to travel was by boat. He regretted only that his mother was not with him to enjoy that day. For hours they coasted southward within easy view of the New Jersey shore, dotted here and there with cities, towns, and villages. Light houses marked the rocky points where danger once lurked for the men of the sea.

The sea itself was of constant interest; and hundreds of craft were passed or met. Here a full-rigged sailing vessel lazily drifting with the wind; there a giant little tug puffing in the opposite direction with a string of barges in tow loaded almost to the water's edge.

Norfolk was reached early the next morning, and before noon Percy passed through Petersburg on his way to Montplain. He changed cars at Lynchburg and arrived at Montplain before dark. In accordance with a promise to Mr. West he had notified him of his plans.

Would Adelaide met him, and if so would she have the family carriage and again insist upon his riding in the rear seat? He had found these questions in his mind repeatedly since he left New London, with no very definite purpose before him except to arrive at Montplain at the appointed time.

Yes, it was the family carriage. He saw the farm team tied across the street from the depot. As he left the train he caught a glimpse of Adelaide standing with the group of people who were waiting to board the train. She extended her hand as he reached her side.

"Mr. Johnston, meet my cousin, Professor Barstow."

"I am glad to meet you, Professor," said Percy, as he shook hands with a tall young man about his own age. Percy noted his handsome face and gentlemanly bearing.

"Miss Adelaide calls me cousin," said Barstow, "because my aunt married her uncle."

"Well, Sir, if we're not cousins, then I'm Miss West and not Miss Adelaide. Is that too much for an absent-minded professor to remember?"

"I am afraid it is," said Barstow, "and I am sure I would rather be cousins."

"Professor Barstow leaves on this train," Adelaide explained to Percy; "excuse me, please."

Percy raised his hat as he stepped back from the crowd and waited for the parting of the two. He was sure that Barstow held her hand longer than was necessary, and he also noticed that her face flushed as she rejoined him after the train started.

"Will you take the rear seat?" she asked. as they reached the carriage.

"If you so prefer."

"That seat is for our guests, so I don't prefer," came her reply, which left Percy wholly in the dark as to her wishes.

"Then let me be your coachman rather than your guest."

"If you so prefer," she repeated, and without waiting for assistance quickly mounted to the front seat, leaving him to occupy the driver's seat beside her.

"Captain and Mrs. Stone of Montplain were with us for Thanksgiving and I came with the carriage to take them home. Professor Barstow has also been spending his Thanksgiving vacation visiting with papa."

"Thank you," said Percy, as he took the lines and turned the horses toward Westover.

"You are certainly welcome to drive this team if you enjoy it."

"I thank you for that also," said Percy. Adelaide noted the word also, but she only remarked that she hoped he had enjoyed his travels, though she could not understand what pleasure he could find in visiting old worn-out farms.

"Of all things," she continued, "it seems to me that farming is the last that anyone would want to undertake."

"It is both the first and the last," said Percy. " As you know, when our ancestors came to America, agriculture was the first great industry they were able to develop. Other industries and professions follow agriculture and must be supported in large measure by the agricultural industry. Merchants, lawyers, doctors and teachers are in a sense agricultural parasites."

An hour before he would not have included teachers in this class; for, next to the mother in the home, he felt that the teacher in the school is the greatest necessity for the highest development of the agricultural classes.

"Without agriculture," he continued, "America could never have been developed, and, unless the prosperity of American agriculture can be maintained, poverty is the only future for this great nation. The soil is the greatest source of wealth, and it is the most permanent form of wealth. The Secretary of Agriculture at Washington told me a few days ago that eighty-six per cent. of the raw materials used in all our manufacturing industry are produced from the soil.

"Yes, agriculture is certainly the first industry in this country; and I am fully convinced that to restore the fertility of the depleted soils of the East and South, and even to maintain the productive power of the great agricultural regions of the West, deserves and will require the best thought of the most influential people of America.

"Throughout the length and breadth of this land, the almost universal purpose of the farmers is to work the land for all they can get with practically no thought of permanency. The most common remark of the corn belt farmer is that his land doesn't show much wear yet; and it is holding up pretty well, or as well as could be expected; or that he thinks it will last as long as he does. All recognize that the land cannot hold up under the systems of farming that are being practiced, and these systems are essentially the same as have been followed in America since 1607. What the Southern farmer did with slave labor, the Western farmer is now doing with the gang plow, the two- row cultivator, and the four-horse disks and harrows. In addition he tile-drains his land which helps to insure larger crops and more rapid soil depletion. He even uses clover as a soil stimulant, and spreads the farm fertilizer as thinly as possible with a machine made for the purpose in order to secure both its plant food value and its stimulating effect. Positive soil enrichment is practically unknown in the great corn belt.

"Robbery is a harsh word; and yet the farmers and landowners of America are and always have been soil robbers; and they not only rob the nation of the possibility of permanent prosperity, but they even rob themselves of the very comforts of life in their old age and their children and grandchildren of a rightful inheritance.

"Worse than all this, or at least more lamentable, is the fact that it need not be. The soils of Virginia need not have become worn out and abandoned; because the earth and the air are filled with the elements of plant food that are essential to the restoration and permanent maintenance of the high productive capacity of these soils. Moreover there is more profit and greater prosperity for the present landowner in a possible practicable system of positive soil improvement than under any system which leads to ultimate depletion and abandonment of the land.

"The profit in farming lies first of all in securing large crop yields. It costs forty bushels of corn per acre in Illinois to raise the crop and pay the rent for the land or interest and taxes on the investment. With land worth $150 an acre, it will require $8 to pay the interest and taxes. Another $8 will be required to raise the crop and harvest and market it, even with very inadequate provision made for maintaining the productive power of the soil, such as a catch crop of clover, or a very light dressing of farm fertilizer. A forty-bushel crop of corn at forty cents a bushel, which is about the ten year average price for Illinois, would bring only $16 an acre, and this would leave no profit whatever.

"A crop of fifty bushels would leave only ten bushels as profit; but, if we could double the yield and thus produce a hundred bushels per acre, the profit would not be doubled only, but it would be six times as great as from the fifty bushel crop. In other words, 100 bushels of corn from one acre would yield practically the same profit as fifty bushels per acre from six acres, simply because it requires the first forty bushels from each acre to pay for the fixed charges or regular expense.

"It is not the amount of crop the farmer handles, but the amount of actual profit that determines his prosperity. It requires profit to build the new home or repair the old one, to provide the home with the comforts and conveniences that are now to be had in the country as well as in the city; to send the boys and girls to college; to provide for the expense of travel and the luxuries of the home."

Percy stopped himself with an apology.

"I hope you will pardon me, Miss West. I forget that this subject may be of no interest to you, and I have completely monopolized the conversation."

"I am glad you have told me so much," she replied. " I am deeply interested in what you have been saying. I never realized that agriculture could involve such very important questions in regard to our national prosperity. I only know that our farm has furnished us with a living but there has been very little of what you call profit. We children could never have gone away to school except that we were enabled to take advantage of some unusual opportunities. My brother almost earned his expenses as commissary in a boarding club at college. He felt that he could not come home for Thanksgiving because he had a chance to earn something and I have missed him so much. Most farmers get barely enough from their farms in these parts to furnish them a modest living and pay their taxes."

"That reminds me of your statement that farming is the last thing that you would expect anyone to undertake. In a large sense that is in accordance with the history of all great agricultural countries. After the great wave of easy spoilation of the land has passed, and the farmers reach a condition under which they need most of what they produce for their own consumption, the parasites are themselves forced to produce their own food. The lands become divided into smaller holdings and the agricultural inhabitants increase rapidly in proportion to the urban population which must depend upon the profits from secondary pursuits for a living. Thus ninety-five per cent. of the three hundred million people of India belong principally to the agricultural classes, and the farms of India average about two to three acres in size. Farming there is in no sense a profit-yielding business, but it is only a means of existence. The people live upon what they raise, so far as they can, although, as you must know, India is almost never free from famine. In Russia, the situation is but little better, for famine follows if the yield of wheat falls two bushels below the average. Special agents of the Bureau of Statistics of the United States Department of Agriculture report that at least one famine year occurs in each five year period, and sometimes even two; that the famine years are so frequent they are recognized as a permanent feature of Russian agriculture."

"But couldn't those poor starving people do some other kind of work and thus earn a better living?" asked Adelaide.

"No. Agriculture is the only hope," said Percy. "The soil is the breast of Mother Earth, from which her children must always draw their nourishment, or perish. It is the 'last thing,' as you truly said. Aside from hunting and fishing, there is no source of food except the soil, and, when this is insufficient for the people who produce it in the country, God pity the poor people who live in the cities. But let us not talk of this more. I ought not to have taken up the time of our ride through this beautiful scenery with a subject which tends always toward the serious. The leaves are all gone in New England, but here they have only taken on their most beautiful colors. 'What is so rare as a day in June?' could now well be answered, 'a day in November in Piedmont, Virginia.'"

"Do you know if your father received a letter for me from the chemist to whom I sent the soil samples?"

"Yes, it came in Wednesday's mail, and there is a letter from the University of Illinois and two others that Grandma says must be from a lady. Papa says he is anxious to know what results would be found in the chemist's report. May I listen while you tell papa about it? Indeed, I am extremely interested to know if anything can be done to make our farm produce such crops as it used to when grandmother was a little girl."

"Still I fear you will find it a very tiresome subject," said Percy. "It is, as a rule, not an easy matter to adopt a system of permanent improvement on land that has been depleted by a century or more of exhaustive husbandry. but you will be very welcome not only to listen but to counsel also. My mother can measure difficulties in advance better than most men; and I believe it is true that women will deliberately plan and follow a course involving greater hardship and privation than men would undertake. I cannot conceive of any man doing what my mother has done for me."

Adelaide glanced at Percy as he spoke of his mother. Something in his words or voice seemed to reveal to her a depth of feeling, a wealth of affection akin to reverence, such as she had never recognized before.




CHAPTER XXIX
THE ULTIMATE COMPARISON

WILKES was at the side gate to meet Adelaide and Percy, and the grandmother stood at the door as they reached the veranda.

"Lucky for us you got back before the Thanksgiving scraps are all gone," she said to Percy, " but I suppose even our Thanksgiving fare will be poor picking after you've been living in Washington and Boston."

"Even the Thanksgiving dinner on the boat was not equal to this," said Percy, as they sat down to the table loaded with such an abundance of good things as is rarely seen except on the farmer's table. The "scraps," if such there were, had no appearance of being left-overs, and there was monster turkey, browned to perfection and sizzling hot, placed before Mr. West ready for the carving knife.

Percy had opened the letter from the chemist, but said to Mr. West that it would take him an hour or more to compute the results to the form of the actual elements and reduce them to pounds per acre in order to make possible a direct comparison between the requirements of crops, on the one hand, and the invoice of the soil and application of plant food in manure and fertilizers, on the other hand.

"Please let me help you make the computations," said Adelaide, much to the surprise of her parents, who knew that she took no interest in affairs pertaining to farming. " I like mathematics and will promise not to make any mistakes if you will tell me how to do some of the figuring."

"Thank you," said Percy. "With your help it will take only half the time that I should require alone."

This proved to be correct, for in half an hour after supper they had the results in simplified form. Even the mother and grandmother joined the circle as Percy began to discuss the results with Mr. West

"Now here is the invoice," said Percy, " of the surface soil from an acre of land where we collected the first composite sample,--the land which you said had not been cropped since you could remember. This soil contains plant food as follows:

1,440 pounds of nitrogen
380 pounds of phosphorus
15,760 pounds of potassium
3,340 pounds of magnesium
10,420 pounds of calcium

"I'd like to know how these amounts compare with what your Illinois soil contains," said Mr. West.

"We have several different kinds of soil in Illinois," replied Percy. "The common corn belt prairie soil is called brown silt loam. It contains, as an average, 5000 pounds of nitrogen and 1200 pounds of phosphorus, or nearly four times as much of each of those elements as this Virginia soil which you say is too poor to cultivate.

"I wrote to the Illinois Experiment Station before I left Washington to see if I could get the average composition of the heavier prairie soil, which occupies the very flat areas that were originally swampy, and one of the letters you had received for me gives 8000 pounds of nitrogen and 2000 pounds of phosphorus as the general average for that soil. That is our most productive land, and it contains about five times as much of these two very important elements as your poorest land.

"Our more common Illinois prairie contains about 35,000 pounds of potassium, 9,000 pounds of magnesium, and I 1,000 pounds of calcium. This is more than twice as much potassium and nearly three times as much magnesium as in your poorest land, but the calcium content is about the same in your soil as in ours. However, as you will remember, your soil is distinctly acid and consequently markedly in need of lime, the magnesium and calcium evidently being contained in part in the form of acid silicates with no carbonates; whereas, our brown silt loam is a neutral soil and our black clay loam contains much calcium carbonate, the same compound as pure limestone."

"I am anxious to know about our best land," said Mr. West. " What did the chemist find in the soil from the slope where we get the best corn after breaking up the old pastures?"

"He found the following amounts in the surface soil," said Percy.

800 pounds of nitrogen
1,660 pounds of phosphorus
34, 100 pounds of potassium
8,500 pounds of magnesium
13,100 pounds of calcium

"Rich in everything but nitrogen," Percy continued, "richer than our common prairies in phosphorus and calcium, and nearly as rich in potassium and magnesium; but very, very poor in nitrogen. Legume plants ought to grow well on that land, because the minerals are present in abundance, and, while lack of nitrogen in the soil will limit the yield of all grains and grasses, there is no nitrogen limit for the legume plants if infected with the proper nitrogen-fixing bacteria, provided, of course, that the soil is not acid. You will remember, however, that even this sloping land is more or less acid, although here and there we found pieces of undecomposed limestone. With a liberal use of ground limestone, any legumes suited to this soil and climate ought to grow luxuriantly on those slopes."

"That reminds me that we are greatly troubled with Japan clover on those slopes," said Mr. West. "Of course it makes good pasture for a few months, but it doesn't come so early in the spring as blue grass and it is killed with the first heavy frost in the fall. We like blue grass much better for that reason, but when we seed down for meadow and pasture, the Japan clover always crowds out the timothy and blue grass on those slopes."

"And when you plow under the Japan clover, you get one or two good crops of grain," said Percy, "because this clover has stored up some much needed nitrogen and the soil is rich in all other necessary elements. Have you ever tried alfalfa on that kind of land? That is a crop that ought to do well there, especially if limestone were applied."

"Yes, I have tried alfalfa," replied Mr. West, "and I tried it on a strip that ran across one of those steep slopes; but it failed completely, and, as I remember it, it was poorer on that hillside than on the more level land."

"Did you inoculate it?" Percy asked.

"Inoculate it? No. I didn't do anything to it, but just sow it the same as I sow red clover."

"What does it mean to inoculate it?" asked Adelaide.

"It means to put some bugs on it," said the grandmother; "some germs or microbes, or whatever they are called. Don't you remember, Adelaide, that I told you about that when I read it in the magazine a while ago? Don't you remember that somebody was making it and a man could carry enough in his vest pocket to fertilize an acre and he wanted $2 a package. Charles said that $1.50 a hundred was more than he could afford to pay for fertilizer, and he didn't care to pay $2 for a vest pocket package. Isn't that the stuff, Mr. Johnston?"

"It listens like it, as the Swedes say," said Percy, "but the advertisements of these germ cultures put out by commercial interests are usually very misleading. The safest and best and least expensive method of inoculating a field for alfalfa is to use infested soil taken from some old alfalfa field or from a patch of ground where the common sweet clover, or mellilotus, has been growing for several years. I saw the sweet clover growing along the railroad near Montplain, and there is one patch on the roadside right where--when you enter the valley on the way to the station."

"Right where Adelaide smashed that nigger's eye with her heel and helped Mr. Johnston capture them both," broke in the grandmother. "That's the only good thing I can say for her peg heeled shoes."

Adelaide colored and Percy now understood what had been a puzzle to him.

"The same bacteria," he went on quickly, "live upon both the sweet clover and the alfalfa, or at least they are interchangeable. These bacteria are not a fertilizer in any ordinary sense, but they are more in the nature of a disease, a kind of tuberculosis, as it were; except that they do much more good than harm. They attack the very tender young roots of the alfalfa and feed upon the nutritious sap, taking from it the phosphorus and other minerals and also the sugar or other carbohydrates needed for their own nourishment, since they have no power to secure carbon and oxygen from the air, as is done by all plants with green leaves. On the other hand, these bacteria have power to take the free nitrogen of the air, which enters the pores of the soil to some extent, and cause it to combine with food materials which are secured from the alfalfa sap, and thus the bacteria secure for themselves both nitrogen and the other essential plant foods. The alfalfa root or rootlet becomes enlarged at the point attacked by the bacteria, and a sort of wart or tubercle is formed which resembles a tiny potato, as large as clover seed on clover or alfalfa, and, singularly, about as large as peas on cowpeas or soy beans. On plants that are sparsely infected, these tubercles develop to a large size and often in clusters. While the bacteria themselves are extremely small and can be seen only by the aid of a powerful microscope, the tubercles in which they live are easily seen, and they are sufficient to enable us to know whether the plants are infected."

"I wish you would tell me the difference between the words inoculated and infected," said Adelaide.

"Inoculated is used in the active sense and infected in the passive," said Percy. " Thus the red clover growing in the field is infected if there are tubercles on its roots, although it may never have been inoculated; and we inoculate alfalfa because it would not be likely to become infected without direct inoculation."

"Under favorable conditions," continued Percy, "these bacteria multiply with tremendous rapidity, somewhat as the germs of small pox or yellow fever multiply if allowed to do so. A single tubercle may contain a million germs which if distributed uniformly over an acre would furnish more than twenty bacteria for every square foot."

"There, Charles," said the grandmother, "wouldn't a vest pocketful of those bugs or germs be a big enough dose for one acre?"

"Well, but they're not a fertilizer, Mother," said Mr. West, "and besides Mr. Johnston says it is better to use the infected sweet clover soil and there is no need of paying $2 an acre for something we knew nothing about, and especially on land that is not worth more than $2 an acre."

"I don't care what it's worth," she replied, "some of it cost your grandfather $68 an acre, and it will never be sold for any $2, while I have any say so about it."

They waited for Percy to proceed.

"The individual bacteria are very short-lived," he continued, "and products of decay soon begin to accumulate in the tubercles. These products contain, in combined form, nitrogen which the bacteria have taken from the air, and in this form it is taken from the tubercles and absorbed through the roots into the host plant and thus serves as a source of nitrogen for all of the agricultural legumes.

"It should be kept in mind, of course, that the red clover has one kind of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, that the cowpea has a different kind, and that the soy bean bacteria are still different, while a fourth kind lives on the roots of alfalfa and sweet clover."

"How much infected sweet clover soil would I need to inoculate an acre of land for alfalfa?" asked Mr. West.

"If the soil is thoroughly infected, a hundred pounds to the acre will do very well if applied at the same time the alfalfa seed is sown and immediately harrowed in with the seed. If allowed to lie for several hours or days exposed to the sunshine after being spread over the land the bacteria will be destroyed, for like most bacteria, such as those which lurk in milk pails to sour the milk, they are killed by the sunshine."

" That's right," said the grandmother. "That's the way to sterilize milk pails and pans and crocks. I like crocks better than pans. They don't have any sort of joints to dig out."

"Of course," continued Percy, "a wagon load of infected soil will make a more perfect inoculation than a hundred pounds, and where it costs nothing but the hauling it is well to use a liberal amount."

"How deep should it be taken?" asked Mr. West.

"About the same depth as you would plow. The tubercles are mostly within six or eight inches of the surface. The bacteria depend upon the nitrogen of the air and this must enter the surface soil. Sometimes in wet weather the tubercles can be found almost at the surface of the ground, and when the ground cracks one can often find tubercles sticking out in the cracks an inch or two beneath the surface but protected from direct sunshine.

"These bacteria have power to furnish very large amounts of nitrogen to such a crop as alfalfa. The Illinois Station reports having grown eight and one-half tons of alfalfa per acre in one season. It was harvested in four cuttings. The hay itself was worth at least $6 a ton above all expenses, which would bring $51 an acre net profit for one year. Of course this was above the average, which is only about four and one-half tons over a series of several years. But suppose you can save only three tons and get $6 a ton net for it, as you could easily do by feeding it to your cattle and sheep. That would bring $18 an acre or six per cent. interest on $300 land. I am altogether confident that this could be done on your sloping hillsides, with their rich supplies of phosphorus and other mineral foods, provided, of course, that you use plenty of ground limestone and thoroughly inoculate the soil."

"Well, I shall certainly try alfalfa again," said Mr. West, "and if I can grow such crops of alfalfa as you think on the hillsides, I can have much more farm manure produced for the improvement of the rest of the land. By the way what did that chemist find in that sample you took of the other land where it does not wash so much as on the steeper slopes."

"He found the following:

1,030 pounds of nitrogen
1,270 pounds of phosphorus
16,500 pounds of potassium
7,460 pounds of magnesium
16,100 pounds of calcium

"Well, the phosphorus is not so low," said Mr. West.

"Fully equal to that in our $150 Illinois prairie," replied Percy, "and again the calcium is more than ours, with magnesium not far below, and potassium half our supply. Nitrogen is plainly the most serious problem on most of this farm, and limestone and legumes must solve that problem if properly used."

"Do you think this land could be made as valuable as the Illinois land just by a liberal use of limestone and legumes?" asked Adelaide.

"I should have some doubt about that," Percy replied. "Your very level uplands that neither lose nor receive material from surface washing are very deficient in phosphorus and much poorer than ours in potassium and magnesium; and your undulating and steeply sloping lands are more or less broken, with many rock outcrops on the points and some impassable gullies, which as a rule compel the cultivation of the land in small irregular fields. A three-cornered field of from two to fifteen acres can never have quite the same value per acre as the land where forty or eighty acres of corn can be grown in a body with no necessity of omitting a single hill. Then there is some unavoidable loss from surface washing, so that to maintain the supply of organic matter and nitrogen will require a larger use of legumes than on level land of equal richness. In addition to this is the initial difference in humus content. This is well measured by the nitrogen content. While your soil contains eight hundred pounds of nitrogen on the steeper slopes and one thousand pounds on the more gently undulating areas, ours contains five thousand pounds in the brown silt loam and eight thousand pounds in the heavier black clay loam. This means that our Illinois prairie soil contains from five to ten times as much humus, or organic matter, as your best upland soil. To supply this difference in humus would require the addition of from four hundred to eight hundred tons per acre of average farm manure, or the plowing under of one hundred to two hundred tons of air-dry clover. This represents the great reserve of the Illinois prairie soils above the total supplies remaining in your soils.

"Our farmers are still producing crops very largely by drawing on this reserve. Of course most of this great supply of humus is very old. It represents the organic residues most resistant to decomposition; and, where corn and oats are grown exclusively, the soil has reached a condition on many farms under which the decomposition of the reserve organic matter is so slow that the nitrogen liberated from its own decay and the minerals liberated from the soil by the action of the decomposition products are not sufficient to meet the requirements of large crops, and for this reason alone some of our lands that are still rich are said to be run down; but they only require a moderate use of clover or farm manure or other fresh and active organic matter to at once restore their productiveness to a point almost equal to the yields from the virgin soil. Some Illinois farmers who have discovered this apparent restoration have jumped to the conclusion that they have solved the problem of permanently maintaining the fertility of the soil; and I judge from a remark made by the Secretary of Agriculture that some Iowa farmers have the same mistaken notions.

"These fresh supplies of active organic matter serve primarily as soil stimulants, hastening the liberation of nitrogen from the organic reserve and of minerals from the inorganic soil materials.

"Where one of the Eastern farmers has managed a farm under the rotation system with the occasional use of clover or light applications of farm manure,--where this has been continued until the great reserve is largely gone, and the phosphorus supply greatly depleted, then the land is truly run down, but not until then.

"Finally, land-plaster and quick-lime, still more powerful soil stimulants, are often brought into the system to bring about a more complete exhaustion of the soil reserves, and lastly the use of small amounts of high-priced commercial fertilizers serves to put the land in suitable condition for ultimate abandonment."

"Do you mean that commercial fertilizers injure the soil?" asked Mr. West.

"Well, to some extent they injure the soil because they tend to destroy the limestone and increase the acidity of the soil, and also because they contain more or less manufactured land-plaster and thus serve as soil stimulants; but the chief point to keep in mind concerning the use of the common so-called complete commercial fertilizer is that they are too expensive to permit their use in sufficient quantities to positively enrich the soil. Thus the farmer may apply two hundred pounds of such a fertilizer at a cost of $3.00 an acre, and then harvest a crop of wheat, two crops of hay, pasture for another year or two, plow up the grounds for corn, apply another two hundred pounds for the corn crop, follow with a crop of oats, and then repeat. He thus harvests five crops and pastures a year or two and applies perhaps four hundred pounds of fertilizer at a cost of $6.00.

"As an average of the most common commercial fertilizers sold to the farmers in the Eastern and Southern States, the four hundred pounds would add to the soil seven pounds of nitrogen, fourteen pounds of phosphorus and seven pounds of potassium, while a single fifty-bushel crop of corn will remove from the soil ten times as much nitrogen, five times as much potassium, and nearly as much phosphorus as the total amounts applied in this six-year or seven-year rotation.

"In this manner the farmer extends the time during which he can take from the soil crops whose value exceed their cost. He applies only one-fourth or possibly one-half as much of the most deficient element as the crops harvested require, and thus he continues for a longer time to 'work the land for all that's in it! '"

"Well, isn't that the limit?" said Adelaide, with emphasis on the "isn't," for which she received a disapproving look from her mother, so far as her almost angel-face could give such a look.

"So far as human ingenuity has yet devised," replied Percy, "this system appears to be the limit; but this limit has not yet been reached on any Westover soil. If anyone can devise a method for extending this limit he should apply it on a type of soil covering more than two-fifths of the total area of St. Mary County and more than 45,000 acres of Prince George County, Maryland, some of which almost adjoins the District of Columbia. This soil has been reduced in fertility until it contains only one-third as much phosphorus as your poorest land. I found a Western man who had come down to Maryland a few years ago. He saw that beautiful almost level upland soil, and it looked so good to him that he bought and kept buying until he had ' squared out 'a tract of eleven hundred acres. He still had left money enough to fence the farm and to put the buildings in good repair. He was a live-stock farmer from the West who just knew from his own experience and from that of the Secretary of Agriculture, in the use of a little clover or farm manure in unlocking the great reserves of an almost virgin soil, that all his Maryland farm needed was clover seed and live stock. Sheep especially he knew to be great producers of fertility.

"He sowed the clover and grass seed and they germinated well. He even secured a fine catch, but it failed to hold, as we say out West. He tried again and again, and failed as often as he tried. He showed me his best clover on a field that had received some manure made from feed part of which was purchased, and that had also received five hundred pounds per acre of hydrated lime, which he was finally persuaded to use, after becoming convinced that clover-growing on old abandoned land was not exactly as easy as clover-growing on a 'run-down' farm of almost virgin soil in the West."

"And was the clover good after that treatment?" asked Mr. West.

"No, not good," said Percy, "but in some places where the manure had been applied to the high points, as is the custom of the Western farmer, the yield of clover, weeds, and foul grass together must have been nearly a half ton to the acre. Fortunately he waited to fully stock his farm with cattle and sheep until he should have some assurance of producing sufficient feed to keep them for a time at least, instead of making the common mistake of the less experienced farmer who goes to the country from the city, and who imagines that, if he has plenty of stock on the farm, they must of necessity produce abundance of manure with which to enrich his land for the production of abundant crops."

"Well, now you'll have to show me," said the grandmother. " To my way of thinking that's a pretty good kind of a notion for a farmer to have, and I'd like to know what's wrong with it.

Again a shadow seemed to cross the sweet face as the mother's glance turned from grandma to Adelaide.

"The system has some merit," replied Percy, "but it starts at the wrong point in the circle. Cattle and sheep must first have feed before they can produce the fertilizer with which to enrich the soil; and people who would raise stock on poor land should always produce a good supply of food before they procure the stock requiring to be fed. There is probably no more direct route to financial disaster than for one to insist upon over-stocking a farm that is essentially worn out."

"But doesn't pasturing enrich the soil?" asked the grandmother.

"Pasturing may enrich the soil only in a single element of plant food," said Percy. "In all other elements simple pasturing must always contribute toward soil depletion. If the pasture herbage contains a sufficient proportion of legume plants so that the fixation of free nitrogen exceeds the utilization of nitrogen in animal growth, then the soil will be enriched in that element, although with the same growth of plants it would be enriched more rapidly without pasturing; for animals are not made out of nothing. Meat, milk, and wool are all highly nitrogenous products.

"On the other hand no amount of pasturing can add to the soil a single pound of any one of the six mineral elements, and phosphorus, which is normally the most limited of all these elements, is abstracted from the soil and retained by the animals in very considerable amounts. As an average one-fourth of the phosphorus contained in the food consumed is retained in the animal products, especially in bone, flesh, and milk."

"Well, I didn't know that milk contained phosphorus," said Mr. West, "although I did know, of course, that phosphorus must be contained in bone."

"But, as you know," said Percy, "milk is the only food of young animals, and they must secure their bone food from the milk. Furthermore, the complete analysis of milk shows that it contains very considerable quantities. There are also records of digestion experiments in which less than one-half of the phosphorus in the food consumed was recovered in the total manural excrements. As a matter of fact there is a time in the life of the young mother, as with the two-year old cow, for example, when she must abstract from the food she consumes sufficient phosphorus for the nourishment of three growing animals,--her own immature body, a suckling calf, and another calf as yet unborn.

"Of course the organic matter of the soil should increase under pasturing, especially under conditions that make possible an accumulation of nitrogen; but here too the animals make no contribution toward any such accumulation. With the same growth of plants the accumulation of organic matter would be much more rapid without live stock."

"It is known absolutely but not generally that live stock destroy about two-thirds of the organic matter contained in the food they consume. With grains the proportion is higher, and with coarse forage it is lower, but as an average about two-thirds of the dry matter in tender young grass or clover or in a mixed, well-balanced ration of grain and hay is digested and thus practically destroyed so far as the production of organic matter is concerned.

"This you could easily verify yourself, Mr. West, by feeding two thousand pounds of any suitable ration, such as corn and clover hay, collecting and drying the total excrement, which will be found to weigh about seven hundred pounds, if it contains no higher percentage of moisture than was contained in the two thousand pounds of food consumed.

"Of course one should not forget that the liquid excrement contains more nitrogen and more potassium than the solid, and that much of this can be saved and returned to the land by use of plenty of absorbent bedding, and in pasturing there is no danger of any loss from this source."

"That is one great trouble with us," said Mr. West. "We never have as much bedding as we could use to advantage, and it is altogether too expensive to permit us to think of buying straw."

"Probably it would be much less expensive for you to buy ground limestone and then use good alfalfa hay for bedding," said Percy. "I mean exactly what I say," he continued. "Of course I do not advise you to use good alfalfa hay in that way, but it would be a cheap source of very valuable bedding, and it would make an extremely valuable manure. However, I should not hesitate to make liberal use of partially spoiled alfalfa hay for bedding, and you are quite likely to have more or less such hay; for under favorable conditions, such as you can easily have with your soil and climate, alfalfa comes on with a rush in the spring, and often the first crop should be cut before the weather is suitable for making hay. There should be very little or no delay at this time, because the first cutting should be removed in order that it may be out of the way of the second crop, which comes forward still more rapidly under normal conditions.

"Some of our Illinois farmers make strenuous objection to taking care of an alfalfa field that produces $50 worth of the richest and most valuable hay, because it interferes too much with the proper care of a $25 corn crop, which they somehow feel requires and deserves all their time and attention.

"Some of our Virginia farmers have sent to Illinois for their seed corn," said Mr. West; "and they report very good results as a rule, especially on land that has been kept up. On our poor land I think the native corn does better than the Western seed. "

"Perhaps that is because it is used to it," suggested Percy, "used to making the struggle for itself on poor land. Fighting for all it gets, so to speak. You know the high-bred animals cannot hold their own with the scrubs when it comes to pawing the snow off the dead wild grass for a living in the winter, as cattle must do sometimes on the plains of the Northwest.

"Well, there may be something in that," responded Mr. West, "but the western seed corn certainly looks fine."

"Yes, that is true," said Percy. "Our farmers have made marked improvement in seed corn; they also understand very well how to grow corn. They know how and when to prepare the ground, how and when to plant; and how and when to cultivate. When Illinois farmers go to Iowa to buy land, the Iowa real estate men usually take them to see a farm that is owned and operated by a former Illinoisan, and they insist that there are no other farmers who know how to raise corn quite so well as the Illinois farmer. Perhaps the Illinois real estate man would tell a similar story to the Iowa farmer if he ever came there to buy land, but 'Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way' and the man once gone west knows the east no more, except as a market for his surplus products or a good place in which to spend his surplus cash.

"But, here. We must finish our study of the data that Miss Adelaide so kindly helped me to compute."

It was the first time that he had spoken her name in her presence; and she met his glance as she raised her eyes.

What's in a name? What's in a glance?

Percy proceeded without delay; and Adelaide listened as before, her drooping lashes protecting her eyes almost entirely from the view of others. The father and mother heard no name spoken and saw no eyes meet, and yet as Percy continued speaking a second self seemed to be thinking different thoughts and he was conscious of a strong desire to look longer than an instant into those captivating eyes.

A side glance, as she let her lashes droop, revealed to Adelaide that grandma alone had heard and seen. But Percy was a very common-place man. Certainly he had no such face as had held her glance for more than an instant as the afternoon train began to move from the depot platform. Percy was slightly above the average height and solidly built, but he was not tall. His face had often been described as a "perfect blank." No one saw anything of what lay within by merely looking into his eyes, and yet there was a certain indescribable something that appealed to one from those eyes. An elderly German lady once remarked to his mother: "Ihr Sohn hat so etwas gutes im Auge."

Percy was not polished in manner, Adelaide admitted. Professor Barstow had said that he deliberated for half an hour as to whether he should bring his "cawds," for use on Thanksgiving day, because he feared that the custom in "Vi'ginia" might not be the same as in "No'th Cahlina"; while she doubted very much if Percy had any cards whatever. She had never heard it said that he was "strong as an ox and quick as lightning," but perhaps she knew it as well as his schoolmates ever had. She had not heard that one of the college professors, noted for his short-cut expressions, had once told his class that he wished they would all "keep their thinking apparatus in as good repair as Johnston's." One thing she did know was that Percy's voice had been trained to talk to a woman, and that no other voice had ever spoken her name as he did. Reserve force? depth of manhood? confidence in his own words? absolute decision? wealth of tenderness? persistent endurance? unfailing loyalty? boundless affection? Deep in her heart Adelaide felt that these were among the attributes revealed in Percy's voice. When he spoke all listened. His voice was low-pitched but rich in tone and volume and sincerity,--that was the word.--The whole man seemed to feel and speak when he spoke. He surely can have no secrets. His mother must know all that he knows of his own self; but were those letters from his mother? The handwriting was very modern. Even her father made an old-fashioned C and W in signing his own name. Had he not looked at the writing on both those letters before he noticed the others? and why did he remain so long in his room before coming down to dinner? Had he not been in college--in a great University where there were hundreds of the brightest girls of his own State? But why should any girl be interested in farming? Teaching is such a cultured profession.

Only a moment--just while he was sorting the papers upon which they had made the computations, but a hundred thoughts had passed through her mind. Now he was speaking.

"You remember we took a sample of the subsoil on the sloping land. This soil is evidently residual, formed in place from the disintegration of the underlying rock. The soil may represent only a small part of the original rock, because of the loss by leaching. Here are the amounts of plant food found in two million pounds of the subsoil:

590 pounds of nitrogen
1,980 pounds of phosphorus
37,940 pounds of potassium
24,808 pounds of magnesium
31,320 pounds of calcium

"A splendid subsoil," Percy continued. "I know of none better in Illinois, except that we sometimes have more calcium in the form of carbonate, and even somewhat more potassium in places; but this must be a fine subsoil for alfalfa, where the bed rock is not too near the surface. Of course there is but little nitrogen in the subsoil, but that is true of all normal soils, because the nitrogen is contained only in the organic matter, and that decreases rapidly with depth and usually becomes insufficient to color the soil below 18 inches."

"Now," began Mr. West, "from these different analyses or invoices, and from your discussion of these results, I take it that you would not advise me to purchase any commercial fertilizer for use on the land we are still using in my rotation; but you think we should make large use of limestone and legume crops."

"Yes, Sir. Phosphorus is markedly deficient only in the very level upland which has been allowed to remain uncleared for fifty years or more, and nitrogen is certainly the limiting element on the land you are trying to keep in your rotation. While you cannot hope to put into your soil any such reserve of slow-acting organic matter as we still have in our comparatively new soils of the West, we may keep in mind that a small amount of quick-acting fresh organic matter is more effective than a large supply of what we might call embalmed material that decomposes very, very slowly unless assisted by the addition of more active organic matter. It frequently happens that one soil containing a large reserve of old humus, and hence showing more organic carbon and more nitrogen, by the ultimate invoice, than another soil, is, nevertheless, less productive, because the other soil contains a larger amount of fresh organic matter which decays quickly and thus furnishes more nitrogen and liberates more of the other elements from the insoluble minerals of the soil because of the greater abundance of the active products of organic decay.

"I think you should keep in mind, however, that, for every twenty-five bushels of corn you wish to produce, you should return to the soil one ton of clover or four tons of average farm manure, and that for one ton of produce hauled to the barns and fed, you will probably not return to the land more than one ton of manure."




CHAPTER XXX
"STONE SOUP"

THE next forenoon Percy and Mr. West spent some time making some further tests with hydrochloric acid and litmus paper in different places on the farm; but the result only confirmed the previous examinations.

"I never before saw any such light as now appears," said Mr. West. "It seems to me that for the first time in the history of Westover, covering about two centuries, a real plan can be intelligently made based upon definite information looking toward the positive improvement of the soil. While you have been away, I have been looking up the lime matter. I find that a lime is being advertised, and sold in small amounts, that is called hydrated lime, and it is especially prepared as an agricultural lime. It is recommended by some dealers as being fully equal to the ordinary commercial fertilizer which sells at about $25 a ton, while this hydrated agricultural lime can be bought for $8 a ton, and I think for a little less in larger amounts. You mentioned also that you had seen some one who had used hydrated lime, but it didn't seem to make much of a clover crop. Of course, I understand from what you said that his soil contained only one hundred and sixty pounds of phosphorus, and I take it that lime alone could not markedly improve his soil; but still I would like to know why, if he has one hundred and sixty pounds of phosphorus in his plowed soil, he could not produce a few good crops of clover. HOW much phosphorus does it require for a ton of clover?"

"One ton of clover contains only five pounds of phosphorus," Percy replied, "and of course the roots must also require some phosphorus, although after the crop is produced and removed, the phosphorus contained in the roots remains for the benefit of subsequent crops. Thus we might suppose the land which contains one hundred and sixty pounds of phosphorus ought to furnish the phosphorus needed for a three ton crop of clover every year for ten years; but in actual practice no such results are secured. The invoice of the plant food in the soil is a matter of very great importance, for it reveals the mathematical possibilities, but another matter of almost equal importance is the problem of liberating plant food from this supply sufficient for the crops to be produced year by year.

"Decaying or active organic matter is one of the great factors in the liberation of plant food, and undoubtedly the extension or distribution of the root system of the growing plant is another very potent factor. If the root surfaces come in contact with one per cent. of the total surface of the soil particles in the plowed soil, then we might conceive of a relationship whereby one per cent. of the phosphorus in that soil would be dissolved or liberated from the insoluble minerals and thus become available as food for the growing crop. We know that the rate of liberation varies greatly, with different soils and seasons, and crops also differ in their power to assist themselves in the extraction of mineral plant food from the soil. The presence of limestone encourages the development of certain soil organisms which tend to hasten some decomposition process. But, all things considered, it may be said, speaking very generally, that the equivalent of about one per cent. of the total phosphorus contained in the plowed soil does become available for the crops under average conditions. On this basis one hundred and sixty pounds of phosphorus would furnish about one and one-half pounds for the crops during one season. But in such a soil the phosphorus still remaining may be the most difficultly soluble, and the supply of decaying organic matter may be extremely low, so that possibly less than one pound per acre would become available, and this would meet the needs of less than four hundred pounds per acre of clover hay. Furthermore, the supply grows less and less with every crop removed.

"With your ordinary soil, carrying twelve hundred and seventy pounds of phosphorus, perhaps you may be able by a liberal use of decaying organic matter to liberate ten or fifteen pounds of phosphorus, or sufficient for a crop of forty to sixty bushels of corn; and, with a subsoil richer in phosphorus than the surface, and with more or less of the partially depleted surface removed by erosion year by year, the supply of phosphorus is thus permanently provided for unless the bed rock is brought too near the surface. It is doubtful if the direct addition of phosphorus to your sloping lands will ever be necessary or profitable. Certainly such addition is not advisable until you have brought the land to as high a state of fertility as is practicable by means of limestone, legumes, and manure."

"That seems clearly to be the case with most of the land now under cultivation on this farm," said Mr. West "Can you tell me anything about this hydrated lime?

"I can tell you it is correctly named," Percy replied. " Hydrated means watered, and an investment in hydrated lime is properly classed with other watered investments. If you prefer to use hydrated lime I would suggest that you buy fresh burned lump lime and do the hydrating yourself, which only requires that you add eighteen pounds of water to each fifty-six pounds of quick lime; in other words, that you slack the lime by adding water in the proper proportion. Both quick lime and hydrated lime are known as caustic lime. Webster says that the word caustic means 'capable of destroying the texture of anything or eating away its substance by chemical action.'

"This definition is correct for caustic lime, as you can easily determine by keeping your hand in a bucket of slacked lime a few minutes. Caustic lime eats away the organic matter of the soil. In an experiment conducted by the Pennsylvania Experiment Station, during a period of sixteen years, eight tons of hydrated lime destroyed organic matter equivalent to thirty-seven tons of farm manure, as compared with the use of equivalent applications of ground limestone; and, as an average of the sixteen years, every ton of caustic lime applied liberated seven dollars' worth of organic nitrogen, as compared with ground limestone. That this much liberated nitrogen was essentially wasted and lost is evidenced by the fact that larger crops were produced where ground limestone was used than where burned lime was applied.

"The limestone must be quarried whether used for grinding or for burning, and the grinding can be done for twenty-five cents a ton where a large equipment with powerful machinery is used and where cheap fuel is provided, as near the coal mining districts. It need not be very finely ground. If ground to pass a sieve with twelve meshes to the linear inch, it is very satisfactory, provided that all of the fine dust produced in the grinding is included in the product. You see the soil acids are slightly soluble and they attack the limestone particles and are thus themselves destroyed or neutralized. If, however, you ever wish to use raw rock phosphate, insist upon its being sufficiently fine-ground that at least ninety per cent. of it will pass through a sieve with ten thousand meshes to the square inch, this being no finer than is required for the basic slag phosphate, of which several million tons are now being used each year in the European countries. Like the raw rock phosphate, the slag gives the best results only when used in connection with plenty of decaying organic matter."

"That reminds me," said Mr. West, "of what one of the fertilizer agents said about raw phosphate. He said the use of raw phosphate with farm manure reminded him of 'stone soup,' which was made by putting a clean round stone in the kettle with some water. Pepper and salt were added, then some potatoes and other vegetables, a piece of butter and a few scraps of meat. 'Stone soup,' thus made, was a very satisfactory soup. He said that in practically all of the tests of raw phosphate conducted by the various State Experiment Stations, manure has been used as a means of supplying organic matter to liberate the phosphorus from the raw rock, but in such large quantity as to be entirely impracticable for the average farmer to use on his own fields; and his opinion was that the entire benefit was due to the manure. He had a little booklet entitled 'Available or Unavailable Plant Food--Which?' published by the National Fertilizer Association, and said I could get a copy by addressing the Secretary at Nashville, Tennessee."

"Fortunately," said Percy, "this is not a question of opinion but one of fact; and it has been discovered that the fertilizer agents who are long on opinions and short on facts prefer to sell four tons of complete fertilizer for $80, or even two tons of acid phosphate for $30, rather than to sell one ton of raw phosphate, containing the same amount of phosphorus, for $7.50. In the manufacture of acidulated fertilizers, one ton of raw phosphate, containing about two hundred and fifty pounds of the element phosphorus, is mixed with one ton of sulfuric acid to make two tons of acid phosphate; and, as a rule, these two tons of acid phosphate are mixed with two tons of filler to make four tons of complete fertilizer. A favorite filler is dried peat, which is taken from some of the peat bogs, as at Manito, Illinois, and shipped in train loads to the fertilizer factories. The peat is not considered worth hauling onto the land in Illinois, even where the farmers can get it for nothing; but it contains some organic nitrogen, and, by the addition of a little potassium salt, the agent is enabled to call the product a 'complete' fertilizer.

"Experiments with the use of raw rock phosphate have been conducted by the State Agricultural Experiment Stations over periods of twelve years in Maryland, eleven years in Rhode Island, twenty-one years (in two series) in Massachusetts, fourteen years (in two series) in Maine, twelve years in Pennsylvania, thirteen years in Ohio, four years in Indiana, and from four to six years on a dozen different experiment fields in different parts of Illinois.

"I have here some quotations taken from the directors of several of these experiment stations which fairly represent the opinions which they have expressed concerning their own investigations. Thus the Maryland director says:

"'The results obtained with the insoluble phosphates has cost usually less than one-half as much as that with the soluble phosphates. Insoluble South Carolina phosphate rock produced a higher total average yield than dissolved South Carolina rock.'

"The Rhode Island director comments as follows:

"' With the pea, oat, summer squash, crimson clover, Japanese millet, golden millet, white podded Adzuka bean, soy bean, and potato, raw phosphate gave very good results; but with the flat turnip, table beet, and cabbage it was relatively very inefficient.'

"The following statement is from the Massachusetts director:

"'It is possible to produce profitable crops of most kinds by liberal use of natural phosphates, and in a long series of years there might be a considerable money saving in depending at least in part upon these rather than upon the higher priced dissolved phosphates.'

"The director of the Maine State Experiment Station gives us the following:

"'For the first year the largest increase of crop was produced by soluble phosphate. For the second and third years without further addition of fertilizers, better results were obtained from the plots where stable manure and insoluble phosphates had been used.'

"The stable manure and insoluble phosphates here referred to were not applied together, but on separate plots. In deed, the raw phosphate was not used in connection with manure either in Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, Pennsylvania, or Indiana; and in the extensive experiments in progress in Illinois the raw phosphate has been used, as a rule, not with farm manure, but with green manures; and wherever manure has been used in connection with the raw phosphate, as in Ohio, the comparison is made with the same amounts of manure applied without phosphate.

"The Pennsylvania Report for 1895, page 210, contains the following statement:

"'The yearly average for the twelve years gives us a gain per acre of $2.83 from insoluble ground bone, $2.45 from insoluble South Caroline rock, $1.61 from reverted phosphate, and 48 cents from soluble phosphate, thus giving us considerably better results from the two forms of insoluble phosphate than from the reverted or soluble forms.'

"The Indiana director reports as follows:

"'It will be seen that during the first and second years the rock phosphate produced little effect, while the acid phosphate very materially increased the yields. During the third and fourth seasons, however, the rock produced very striking results, even forging ahead of the acid. This and very similar investigations in progress lead us to believe that rock phosphate is a cheap and effective source of phosphorus where immediate returns are not required.

"In the Ohio experiments eight tons of manure per acre were applied once every three years in a three-year rotation of corn, wheat, and clover, three different fields being used, so that every crop might be grown every year. The average yields for the thirteen years where manure alone was used were:

53.1 bushels of corn
20.6 bushels of wheat
1.63 tons of hay

"The average yields on the unfertilized land were:

3 2.2 bushels of corn
11.4 bushels of wheat
1.16 tons of hay

"If the corn is worth 35 cents a bushel, the wheat 70 cents, and the hay $6 a ton, in addition to the expense of harvesting and marketing, then the total value of the manure spread on the land is $2.07 a ton.

"Where $1.20 worth of raw phosphate (320 pounds) were added in connection with the manure the average yields were as follows:

61.4 bushels of corn
26.3 bushels of wheat
2.23 tons of hay

"And where $2.40 worth of acid phosphate (320 pounds) were used with the same amount and kind of manure the following average yields were secured:

60.4 bushels of corn
26.5 bushels of wheat
2.16 tons of hay

"These are the actual yield, and by any method of computation yet proposed, each dollar invested in raw phosphate has paid back much more than has a dollar invested in acid phosphate."

"And was the use of the raw phosphate really profitable?" asked Mr. West.

"Well, you might figure that out for yourself," Percy replied, "preferably using the average prices for your own locality for corn, wheat and clover. As I figure it at prices below the ten-year average for Illinois, the raw phosphate paid about eight hundred per cent. net on the investment."

"Eight hundred per cent! You must mean eight per cent. net.

"No, Sir, I mean eight hundred per cent. net, but you had better take the data and make your own computations. But does it not seem strange that, with such positive knowledge as this available, many of the Illinois landowners who have managed to sell off enough of their original stock of fertility in grain or stock at good prices to enable them to more than pay for their lands, should continue to invest their surplus in more land with hope that it will pay them eight per cent. interest, when they could secure many times that much interest from investing in the permanent improvement of the land they already own?"

"Perhaps it is not so strange," replied Mr. West. "I fear that some of their ancestors did the same thing in Virginia and other Eastern States until the land became poor, and then of course they were 'land poor.' But, say, that 'stone soup' wouldn't be so bad for those Ohio landowners, would it? I should think they would avail themselves of the positive information from their experiment station. Speaking of soup, I wonder if it isn't time for lunch! But tell me; are the Illinois farmers doing anything with raw phosphate?"

"Yes, they are doing something, but by no means as much as they ought. About two months ago a group of the leading farmers from our section of the State went up to Urbana to look over the experiment fields, some of which have been carried on since 1870. The land is the typical corn belt prairie, and consequently the results should be of very wide application. Well, as a result of that day's inspection of the actual field results, an even twelve carloads of raw phosphate were ordered by those farmers upon their return home; and I learned of another community where ten carloads were ordered at once after a similar visit. As an average of the last three years the yield of corn on those old fields has been 23 bushels per acre where corn has been grown every year without fertilizing, 58 bushels where a three-year rotation of corn, oats and clover is followed, and in the same rotation where organic matter, limestone, and phosphorus have been applied the average yield has been 87 bushels in grain farming and 92 bushels in live-stock farming.

"I attended the State Farmers' Institute last February, and there I met many men who have had several years' experience with the raw rock. Usually they put on one ton per acre as an initial application and plow it under with a good growth of clover; and, afterward, about one thousand pounds per acre every four years will be ample to gradually increase the absolute total supply of phosphorus in the soil, even though large crops are removed.

"A good many of our thinking farmers are now using one or two cars of raw phosphate every year, and they are figuring hard to keep up the organic matter and nitrogen. The most encouraging thing is the very marked benefit of the phosphate to the clover crop, and of course more clover means more corn in grain farming, and more corn and clover means more manure in live-stock farming.

"On the Illinois fields advantage is taken of these relations in the developing of systems of permanent agriculture. You see, if the phosphate produces more clover, then more clover can be plowed under on that land; or, if the crops are fed, then more manure can be returned to the phosphated land than to the land not treated with phosphate and not producing so large crops. Really the phosphate is not given full credit for what it has accomplished in the Ohio experiments; because, while the land receiving phosphated manure has produced about one-fourth larger crops than the land receiving the untreated manure, the actual amounts of manure applied have been the same, whereas one-fourth more manure can be produced from the phosphated land and if this increased supply of manure were returned to the land it would increase the supply of nitrogen and thus make still larger crop yields possible."

"That is surely the way it would work out in practical farming," said Mr. West. "I think I did not tell that $4.80 a ton is the lowest quotation I have been able to get as yet for ground limestone delivered at Blue Mound Station."

"That would make its use prohibitive," said Percy. "You ought to get it for just one-fourth of that, or for $1.20 a ton. In Illinois we can get it delivered a hundred miles from the quarry for $1.20 a ton. It costs no more for a thirty-ton car of ground limestone than the farmer receives for a cow; and the cost of a car of fine-ground natural phosphate is about equal to the price of one horse."

"Of course, our limestone supplies are essentially inexhaustible," said Mr. West, "but is that also true of our natural phosphate deposits?"

"It is not true of the high-grade phosphate," replied Percy; "for, according to the information furnished by the United States Geological Survey, it is evident that the known supplies of our high-grade phosphate will be practically exhausted in fifty years if our exportation continues to increase at the prevailing rate. After that is gone we may then draw upon our low-grade phosphate deposits, which though probably not inexhaustible are known to be exceedingly extensive."