The Story of the Soil | Page 8

or any crop, takes from the soil. I want to learn how to analyze the soil and crop and to find out, if possible, why soils become poor, in order, as Lincoln suggests, that the cause may be discovered and remedied."
"It may be that the college professors could teach you in that way," said the mother, "but you know the farm life is so full of work and so empty of mental culture."
"I used to think so too," said Percy, "but I fear we have worked too much with our hands and too little with our minds; that we have done much work in blindness as to the actual causes that control our crop yields; and that we have not found the mental culture that may be found in the farm life. Let me read again. These are Lincolns words:
"'No other human occupation opens so wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labor with cultivated thought, as agriculture. I know nothing so pleasant to the mind as the discovery of anything that is at once new and valuable--nothing that so lightens and sweetens toil as the hopeful pursuit of such discovery. And how vast and how varied a field is agriculture for such discovery! The mind, already trained to thought in the country school, or higher school, cannot fail to find there an exhaustless source of enjoyment. Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two where there was but one is both a profit and a pleasure. And not grass alone. but soils, seeds, and seasons--hedges, ditches, and fences--draining, droughts, and irrigation--plowing, hoeing, and harrowing--reaping, mowing, and threshing--saving crops, pests of crops, diseases of crops, and what will prevent or cure them--implements, utensils, and machines, their relative merits, and how to improve them--hogs, horses, and cattle--sheep, goats and poultry--trees, shrubs, fruits, plants, and flowers--the thousand things of which these are specimens--each a world of study within itself.
"'In all this book learning is available. A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so; it gives a relish and facility for successfully pursuing the unsolved ones. The rudiments of science are available, and highly available. Some knowledge of botany assists in dealing with the vegetable world--with all growing crops. Chemistry assists in the analysis of soils, selection and application of manures, and in numerous other ways. The mechanical branches of natural philosophy are ready help in almost everything, but especially in reference to implements and machinery.
"'The thought recurs that education--cultivated thought--can best be combined with agricultural labor, on the principle of thorough work; that careless, half-performed, slovenly work makes no place for such combination; and thorough work, again, renders sufficient the smallest quantity of ground to each man; and this, again, conforms to what must occur in a world less inclined to wars and more devoted to the arts of peace than heretofore. Population must increase rapidly, more rapidly than in former times, and ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community whose every member possesses this art, can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms. Such community will be alike independent of crowned kings, money kings, and land kings.'"

CHAPTER IV
LIFE'S CHOICE

PERCY read these words as though they were his own; and perhaps we may say they were his own, for, as Emerson says: "Thought is the property of him who can entertain it."
The mother listened, first with wonder; then with deepened interest, which changed to admiration for the language and for her son, who seemed to be filled with the spirit which had led Lincoln to see the problems and the possibilities of the farm life in a light that was wholly new.
"Surely those are noble thoughts," she said, "from a noble and wise man. I shall only hope that you will find some opportunity to make the best possible of your life. We have such a small farm, and the land hereabout is all so high in price that to enlarge the farm seems almost hopeless. In part because of this difficulty it had seemed to me that greater opportunities might be open for you in other lines. Don't you feel that you will be greatly handicapped in the beginning?"
"Perhaps," said Percy, "in some ways; but not in other ways. We hear on every hand that this is an age of specialists, that the most successful man cannot take time to prepare himself well for many different lines of work; that he must make the best possible preparation in some one line for which he may have special