How the consciousness of independence, the feeling of self-respect, will sustain this man through many hardships, disappointments and trials! In a short time one or two cows take the place of the dingy cans of the milkman, and some young grunters in the hog pen represent the meat-market. After some years are past we visit the scene again. There is no loneliness here now, for it is harvest time, and the farmer and his sons are busy in the fields, his wife and eldest daughters busy in the house preparing for the keen appetites the men will bring in with them. The first rude shanty has given place to a nice two-story frame house, well sheltered from sun and wind by the healthy young trees the farmer planted with his own hands, and in the rear are the snug barn and granary. Where once the wild prairie grass waved, comes the cheery clatter of the harvester, and swath after swath of the golden grain falls down before it. By and by the younger children return from school, rosy and hungry, and a small skirmisher is thrown out and enters the pantry; he is repulsed and falls back on the main body; then, taking advantage of the "good woman," being obliged to run to the oven to keep the bread from burning, the whole force advance, a pie is spiked and carried off in triumph. As the shades of evening fall, a herd of cattle march lazily into the farm yard, and then from the field come the farmer and his sons. Lonely, indeed! Why the noise of Babel is renewed here. Dipping his hot face in a basin of cool water, the farmer splutters out his directions; seizing a jack towel, he scrubs his face, and continues to halloo to Mike, and Tom, and Patrick. Why, _the boss has come back_. Ay, but THE MAN HIMSELF IS THE BOSS NOW. All things come to an end, so does the farmer's supper; and as we sit with him on the porch outside we say, "You have a splendid place here." "It will do," he answers quite carelessly; but he can't fool us. We know that he is proud of his success. "I had to work hard for it," he continues, "but God has been very good to us." We are not romancing. We have drawn a picture from the original, which can be duplicated a thousand fold in this State. It is not individual success alone we can point to, but likewise the success of whole farming communities, where the people commenced poor--many of them, perhaps the majority, with scarcely any means at all--under disadvantages that would now appear to us, with railroads and markets on every side, almost insurmountable, and where to-day we cannot find one exceptional case of failure without an exceptional cause for it.