His handsome, two-story frame house stands embowered in the orchard and shade trees, sturdy Hugh Derham planted with his own hands; his barn alone cost three thousand dollars; he has flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, and horses as he requires them; and he has a good wife, who assisted him in his early struggles, healthy, fresh and handsome still. He has had his eldest daughter at a convent school, and bought for her last year a five hundred dollar piano. It is said that he has some ten thousand dollars loaned out at interest. Now, is Hugh Derham's an exceptional case? If you came along, and we were inclined to brag, and show you a specimen of our Catholic farmers in Minnesota, we would bring you direct to Hugh Derham, not for his herds, and stock, and well filled granary--he is surpassed by many of our farmers in all these--but for the look of respectable thriftiness all around him. There is his next neighbor, Wm. Murphy, another well-to-do, respectable farmer, not perhaps as well off as Derham, but still able to bear some time ago a loss of five thousand dollars by fire, and to make no poor mouth about it. Another neighbor, Mich. Johnson, a prosperous man, better still, a high spirited, fine fellow, and an earnest worker in the cause of temperance. Another neighbor, Tom Hiland, as rich a man as Derham. In the next township, the Bennetts--three or four brothers that a poor but good, intelligent, widowed mother, with much struggling, managed to bring West, and locate on government land. These brothers now farm five times as much land as Derham, and raise five times as much wheat. And as we have been led into giving individual cases of success,--not at first intended, for such cases must be always in certain features more or less exceptional--we will give one more, that of Mich. Whalen of Whalen township, Fillmore county. His history is a remarkable one, as told by himself to us; remarkable in his brave struggle for independence, his sagacity, and final success. We give some points: About thirty years ago Mich. Whalen landed from Ireland in New York. He was then forty years of age, and had a wife and eight children--all his wealth. Yes, his wealth, he thought, if he could but reach with them the broad acres of the West. So he sawed wood for seventy-five cents a cord in the city of New York: the more he sawed the less he liked the work, and making a brave effort he found himself, with wife and children, squatted on one hundred and sixty acres of government land in Fillmore county, Minnesota. When the land came into market he was not able to pay the government price, one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, but Capt. McKenney, the then receiver of the U. S. Land Office, managed to give him time, and the next year's crop enabled him to pay up. At this time John, his eldest of six sons, was sixteen years of age, and able to help his father.