"Well, Sir," said Mr. West, "if you could accomplish your purpose and ultimately show a balance on the right side of the ledger, it would be a work of very great value to this country. There will be no difficulty in securing such land as you want with location and price to suit you; but I think that you should know in advance that older men than you have purchased farms hereabout with very similar intentions, but with the ultimate result that they have lost more, financially, than we who are native to the soil; for, while we were once well-to-do and are now poor, we still own our land, impoverished as it is. However, the farm still furnishes us a comfortable living, supplemented, to be sure, with some income from other sources. "I am very willing to give as much information as I can regarding our lands and the agricultural conditions and common practices, although I fear that this knowledge will discourage you from making any investments in our worn-out farms. If you still decide to make the trial, I surely hope you will be successful, for we need such an object lesson above all else. "I assume that you will wish to locate near a town of considerable size, in order that you can haul manures from town, and perhaps some feed also; and have a good market for your milk and other products." "No, Sir," said Percy, "I should prefer not to engage in dairying, and I do not wish to make use of fertilizer made from my neighbors' crops. We have some object lessons of that kind in my own state; and I have no doubt that some can be found in this state who feed all they produce on their own land and perhaps even larger amounts of feed purchased from their neighbors, or hauled from town, and who, in addition to using all of the farm fertilizer thus produced, haul considerable amounts of such materials from the livery stables in town. With much hard work, with a good market for the products of the dairy and truck garden, and with business skill in purchasing feed from their neighbors when prices are low, such men succeed as individuals; but do they furnish an object lesson which could be followed by the general farmer?" "I had not looked at the matter from that point of view," said Mr. West, "but it is plain to see that on the whole there can be only a small percentage of such farmers; and in reality they are a detriment to their neighbors who permit their own hay and grain to be hauled off from their farms; but certainly these are the methods followed by our most successful farmers, and these are they who live on the fat of the land."