"Professor Roberts came to my place one time, to investigate a little. I knew what he came for. I showed him around, and showed him the land we had not touched, not to this day. He was a surprised man. I remember the second crop of clover was at its best. It was above his knees. He says, 'This will make two tons of hay to the acre, and it is the second crop.' He didn't say but very little. I couldn't get him to talk much. He went home and began that system of experiments at Ithaca that has practically revolutionized the agriculture of the east--experiments in tillage. Pretty soon we had his book on the fertility of the soil. I think he got his inspiration from what he saw. He said to himself, seems to me, 'Terry has something that scientific men do not know.' He got samples of soil all over the state. They analyzed the soil and found what the average soil of New York contained. They found about four thousand five hundred pounds of nitrogen, six thousand three hundred pounds of phosphoric acid, and twenty-four thousand pounds of potash in an average acre eight inches deep; and they had been buying potash largely. (Laughter.) "The farm we moved onto was the old Sanford homestead. Old Mr. Sanford lived there and brought up a large family. I think five of them boys. Every one of these boys left the farm just as soon as they could get away. There wasn't anything in farming for them. After we had been at work a dozen years or more and got things going nicely, they came back (one of them lives in Connecticut) and visited the old homestead. I remember Lorenzo said, 'It seems like a miracle. I don't know how you did it. We worked from daylight to dark, from one year's end to another, and never had anything. We boys used to be promised a holiday on the Fourth of July if the corn was all hoed. That was all we got. How on earth have you done these things?' "Friends, there were three farms we bought. Old Mr. Sanford didn't know anything about but one. There was the air and the soil and there was the subsoil. He had been working only the soil, plowing it three or four inches deep, scratching it over, taking what came, and every year less and less came. The land had run down until the surface had quit producing. We took the same soil, put in clover and took the fertility out of the upper farm, the air, and out of the lower one, the subsoil, and put it into the second one. We plowed the surface soil a little deeper and deeper until we got it eight or nine inches deep instead of four. We worked it more and more, setting more and more of the available plant food in the soil free. That is how we did it. "I say 'we' advisedly, because, friends, if I hadn't had a wife fully able and willing to do her part, and more, I would not have this story to tell." CHAPTER XXXVIII AN AWAKENING DREAM "THE chores are all done," said Mrs. Johnston, as Percy began to take down his heavy work-coat about nine o'clock that evening.