When I was ten years old, my father took a job of clearing off the mainly fallen and partially rotten timber--largely White Pine and Black Ash--from fifty acres of level and then swampy land; and he and his two boys gave most of the two ensuing years (1821-2) to the rugged task. When it was finished, I--a boy of twelve years--could have taken just such a tract of half-burned primitive forest as that was when we took hold of it, and cleared it by an expenditure of seventy to eighty per cent. of the labor we actually bestowed upon that. I had learned, in clearing this, how to economize labor in any future undertaking of the kind; and so every one learns by experience who steadily observes and reflects. He must have been a very good farmer at the start, or a very poor one afterward, who cannot grow a thousand bushels of grain much cheaper at thirty years of age than he could at twenty. To every young man who has had no farming experience, or very little, yet who means to make farming his vocation, I say, Hire out, for the coming year, to the very best farmer who will give you anything like the value of your labor. Buy a very few choice books, (if you have them not already,) which treat of Geology, Chemistry, Botany, and the application of their truths in Practical Agriculture; give to these the close and thoughtful attention of your few leisure hours; keep your eyes wide open, and set down in a note-book or pocket-diary each night a minute of whatever has been done on the farm that day, making a note of each storm, shower, frost, hail, etc., and also of the date at which each planted crop requires tillage or is ripe enough to harvest, and ascertaining, so far as possible, what each crop produced on the farm has cost, and which of them all are produced at a profit and which at a loss. At the year's end, hire again to the same or another good farmer and pursue the same course; and so do till you shall be twenty-four or twenty-five years of age, which is young enough to marry, and quite young enough to undertake the management of a farm. By this time, if you have carefully saved and wisely invested your earnings, you will have several hundred dollars; and, if you do not choose to migrate to some region where land is very cheap, you will have found some one willing to sell you a small farm on credit, taking a long mortgage as security. Your money--assuming that you have only what you will have earned--will all be wanted to fix up your building, buy a team and cow, with the few implements needed, and supply you with provisions till you can grow some. If you can start thus experienced and full-handed, you may, by diligence, combined with good fortune, begin to make payments on your mortgage at the close of your second year.