I hate debt as profoundly as any one can, but I do not consider this really running into debt. One has more land than he needs, and does not need his pay for it forthwith; another wants land, but lacks the means of present payment. They two enter into an agreement mutually advantageous, whereby the poorer has the present use and ultimate fee-simple of the farm in question, in consideration of the payment of certain sums as duly stipulated. Technically, the buyer becomes a debtor; practically, I do not regard him as such, until payments fall due which he is unable promptly to meet. Let him rigorously avoid all other debt, and he need not shrink from nor be ashamed of this. I have a high regard for scientific attainments; I wish every young man were thoroughly instructed in the sciences which underlie the art of farming. But all the learning on earth, though it may powerfully help to make a good farmer, would not of itself make one. When a young man has learned all that seminaries and lectures, books and cabinets, can teach him, he still needs practice and experience to make him a good farmer. --"But wouldn't you have a young man study in order that he may become a good farmer?" --If he has money, Yes. I believe a youth worth four or five thousand dollars may wisely spend a tenth of his means in attending lectures, and even courses of study, at any good seminary where Natural Science is taught and applied to Agriculture. But life is short at best; and he who has no means, or very little, cannot really afford to attend even an Agricultural College. He can acquire so much of Science as is indispensable in the cheaper way I have indicated. He cannot wisely consent to spend the best years of his life in getting ready to live. He who has already mastered the art of farming, and has adequate means, may of course buy a farm to-morrow, though he be barely or not quite of age. He has little to learn from me. Yet I think even such have often concluded, in after years, that they were too hasty in buying land--that they might profitably have waited, and deliberated, and garnered the treasures of experience, before they took the grave step of buying their future home; with regard to which I shall make some suggestions in my next chapter. But I protest against a young man's declining or postponing the purchase of a farm merely because he is not able to buy a great one. Twenty acres of arable soil near a city or manufacturing village, forty acres in a rural district of any old State, or eighty acres in a region just beginning to be peopled by White men, is an ample area for any one who is worth less than $2,000. If he understands his business, he will find profitable employment hereon for every working hour: if he does not understand farming, he will buy his experience dear enough on this, yet more cheaply than he would on a wider area. Until he shall have more money than he needs, let him beware of buying more land than he absolutely wants. V.