I _have_ known men do better, even at farming. I recollect one who, with no capital but a good wife and four or five hundred dollars, bought (near Boston) a farm of two hundred mainly rough acres, for $2,500, and paid for it out of its products within the next five years, during which he had nearly doubled its value. I lost sight of him then; but I have not a doubt that, if he lived fifteen years longer and had no very bad luck, he was worth, as the net result of twenty years' effort, at least $100,000. But this man would rise at four o'clock of a winter morning, harness his span of horses and hitch them to his large market-wagon (loaded over night), drive ten miles into Boston, unload and load back again, be home at fair breakfast-time, and, hastily swallowing his meal, be fresh as a daisy for his day's work, in which he would lead his hired men, keeping them clear of the least danger of falling asleep. Such men are rare, but they still exist, proving scarcely anything impossible to an indomitable will. I would not advise any to work so unmercifully; I seek only to enforce the truth that great achievements are within the reach of whoever will pay their price. An energetic farmer bought, some twenty-five years ago, a large grazing farm in Northern Vermont, consisting of some 150 acres, and costing him about $3,000. He had a small stock of cattle, which was all his land would carry; but he resolved to increase that stock by at least ten per cent. per annum, and to so improve his land by cultivation, fertilizing, clover, &c., that it would amply carry that increase. Fifteen years later, he sold out farm and stock for $45,000, and migrated to the West. I did not understand that he was a specially hard worker, but only a good manager, who kept his eyes wide open, let nothing go to waste, and steadily devoted his energies and means to the improvement of his stock and his farm. Walking one day over the farm of the late Prof. Mapes, he showed me a field of rather less than ten acres, and said, "I bought that field for $2,400, a year ago last September. There was then a light crop of corn on it, which the seller reserved and took away. I underdrained the field that Fall, plowed and sub-soiled it, fertilized it liberally, and planted it with cabbage; and, when these matured, I sold them for enough to pay for land, labor, and fertilizers, altogether." The field was now worth far more than when he bought it, and he had cleared it within fifteen months from the date of its purchase. I consider that a good operation. Another year, the crop might have been poor, or might have sold much lower, so as hardly to pay for the labor; but there are risks in other pursuits as well as in farming.