A fruit-farmer, on the Hudson above Newburg, showed me, three years since, a field of eight or ten acres which he had nicely set with Grapes, in rows ten feet apart, with beds of Strawberries between the rows, from which he assured me that his sales per acre exceeded $700 per annum. I presume his outlay for labor, including picking, was less than $300 per annum; but it had cost something, to make this field what it then was. Say that he had spent $1,000 per acre in underdraining, enriching and tilling this field, to bring it to this condition, including the cost of his plants, and still there must have been a clear profit here of at least $300 per acre. I might multiply illustrations; but let the foregoing suffice. I readily admit that shiftless farming doesn't pay--that poor crops don't pay--that it is hard work to make money by farming without some capital--that frost, or hail, or drouth, or floods, or insects, may blast the farmer's hopes, after he has done his best to deserve and achieve success; but I insist that, as a general proposition, GOOD _Farming_ DOES _pay_--that few pursuits afford as good a prospect, as full an assurance, of reward for intelligent, energetic, persistent effort, as this does. I am not arguing that every man should be a farmer. Other vocations are useful and necessary, and many pursue them with advantage to themselves and to others. But those pursuits are apt to be modified by time, and some of them may yet be entirely dispensed with, which Farming never can be. It is the first and most essential of human pursuits; it is every one's interest that this calling should be honored and prosperous. If not adequately recompensed, I judge that is because it is not wisely and energetically followed. My aim is to show how it may be pursued with satisfaction and profit. II. GOOD AND BAD HUSBANDRY. Necessity is the master of us all. A farmer may be as strenuous for deep plowing as I am--may firmly believe that the soil should be thoroughly broken up and pulverized to a depth of fifteen to thirty inches, according to the crop; but, if all the team he can muster is a yoke of thin, light steers, or a span of old, spavined horses, which have not even a speaking acquaintance with grain, what shall he do? So he may heartily wish he had a thousand loads of barn-yard manure, and know how to make a good use of every ounce of it; but, if he has it not, and is not able to buy it, he can't always afford to forbear sowing and planting, and so, because he cannot secure great crops, do without any crops at all. If he does the best he can, what better _can_ he do?