The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1868-09-28
MONDAY. .....SEPTEMBER rs, 1868.
For the Dispatch.

New York Published by JAMES MILLER
522 Broadway.
In these days of machine book making
when SO many professional hackney book
makers turn off new book every two o.
three weeks, it is refreshing to take up this
modest little volume, which is not Of forced
growth nor untimely birth, but seems tc
have welled up spontaneously from those
springs in the human heart in which human
sensibilities have their deepest seat, and
whence practical philosophy takes its widest
range.
These sensiAilities find expression in
efforts to secure for wife, children, little
birds, and all animate nature, the full! nel'
sure of enjoyment of which they are capa
Bile }; and the practical philosophy consists
in faculty for close observation which
enables the author to learn the causes o.
things and he applies this knowledge tc
soften the asperities Of life and to further
the great object Of his undertaking, which
was to prove that ten acres of land Is
enough to support an Industrious and pru-
dent family in comfortable independence.
There is also blended with the whole re-
lo,ute will, which never succumbs, and q
high moral sense which sees dignity in an
old hat or o thread-bare coat, and in every
act of self-denial that is endured 10 avoid
incurring debt or acquiring means for self
indulgence by any indirection.
These elements, and a good-natured, quiet
satire, not unworthy of Goldsmith or Irving,
and partaking of the style of both, have
given us q book which, without pretensions
to literary excellence, Or other knowledge
Il. |of ,o1 ba ,,tb 4rn CT ho N
that derived from undisciplined practice,
and, too, on so CO onmonplace subject as ateW
years experience in gardening, has yet OBJ
tained leverage that has moved the whole
agricultural world it has rus-stricken all
embarrae3 3ed merchants and manufacturers
and iuoculated thousands Of citizens in
thousands of cities with phobia to make q
bonfire of their desks and ledgers, to turn
out alike their customers and clerks, and to
rush, spade in one hand and this book in
the other, into the country to grow straw
berries and onions, and extract at once the
delights of Eden and large fortune from a
ten acre farm. 1t has gone through eight
or ten editions, and has had SO many i'm
tators as to have created quite small-farn
literature, which, under various titles, have
all ore drift, which is to show that plat Sc
small that you may fling stone over it Is
enough to maintain a family, and that q
few acres under high cultivation may be
made to bring in an almost fabulous ln-
come. "Our Farm of Three Acres " is the
n1xt best Of the class, written by Miss Mar
tjneau otherwise favorably known as VIII
ter, and her experience on three acres may
receive notice in some future Dispatch.
This book, in form, is a narrative of the
experience Of tinsmith or other small
manufacturer Of Philadelphia, who, with q
wife and six children to care for, had strug-
gled manfully in the battle of commercial
competition up to middle ege, and the con-
viction was then forced upon him that his
business was 100 precarious dependence
to trust to for the well-doing of his family
for losses of various kinds kept him with
his head barely above water; and so little
of ease was TO himself, and so much Of ap-
prehension that the next wave of trouble
would carry him under, that ne determined
to sell out and invest the $1,000 he had al
opportunity of securing in small farlA.
His first inspirations had come from read
ing agricultural publications. 81 studied
their conteuts as carefully rs the writers
who prepared them; their reports of crops,
experiments and profits and my leading
idea was, so to cultivate few acres as to
insure maintenance for the family, free
from the ruinous vibrations of trade and
commerce in the metropolis" This is g
golden text, and suggests copious sermon
on the mistake made by able-bodied mer
engaging so generally in the grovelling
yocations of trade instead of aspiring tt
the invigorating and manly pursuits oi
agriculture while millions Of acres are
wasting their fertile treasures in woods and
weeds for lack of skilful and industrious
catherers. The agriculturist is the creator
of wealth his gains are not made, like thu
merchants, at the expense of some antago
mist whom he has been able to over-react
in a sharp bargain, but come directly from
the hand of Providence as an approving
reward for his diligence and skill in tha
occupation which he indulgently provided
for orr first progenitor ; and if the tiller O
the soil, az such, held that high place IL
public estimation that he ought to hold, as
a worker in an honorable and ennobline
pursuit, there would he among us much
ewershopkeepers and many more farmers
The six children clap their hands with
delight when they leave the city to take
possession of cottage and ten acres Of lano
their father had bought in New Jersey fol
500 per acre, prudently reserving the
other half of his capital to put the farm IN
paying condition and in the spring of 1885,
he commenced his experiment Of proving
whether ten acres is or is not enough.
When man, in any undertaking, has
achieved great and unlooked-tor success,
one naturally inquiries what were the parti'
ticular means used. Then mark the initial
element of this mans success: " hired a
team to plough, and another to follow with
the subsoiler, and each plow went down ten
inches. My neighbors had never seen such
deep ploughing, and warned me not to turn
up the yellow subsoil, and thus bring it to
the surface but they were not book-farm-
ers." Inquirer cannot expect the same re-
sul; unless he use the same means, and
when the necessity, in high culture, fo1
deep ploughing is SO strongly insisted on
we fear that many Virginia farmer Will
pooh-pooh the idea. Eut, this business
of deep subsoil ploughing is matter of in,
dispensable value in all agriculture, but
especially in the planting of orchards. Nc
n,ant can thrive as it ought unless the
earth is thoroughly and deeply loosened fo1
the free expansion of the roots" And le'
NO nlanter delude himself that he can dc
the planting first and loosen the soil after
wards it must be done before planting; l,
never can nor will be done unless subsolleo
or ridged or trenched in winter as the trs
operation.
| Peaches, raspberries, strawberries ano
blackberries were the crops he first plant
ed, and his first considerable return IN cash