The Tiffin tribune. (Tiffin, Ohio) 1868-1887, 1869-10-22
Twain on Beecher's Farming.

Mark Twain writes to the Bufal
Express.
: Mr.. Beecher's farm consists of thir
ty-six acres, and is carried on on strie
scientific principles. He never puts il
any part of a crop without consultin.
} his book. He plows, and reaps anC
digs, and sOws according 10 the bes
authorities-and the authorities cos
:; more than the other farming imple
ments do. AS soon as the library il
complete the farm will begin to be :
profitable investment. But book
farming has its drawsbaek. Upon
one occasion, when it seemed morally
certain chat the hay ought to be cut
the hay book could not be found, and
before it was found it was too late
and the, hay was all spoiled Mr..
Beeeher raises some Of the finest
crops of wheat in the country. but the
unfavorable difference between the
cost OF producing it and its market
value after it is produced has inter
ferred considerably with its success as
4 commercial enterprise. His special
weakness is hogs, however. He con-
siders hogs the best game farm pro
duces. He buys the orisiual-pig for
a dollar and a half, and feeds him
forty dollars worth of corn, and sells
him for about nine dollars. This is
the only crop he ever makes any
money on. He loses on the corn, but
he makes seven dollars and half on
the hog. He does not mind this, be-
cause he never expects to make any
thing on the corn, anyway. And any
way it turns out, he has the excite /
ment of raising the hog any how, |
he gets the worth Of him or !
not. His Strawberries would be a !
success if the 70 bins
would eat turnips, but they won t, and |
hence the difficulty One of Mr.. |
Beeeher's most harassing difficulties /
in his farming operations comes of |
the close resemblance of different
sorts of seeds and plants to each 9TH
er. Two years ago, his far sighted |
ness warned him that there was going 1
to be great scarcity OF watermel-
ons, and therefore he put in a crop of !
acres of that fruit. But |
when they came up they turned out
to be pumpkins, and dead loss was
the consequence. Sometimes a por-
ton of his crop goes into the ground |
the most promising sweet potatoes,
and comes up the infsrnalest carrots |
though l have never heard him ex-
press it just in that way. When ne
bought his farm, he found one egg in
every hens nest on the place. He
said that here was the reason so many |
farmers failed-they scattered their
forces too much-coneentration was
the idea. So he gathered those eggs |
together and put them all under one
old hen. That hen roost-
ed over the contract, night and day, |
for eleven weeks, under the anxious
personal supervision of Mr.. B., him
self, but she could not "phase" those
eggs. Why? Because they were
those Infamous porcelain things which
are used by ingenious and fraudulent
farmers as "nest eggs" But perhaps
Mr.. Beecher's most disastrous exper-
ience was the time he tried to raise
an immense crop of dried apples
He planted fifteen hundred dollars
worth, but never a one of them
sprouted. He has never been able to
to this day, what was the
matter with those apples. Mr.. Beech
er's farm is not triumph. 1t would
be easier on him if he worked it on
shares Hith-sAIua nn%-5 but be c1u not
1ybedy who-ii= " Il iiiI.ss n s-S.-s.azsdl5
half the expense, and not many are
able. Still, persistence in any cause
is bound to succeed. He was a very
inferior farmer when he first begun,
but a prolong d and upainched as
sault upon his agricultural difficulties
has had its effect at last, and he is
now fast rising from affiuence to poy-
erty.