Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1869-11-10
Mr. Beecher's Book Farming,

from AhafE Twain 8 ''Beecner'S Private Habits.
MIR. Beecher's farm consists Of thirty six
acres, and is carried on on strict scientific
principles He never puts in any part of
crop without consulting his book As soon
rs the library is complete, the farm will
begin to be profitable investment. But
book farming has its drawbacks On one
occasion, when it seemed morally certain
that the hay ought to be cut, the hay book
could not be found and before it was found
1t was too late, and the hay was all spoiled.
Mr.. Beecher raises some of the finest
crops OF wheat In the country, but the un-
favorable difference between the cost of
producing it and it's market value after il
is produced has interfered considerably
with It's success as a commercial enterprise.
His special weakness is hogs however.
He considers hogs the best game q farm
produces. He buys the original pig for
S1.50 and feeds him $40 worth Of corn.
and then sells him for about 50. This is
the only crop he ever makes any money on
He loses on the corn, but he makes 81 so
on the hog. He does not mind This, be-
cause he never expects to make anything
on corn any way. And any way it turns
out he has the excitement of raising the
hog anyhow, whether he gets the worth of
him or not. His strawberries would be q
comfortable success, if the robins would
eat turnips, but they WON'T and hence the
difficulty.
Two years ago Mr.. Beecher's far-sighted.
ness warned him that there was going to
be great scarcity of watermel0ns and
therefore he put in crop of twenty-seven
acres Of that fruit But when they. came
up they turned out to be pumpkins, and
dead loss was the consequence. Sometimes
a portion of his crop goes into the ground
the most promising sweet potatoes, and
comes up the most infernalest carrots
though l never have heard him express it
just in that way. MIR. Beecher's most dis
astrous experience was the time he tried to
raise an immense crop of dried apples
! He planted fifteen hundred dollars worth
but never q one of them sprouted.
RAvAGEs OF THE CHOLERA IN INDIA A
letter from Calcutta, dated August 29th
presents the following sad picture of the
| ravages of cholera in India:
Although at Umritsir, Agra, and several
other places which have been attacked,
cholera has sensibly abated, it is still raging
in many districts in various parts of the
country with fearful Violence and the total
death rate is, at the very lowest estimate,
400 day Since 1858 there has been no
hot season so fatal as the present to Euro
| petaIlS' AL burou9I tuS NOFGnW6SE prov
inces the pestilence is making sad ravages.
At Gwalior the deaths are from sixty to a
hundred a day, and Sepree, Bhopal and Sc
here are suffering heavily. The scourge
seems, indeed, to be steadily marching
along the Agra road to Bombay. At Indore
the native Rajah has made the people offer
sacrifices outside the city walls, with bare
heads and dry. chnpdtties, but without any
| marked success, as upwards of 900 men
have perished during the past three weeks.
All through Malwa the horrors of pestilence
are aggravated by the privations of famine,
especially among the thousands of pilgrims
who have been visiting the shrine of Omcar,
and are now obliged to remain III that dis
trict until the rains are over. From South
ern India we hear almost equally gloomy
tidings. At Hyderabad the cholera has
made terrible inroads and at Madras and
all the other main centres of population il
has had more or less victims.