Waterbury Democrat., 1902-12-20
FRESH HUSBANDRY.
The First, Second and Third Crops Are Stones in Some Places.

The First, Second and Third Crops
 Are Stones in Some Places.
 When a man begins to cultivate a patch of ground in the SWinford un- ion of county Mayo the first three crops he gets consist of stones.
 I state the plain fact. There is no room for humorous exaggeration with respect to that amazing wilderness of glacial debris. The peasant goes to work with a hammer and chisel on stones of hundredweight and upwards Then, with a pick, he gets out the stones of moderate size. In the third wear he collects innumerable small stones There is no land until he has made it. ~.
 That is to say there is no place where he can put the stones to have them up in the middle of his hard-won patch.
 The landscape. of course, is one gray spread of elementary ruin.
 fixed my attention on little space of less than an acre. It was in no way worse than the rest. but I want ed to realize this incgedible labor. The yield of three such harvests had been a strong boundary wall and heap of certainly not less than forty tons in weight Nobody shall tell me again that the Irish peasant is lazy. The whole west of Ireland is ieWeled with such monuments of courage. They are of all dimensions up to that of. a large house.
 Yet Swinford Union accommodates more wives and children to the acre than any other union in Ireland
 Fifty thousand people exist on land which is valued for rating at Al, 600 and the valuation includes villages. No man knows now why people ever went there. There they are, heroic ally.
 counted 56 homes in one cluster at Cleragh. am sure that if the land they stand on were offered in one es- tate as free gift to the meanest little farmer in England he would think it a bad joke. But, as fact, rent is charged for it. Between them the 56 farmers pay, at q very moder- ate computation. E15O or G160 q year for the privilege of residing on it. Each has four or five acres of stones.
 Of course it is impossible to make q living so, even in tho utmost mis- cry.
 What these farmers do in order to pay their rents. is to work in England during nine or ten months of the year. They bring home f16 or f20 i'll Novem- ber That frees them and keeps star I vation just at arms length. These are some of the men I have met in the north, such hard workers in the hay l field that Yorkshire farmer prefers the best of these to all others. One man will come over to the same farm l for twenty. thirty and forty years. If he is not there when the grass is ready the Yorkshire farmer knows l that he has not the money to pay his fare, and sends it.
 The ridiculous patch in county Mayo with it's wIitewashed hovel, meaner and more vilely kept than any dwell 1 ing I have seen in the city slums, is Pats winter residence; no more.
 If you want a notion of simple pa triotism here it is. absurd and sub lime. He goes back from the thriving land every winter, and still clings to l the place where he was born. But lis sons and daughters leave him.
 The stream of emigrants going west overseas flows on, by 40.000 q year after all that has been done for Ire I,nd The merriest song in the lant still is, of to Philadelphia in the ] Morning g."--London Dolly Mail.