Norwich bulletin., 1913-12-27
INSPIRATION AND PRESERVATION AS FARM
ASSETS

very likely tends to a dwarfing of the faculty.-Don't let's start any debate, here, about whether this dWarfing is wholly unfortunate or notl-We must accept the fact. I think, as one lying close at the bottom of any theory we may build up Whatever we argue about the ethical side of it, we must admit that the figures seem to show that only one earner out of ninety in the whole country seems able to make an income of over $500. This bears out my idea that the money making faculty is a comparatively rare one, It's Something like the ability to write poetry or paint portraits or jump up and hit your heels together three times before striking the ground! There have been few Tennysons and Long, fellows, & few Titians and Sargents, a few Rockefellers and Rankins. But there are very. very few who could write Tn Memorian;P very, very few who could paint $400,000 Philip II; very very few who could make three millions working a farm or three mill lions exploiting Standard Oil. Somebody Edison, ! faney,-says that genius is two per cent inspira- tion and ninety eight per cent per spiration." This may be true; never theless, the two per cent of inspira tion seems rather essential, as a starter. Some uncommon people are geniuses at poetry and some at money making. But the great body of us are not supremely gifted, either way. And it really takes something out of the common, something akin to genius to make money. 1t may not be high form of genius: it may not be an al ways or often admirable condition of mind; but that it is somewhat ex- ceptional everything we know seems to assure us.
 The very fact that some farmers do make money is evidence of the truth of this. While hundreds of thous- ahds of us were grubbing away the whole year long just to make a liv ing, David Rankin, with no better start than the poorest of us all, was slowly but surely rolling up bank made from raising corn and selling fat beef.
 Another illustration has come to my attention in a recent magazine arti- cle.
 Six years ago Francis M. Jones, liv- ing near ClintOn N Y. started cow farming with capital of $1,4SO, in- vested, mostly. in two $125 heifers and a registered sire. He has now a herd conservatively valued at s200,000,- after only six years. That is he has made" something like $19S52O in six years from a capital of $1,4S0.
 That's going some, eh?
 Whats the explanation? Why Jones had a knack for raising cattle and an eye for judging good eow'' So says the magazine writer who visited his place.-If Jones had written a second Paradise Lost" don't think he would have been described as hav- ing "a knack' for poetry if he had painted a "F'riedland" I don't think he would have been dismissed as merely having "an eye' for color. Milton and Meissonier are acclaimed by the world IS true geniuses Yet the ability to do the thingsthev did is hardly more rare than the ability to do the thing Jones has done Probably Jones couldn't write two lines of passable poetry: probably he couldn't paint a sign board. I don't believe either Mil- ton or Meissonier could have made $19S,520 in six years with two heifers and a bull.
 And I don't believe either you or I could