I often say to myself, as I ride about the country, what a pity it is our farmers _do not work it right_. When I see a man turn his cattle into the street to run at large and waste their dung, during a winter's day, I say this man does not work it right. Ten loads of good manure, at least, is lost in a season by this slovenly practice--and all for what? For nothing, indeed, but to ruin a farm.
So when I see cattle, late in the fall or early in the spring, rambling in a meadow or mowing field, pouching the soil and breaking the grass roots, I say to myself, this man _does not work it right_.
So when I see a barn yard with a drain to it, I say the owner does not work it right; for how easy it is to make a yard hollow, or lowest in the middle, to receive all the wash of the sides, which will be thus kept dry for the cattle. The wash of the yard, mixed with any kind of earth, or putrid straw, is the best manure in the world--yet how much do our farmers lose! In fact they do not work it right.
When I pass along the road and see a house with clapboards hanging an end with one nail, and old hats and cloths stuffed into the broken windows, and the fences tumbling down or destroyed, I conclude the owner loves rum--in truth, he does not work it right.
When I see a man frequently attending courts, I suspect _he does not work it right_.
When I see a countryman often go to the retailer's with a bottle, or the labouring man carrying home a bottle of rum after his work is done on Saturday night, I am certain this man _does not work it right_.
When a farmer divides a farm of one hundred acres of land among five or six sons, and builds a small house for each, and sets them to work for a living on a little patch of land, I question whether _he works it right_. And when these sons are afterwards unable to live on these mutilated farms, and are compelled by a host of children to go to work by the day to get bread, I believe they are all convinced that _they have not worked it right_.
When a man tells me his wife will not consent to go from home into new settlements, where he may have land enough, and live like a nabob, and therefore he is obliged to sit down in a corner of his father's farm, I laugh at him, and some time or other he will own _he has not worked it right_.
