As with our colleges,so with a hundred “modern improvement;”there is an illusion about them;there is not always a positive advance.The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them.Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys,which distract our attention from serious things.They are but improved means to an unimproved end,an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at;as railroads lead to Boston or New York.We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas;but Maine and Texas,it may be,have nothing important to communicate.Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman,but when he was presented,and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand,had nothing to say.As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly.We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New;but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad,flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.After all,the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages;he is not an evangelist,nor does he come round eating locusts and wild honey.I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried a peck of corn to mill.
One says to me,“I wonder that you do not lay up money;you love to travel;you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country.”But I am wiser than that.I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot.I say to my friend,Suppose we try who will get there first.The distance is thirty miles;the fare ninety cents.That is almost a day's wages.I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road.Well,I start now on foot,and get there before night;I have travelled at that rate by the week together.You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare,and arrive there some time to-morrow,or possibly this evening,if you are lucky enough to get a job in season.Instead of going to Fitchburg,you will be working here the greater part of the day.And so,if the railroad reached round the world,I think that I should keep ahead of you;and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind,I should have to cut your acquaintance altogether.
Such is the universal law,which no man can ever outwit,and with regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long.To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet.Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere,in next to no time,and for nothing;but though a crowd rushes to the depot,and the conductor shouts “All aboard!”when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed,it will be perceived that a few are riding,but the rest are run over,-and it will be called,and will be,“A melancholy accident.”No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare,that is,if they survive so long,but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time.This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first,in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet.He should have gone up garret at once.“What!”exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all the shanties in the land,“is not this railroad which we have built a good thing?”Yes,I answer,comparatively good,that is,you might have done worse;but I wish,as you are brothers of mine,that you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.
Before I finished my house,wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method,in order to meet my unusual expenses,I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans,but also a small part with potatoes,corn,peas,and turnips.The whole lot contains eleven acres,mostly growing up to pines and hickories,and was sold the preceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre.One farmer said that it was “good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on.”I put no manure whatever on this land,not being the owner,but merely a squatter,and not expecting to cultivate so much again,and I did not quite hoe it all once.I got out several cords of stumps in plowing,which supplied me with fuel for a long time,and left small circles of virgin mould,easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there.The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house,and the driftwood from the pond,have supplied the remainder of my fuel.I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the plowing,though I held the plow myself.My farm outgoes for the first season were,for implements,seed,work,etc.,$14.72.The seed corn was given me.This never costs anything to speak of,unless you plant more than enough.I got twelve bushels of beans,and eighteen bushels of potatoes,beside some peas and sweet corn.The yellow corn and turnips were too late to come to anything.My whole income from the farm was
$23.44
Deducting the outgoes 14.72
There are left $8.71,
beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was made of the value of $4.50,-the amount on hand much more than balancing a little grass which I did not raise.All things considered,that is,considering the importance of a man's soul and of to-day,notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment,nay,partly even because of its transient character,I believe that that was doing better than any farmer in Concord did that year.