discouragement over our farm. I do hope we may profit from this fund
of accumulated information which has already been secured from long
years of investigation. Surely we must endeavor to avoid in America
the awful conditions that already exist in the older agricultural
countries, where the lands are depleted and the people are brought
to greater poverty than even here in Virginia.

"But we have already reached the turn, and you have a mile to walk.
How much time have you?"

"Thirty minutes yet," said Percy. "Wait just a moment. Have you read
Lincoln's stories?"

"Many of them, yes."

"Here is the best one he ever told; I have copied it on a card. He
told it to a meeting of farmers at the close of an address in which
he urged them to study the science of agriculture and to adopt
better methods of farming:

"'An Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a
sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and
appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the
words, "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How
chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of
affliction! "And this, too, shall pass away." And yet, let us hope,
it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best
cultivation of the physical world beneath and around us, and the
best intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an
individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose