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36 must have some distinct and important truth to communicate, and the most important it will always be the most easy to communicate to the vulgar.

If anybody thinks a thought how sure we are to hear of it. Though it be only a half thought or half a delusion, it gets into the newspapers, and all the country rings with it. But how much clearing of land, and plowing and planting, and building of stone wall is done every summer without being reported in the newspapers or in literature. Agricultural literature is not as extensive as the fields, and the farmer's almanac is never a big book. Yet I think that the history (or poetry) of one farm from a state of nature to the highest state of cultivation comes nearer to being the true subject of a modern epic than the siege of Jerusalem or any such paltry and ridiculous romance to which some have thought men reduced. Was it Coleridge who said that the "Works and Days" of Hesiod, the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil are but leaves out of that epic? The turning of a swamp into a garden, though the poet may not think it an improvement, is at any rate an enterprise interesting to all men.

A wealthy farmer, who has money to let, was here yesterday who said that fourteen years ago a man came to him to hire two hundred dollars