Advances In Science of Farming

1899

The wonderful advance made in the science of farming during the last few years is one of the best examples of American progressiveness. A little incident recounted by the Ashtabula (Ohio) Sentinel is characteristic.

One evening, a short time ago, a society in Jefferson needed a gallon of cream. The committee called up by telephone the proprietors of a milk farm two miles north of the town, and asked if they could furnish it. The reply was that they could as soon as milking was done. In thirty minutes from the time the call was made the cream was delivered.

The milk had been drawn from the cow, put into a separator, the cream extracted and sent to town by a man on a bicycle.

A few years ago the committee would have had to send a boy in the afternoon, "yesterday's milk" would have had to be skimmed, and if the boy had not treed too many chipmunks on the way, he might have got back in time for the festival.


When It Paid

It was at the village sewing circle, and the unprofitable question of the failure or success of marriage was under discussion. Beulah Blank, a war widow, thrifty to the last degree of New England thriftiness, kept silent until some one said:
"What do you think about it, Beulah?"
"Well, I must say that it depends," said Beulah. "Now when a woman gits married, an' her husband gits drafted into the army, and he gits killed, and she gits a pension of twelve dollars a month as long as she lives, it pays to git married. That's what I think."


Safe Stock

When news came to Boxby that the squire's son "down below" had made a large sum of money in stocks, some of the wiseacres shook their heads.
Not so old lady Sprowlet with whom the young man had always been a prime favorite.
"I don't see what the minister meant, saying he didn't favor Bob's having dealings in the stock market," she said, indignantly, to one of her neighbors. "I can't see why money made in trading cattle, if it's done fair and square, isn't just as good as money made any other way!"