AGRICULTURE A FRAUD.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1381, 27 October 1886, Page 2

AGRICULTURE A FRAUD.

The basest fraud on earth is agriculture. The deadliest ignis fatuus that ever glittered to beguile, and dszz'ed to betray, is agriculture. I speak with feel* Ing on this subject, for I’ve been glittered and beguiled, and destroyed by the same arch deceiver. She has made me a thousand promises and broken everyone of them. She has promised me early potatoes, and the rain has drowned them ; late potatoes, and a drouth has withered them. She hss promised cherries, and the curculio hss stung them, and they contain living things, uncomely to the eye and unsavoury to the tuste. She has pr mised strawberries, and the young chickens have devoured them, and the eye cannot see them No wonder that Cain killed his brother. He was a tiller of the ground. The wonder is he did not kill his father, and then weep because he had not a grandfather to kill. No doubt, his early Rose potatoes, for which be paid Adam 7 dols. a barrel, had been cut down by bugs from the headwaters of the Euphrates; his Pennyslvania wheat had been winter-killed and was not worth cutting, his Norway oats had gone to straw, and would not yield five pecks per acre, and his black 'Spanish watermelons had been stolen by boys, who pulled up the vines, broke down his patent picket fence and had written scurrilous doggotal all over his back gate. No wonder he felt mad when he saw Abel whistling along with hia French marines worth 8 dots, a head, and wool going up every day. No wonder he wanted to kill someb'dy, and thouaht ho would practice on Abel. And Noah’s getting drnnk was not at all surprising. He had become a bus' a idman, and drowned nil sorrows in the ‘ flawing bowl ’ The fact -s, agriculture would demonise a saint. I was almost a saint when I went Into it i’m a demon now. I’m at war with ove'V'hiti". I fight myself out of bed at f..nr o’clock, when all my better nature tells me to lie till seven, I fight myself into the garden t 3 w rk like a brute, when res son and instinct tells me to stay in the hou e and enjoy myself like a man. I fi-tht the nigs, the chickens, the moles, ite birds, the bugs, the worms—everything in which is the brea'h of Ufa. I fijht the docks, the burdocks, the mulleins, the thistles, the grapes, the weeds, the roots —he whole vegetable xingdomi I fight the heat, the frost, the tain, the hail —in short, I fight the un verse, and whipped in every battle, —Oincinnati Times.