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Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1532, 9 December 1873, Page 41

You should Lave seen Simpson’s and his family’s faces. They grew cloudy and long. Indeed, I believe they 7 began to scowl at me. Simpson said : “You’re pretty rough on an old r neighbor, Crumple, now that he’s going. I thought you and I had always been friends. I’ve tried to bo a good and accommodating neighbor. You’ve been a good one to me, and I’m sorry to 1 leave you ; but if you’re glad I’m going, ’ I’m not sorry cither,” “Simpson,” I said, “let us understand each other. As a neighbor, so far as neighborly intercourse is concerned, I’ve no fault to find, and I am sorry you are going. In talking about you as a fanner—you arc, and always have been, a poor one. No man with such a farm as yours ought to want to sell —at least there ought to be no necessity for selling. But you are not a farmer. You haven’t got a single quality essential to make a good farmer. In the first place, you detest the business ; you don’t take any pride or interest in it; you don’t care whether your land improves under cultivation or not; you want to get all off it you can without taking the trouble to pay anything back ; you skin it year after year, and cry out against the seasons ; you denounce every man you deal with as a sharper or swindler because you do not get the prices for your products others do : and yet you do not seem to know the reason is that your products are poor in quality, and put on the market in miserable shape; your stock has been running down ever since your father died ; you haven’t built a new fence, and scarcely repaired an old one; your manure has not been hauled out and judiciously used on the farm; your pigs have bothered your neighbors more tlfun they have benefited you; your cattle have become brcachy, and I had to shut them up in my stables in order to keep them out of my grain; you have distributed from your fence corners more weed seeds than any farmer I know of, and thus given your tidy neighbors more trouble than your favors to them would compensate. In short it is time for you to move. You ought to have a virgin farm! It will take you but a few years to strip it of its fertility ; then you’ll have to move again, and keep moving. You belong to a very large class of farmers who arc a curse to any country. The fact is, you arc not, never were, and never will ho, a farmer in the right sense of that word. You are only a guerilla. You live by robbery—robbery of the soil. And it is not right, neighbor Simpson. Yon had better seek some other vocation, now that you have the cash to start with. You like horses; you know' horses; you can talk horse , from daylight till dark; you can’t be fooled with horses; you like to trade horses; you had better go into some smart town and start a livery stable. You’ll make money at it; you’ll never make money by farming ; you’ll grow poorer and poorer the longer you attempt it.” Just then, Sally Simpson clapped her hands and said : “ That’s so, father. Haven’t I often told you so ? Mother and I have often talked it over, Mr Crumple, ami you arc jlist as right as can he; ami father knows it, too, if he would only say so. I know’ you too well (and you’ve done us too many kindnesses for us ever to forget them), to believe that you have talked to father in the way you have, out of any unkind feeling. It is true, every word of it, father, and you ought to thank neighbor for talking just as he thinks. I do; and I don’t think a bit the less of him, either.” Then Sally burst into tears, and Mrs Simpson drew a long breath and sighed in a way that endorsed all Sally had said: and Simpson got up and came over to me, and said : “ Crumple, I believe you’re right; I only wish you had talked to me in that style ten years sooner. It shan’t : make a bit of difference in our good feeling towards each other, old fellow, and I’ll never forget how you once saved 1 my hoy ” 1 “ There, there ! Simpson ! enough of j that. It’s all right, If I can do any- . thing for you before you go, let me ' know,” and lie shook my hand with a | strong grip as I passed out of the hack , door.