Here he was in direct conflict with modern farming.  The theory of the farming of the present day is that time is money, and, according to this, Hodson made a great mistake.  He should have given a high price for his stock, have paid for cake, &c., and fattened them up as fast as possible, and then realised.  The logic is correct, and in any business or manufacture could not be gainsaid.  But Hodson did just the reverse.  He did not mind his cattle taking a little time to get into condition, provided they cost him no ready money.  Theoretically, the grass they ate represented money, and might have been converted to a better use.  But in practice the reverse came true.  He succeeded, and other men failed.  His cattle and his sheep, which he bought cheap and out of condition, quietly improved (time being no object), and he sold them at a profit, from which there were no long bills to deduct for cake.

He purchased no machinery whilst in this small place—­which was chiefly grass land—­with the exception of a second-hand haymaking machine.  The money he made he put out at interest on mortgage of real property, and it brought in about 4 per cent.  It was said that in some few cases where the security was good he lent it at a much higher rate to other farmers of twenty times his outward show.  After awhile he went into the great farm now occupied by his son Harry, and commenced operations without borrowing a single shilling.  The reason was because he was in no hurry.  He slowly grew his money in the little farm, and then, and not till then, essayed the greater.  Even then he would not have ventured had not the circumstances been peculiarly favourable.  Like the present, it was a time of depression generally, and in this particular case the former tenant had lived high and farmed bad.  The land was in the worst possible state, the landlord could not let it, and Hodson was given to understand that he could have it for next to nothing at first.

Now it was at this crisis of his life that he showed that in his own sphere he possessed the true attribute of genius.  Most men who had practised rigid economy for twenty years, whose hours, and days, and weeks had been occupied with little petty details, how to save a penny here and a fourpenny bit yonder, would have become fossilised in the process.  Their minds would have become as narrow as their ways.  They would have shrunk from any venture, and continued in the old course to the end of their time.

Old Hodson, mean to the last degree in his way of living, narrow to the narrowest point where sixpence could be got, nevertheless had a mind.  He saw that his opportunity had come, and he struck.  He took the great corn farm, and left his little place.  The whole country side at once pronounced him mad, and naturally anticipated his failure.  The country side did not yet understand two things.  They did not know how much money he had saved, and they did not know the capacity of his mind.  He had