It is neglect that impoverishes land, not use.  Intelligent use makes land better year by year.  The only way to wear out land is to starve and to rob it at the same time.  Food for man and beast may be taken from the soil for thousands of years without depleting it.  All it asks in return is the refuse, carefully saved, properly applied, and thoroughly worked in to make it available.  If, in addition to this, a cover crop of some leguminous plant be occasionally turned under, the soil may actually increase in fertility, though it be heavily cropped each year.

It would pay the young American farmer to study Belgian methods, crude though they are, for the insight he could gain into the possibilities of continuous production.  The greatest number of people to the square mile in the inhabited globe live in this little, ill-conditioned kingdom, and most of them get their living from the soil.  It has been the battle-field of Europe:  a thousand armies have harrowed it; human blood has drenched it from Liege to Ostend; it has been depopulated again and again.  But it springs into new life after each catastrophe, simply because the soil is prolific of farmers, and they cannot be kept down.  Like the poppies on the field of Waterloo, which renew the blood-red strife each year, the Belgian peasant-farmer springs new-born from the soil, which is the only mother he knows.

After two weeks in Holland, two in Belgium, and two in London, we were ready to turn our faces toward home.

We took the train to Southampton, and a small side-wheel steamer carried us outside Southampton waters, where we tossed about for thirty minutes before the Normania came to anchor.  The wind was blowing half a gale from the north, and we were glad to get under the lee of the great vessel to board her.

The transfer was quickly made, and we were off for New York.  The wind gained strength as the day grew old, but while we were in the Solent the bluff coast of Devon and Cornwall broke its force sufficiently to permit us to be comfortable on the port side of the ship.

As night came on, great clouds rolled up from the northwest and the wind increased.  Darkness, as of Egypt, fell upon us before we passed the Lizard, and the only things that showed above the raging waters were the beacon lights, and these looked dim and far away.  Occasionally a flash of lightning threw the waters into relief, and then made the darkness more impenetrable.  As we steamed beyond the Lizard and the protecting Cornish coast, the full force of the gale, from out the Irish Sea, struck us.  We were going nearly with it, and the good ship pitched and reared like an angry horse, but did not roll much.  Pitching is harder to bear than rolling, and the decks were quickly vacated.