“I really hope I may, sometime,” she replied.  “We have relatives who claim to live in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, but I think possibly they may all be ‘Egyptians,’ from what you have told me about the vast area of that great fairy empire.  I know I would dearly love to go there.”

“‘Egypt’ is the wheat belt and the fruit belt of Illinois,” Percy continued.  “One of the grand old men of Illinois, Colonel N. B. Morrison, who was for years a trustee of the State University, used to be called upon for an address whenever he was present at Convocation.  He always stated proudly that he lived in the ’Heart of Egypt.’  He said the soil there was not so rich perhaps as in the corn belt, but that with plenty of hard work they were able to live and to produce the finest fruit and the greatest men in America.  He said they had to work both the top and bottom of their soil, and he explained that they harvested wheat and apples from the top, and then went down about 600 feet and harvested ten thousand tons of coal to the acre, and still left enough to support the earth.  I have heard him say that when he was born there was not a mile of railroad in the United States, and that he had during his own lifetime, witnessed the practical agricultural ruin of almost whole States.  He used to plead for the University to send some of her scientific men to help them to solve the problem of restoring the fertility of their soils down in ‘Egypt’; and I am glad to say that finally the State appropriated sufficient funds so that the Illinois Experiment Station is rapidly securing the exact information needed to make those Southern Illinois lands richer than they ever were.

“I spent several days in ‘Egypt’ last month and I am planning to make another trip down there next week before deciding definitely about purchasing our poor land farm.  I am not sure but the land of ‘Egypt’ is as poor as we ought to try to build up considering our limited means.”

“Oh, do you think so?  But Papa’s land is not so poor is it?”

“No, it is not so poor in mineral plant food on the sloping areas, but even there it is extremely poor in humus and nitrogen.  However, I fear I could not enjoy farming in irregular patches of five or ten acres, and the level lands of Virginia and Maryland are so exceedingly poor, that much time and money and work will be required to put them on a paying basis.  There would be no pleasure or satisfaction in merely robbing other farms to build up mine, as some of the prosperous truck farmers and dairymen are doing.  I should want to practice a system of soil improvement of unlimited application so that it would not be a curse to the agricultural people, as is the case with the man who builds up his farm only at the expense of other farms.