“I met Mr. Straight one day.  He said:  ’Terry, things are not going very well in the office since you left.  I wish you would come back.  You are not doing much over on that farm that I can see.  You are having a hard time.  I will gladly give you $1,200 a year if you will come back into our office.’  It was a great temptation.  Think what it meant.  To move back to town and have $100 a month.  But I said, ’No, Mr. Straight; I can’t do it.’  I don’t deserve any credit for it, friends:  but I wasn’t built that way.  I can’t back out.  When I undertake anything I have got to go through.  I would have been willing enough to leave that farm, if I had made a success of it, after I made a success of it, as I thought then; but I wasn’t willing to give up, whipped—­to acknowledge that I had undertaken that job and had to back out and go back to town to make a living.

“Some little incident sometimes will change the whole character of a man’s life.  I remember, when we were in very hard conditions, we were sitting under an apple tree in our door yard one evening.  It is there yet.  Two men from town went by.  One of them said to the other, ‘What is Terry going to do?’ The other said, ’If Terry sticks to it he will make something out of that old farm.’  Just as quick as a flash, friends, I said, ‘Terry will stick to it.’

“You see what condition we were in.  I began to put all these matters together.  I had been taught how to.  In college I had been trained to study and think, of course,—­not to work with my hands.  When I got onto the work at first I worked myself almost to death with my hands, and had no time to think or study; but gradually old methods came around again and I began to think and study.  I said:  ’Here, more hay to the acre, better hay, increased fertility by growing that clover, increased fertility by working that soil so much.’  I didn’t know why, but there was the fact.  ’Now, isn’t it possible to put these matters together and so work them out as to build up the fertility of this farm and make it blossom like the rose?’

“I began to work it out.  What was the first step?  I sold eight or nine cows to get a little money to start, thus cutting off practically our whole source of income.  There was no other way I could get any money.  We had to do some draining.  A part of the land we could not do anything with until it was tile-drained.  It took money to buy tile.  I had to have a little help about the digging, although I like to boast that I laid every tile on my farm with my own hands.  I buried every one and know it will stay there.  They were all sound and hard and good.  In all these years not one has ever failed, not one drain or tile.  I worked day after day, in the rain, wet to the skin, because it had to be done.  It was the foundation of our success.

“As I was coming here yesterday, and passed so much of your flat land, in need of drainage, I thought, drainage is the foundation of success for lots of these people, down here in southern Illinois.  You can’t do much until you have the water out of the land.  Then you have a chance to do something with tillage and manure-saving and clover.  But you throw away your efforts when you try to do this work on land that is in need of drainage.