With that the old lady arose and walked to the house.

CHAPTER XL

INSPIRATION

WESTOVER,

March 14, 1907.

Mr. Percy Johnston,

Heart-of-Egypt, Ill.

MY DEAR Friend:—­We were delighted to receive your interesting letter of March 2, describing the Farmer’s Institute.  I have been to two such meetings in Virginia, but they are devoted to fruit and truck and dairying, and no one seems to know much about our soils.  I appreciate more and more every year the absolute knowledge you helped me to secure concerning Westover, where we had been working in the dark for two centuries.  I am sure you will succeed on Poorland Farm,—­just as confident as any one can be in advance of actual achievement; and I expect to see the time when Richland Farm will be a more appropriate name.

I only wish you could see my alfalfa.  I have been seeding more every year and now have sixty acres.  It has come through winter in fine condition and it will be a fine sight by Easter.  Here’s a standing invitation to take Easter dinner with us, or any other dinner, for that matter, if you ever come East.

I am planning to sow about forty acres more alfalfa this year.  A writer for the Breeder’s Gazette visited us last summer, and he said some of our alfalfa was as good as any he had ever seen in California.  He said ground limestone was plainly what we need for alfalfa at Westover, but he thought some phosphorus would also help on the less rolling areas, where the alfalfa is not so good as where you found more phosphorus.

Lime and raw rock phosphate make the difference between clover and no clover.

I can get ground limestone for $2.90 a ton now, delivered at Blue Mound in bulk in carload lots.  We are hoping to get it still lower, and I think we will, for some of the big lime manufacturers, such as the company at Riverton, are making plans to furnish ground limestone; and the railroad companies are likely to make better rates, or the State will do so for them.

It is truly a lamentable situation, when our hills and mountains are full of all sorts of limestone, and our exhausted lands are crying for that more than anything else.  We understand, even better than you, that everybody is poor in a country where the land is poor; and it should be to the greatest interest of the railroad companies as well as to all other industries, to unite in an effort to make it possible for every landowner to apply large amounts of limestone to his land,—­the more the better,—­and no one should expect any large profit from the business; but wait till the benefit is produced on the land,—­wait till the farmer has his increased crops, and some money from the sale of those crops.  Then the railroads can make profit hauling those crops to market and hauling back the necessary supplies, and even the luxuries, which the farmer’s money will enable him to buy and pay for.  Then the factory wheels will turn; for, as you told us, the Secretary of Agriculture reports that eighty-six per cent. of all the manufactured products are made from agricultural raw materials.