Do you know, Mr. Hill, that, at the Second Conservation Conference called by the President of the United States, Doctor Van Hise, of the University of Wisconsin, was the only man to raise his voice in the interests of the common soils of America?  For three days the statesman and experts discussed the forests, forests, forests, and the waters, waters, and the coal and iron; and for fifteen minutes President Van Hise pleaded for the conservation of phosphate, the master key to all our material prosperity; and he was called a crank with a hobby.

With deep respect, I am,

Very sincerely yours,

PERCY JOHNSTON

CHAPTER XLII

ADVANCE INFORMATION

HEART-OF-EGYPT, November 14, 1909.

DEAR father and mother:  I can scarcely realize that I have been an “Egyptian” for almost two years.  I feel that the time has been shorter than two months of school-teaching.

Percy is so encouraged with the crops that I rejoice with him, although I could never weep with him unless I weep for joy.  He says the crops needed only that I should stroll over the fields with him; that they would grow rapidly if I only looked at them.  Think of it—­I drove the mower to cut hay,—­not all of the 80 acres, to be sure, but I cut where it yielded two tons per acre.  That is on No. 4, where Percy applied his first cars of limestone.  I wish you could have seen the untreated strips—­no clover and only half a ton of weedy timothy, while the rest of No. 4 and No. 6 were clean hay of mixed alsike and timothy.  Percy says that No. 4 produced as much real hay last year as all the rest of the farm has produced since he came, and that the hay crop this year is worth as much for feed as all that has been harvested during the previous five years; and the cattle and horses seem to agree with him.

We sold our main lot of hogs for $654, and have another lot to go later.  We are getting so many horses and cattle on the place, that we are going out of the hog business.

Percy says that hogs belong more properly in the corn belt, than in the wheat and fruit belt.  You know the year I came the corn crop was on No.  I, which had never grown anything but corn, oats, and wheat, so far as we can learn; and the corn was so poor the hogs ate most of it in two months’ time.  During the same two months the price of hogs dropped from 7 to 4-1/2 cents, so that the hogs were worth no more after eating the corn crop than they were before.

Next year we are to have corn on No. 4, and Percy says it will be the first time that corn has had a “ghost of a show to make a decent crop” since he bought the place.  The spring before we were married he reseeded that forty, sowing mixed alsike and timothy.  The clover came on finely, evidently because the scanty growth of clover the year before had at least allowed the field to become thoroughly infected with the clover bacteria.  There was no clover on the unlimed strip.  So we say that limestone and bacteria brought clover.  The hay and other feed has made manure enough so that No. 4 has been completely covered with six tons per acre, and the phosphate has also been applied; so with manure and phosphate on clover ground we hope to grow corn next year, if we have good weather.