“I don’t doubt that,” said Percy.  “An illustration or example can usually be found to prove almost anything.  I know that the Perrine Brothers, who conduct a fruit farm down in ‘Egypt,’ actually received $800 per acre for the apples grown on thirteen acres one year; and there is plenty of such land in Egypt that can be bought for less than $40 an acre, and near to the great markets.  I am told, however, that there are from a dozen to a hundred applicants for every farm opened to settlement in the West in these years, and it is estimated that all of the arid lands that can ever be put under irrigation in the United States will provide homes for no more than our regular increase in population in five years, and that the only other remaining rich lands—­the swamp areas—­will be occupied by the increase of ten years in our population.  It has seemed to me that it is high time we came back to these partially worn-out Eastern lands and begin to build them up.  Here the rainfall is abundant, the climate is fine, and the markets are the best, and there are millions of acres of these Eastern lands that lie as nicely for farming as the Western prairies.  Why should they not be built up into good farms?”

“Now, let me give you a little fatherly advice,” said the Congressman, laying his hand on Percy’s shoulder.  “I tell you this land never was any good.  If the East and South hadn’t been settled first, they never would have been settled.  Poor land remains poor land, and good land remains good land; and if you want to farm good land, you better stay right in the corn belt.  You can’t grow anything on these Eastern lands without fertilizer and the more you fertilize the more you must, and still the land remains as poor as ever.  Just leave off the fertilizer one year and your crop is not worth harvesting.  These lands never were any good and they never will be.”

“But that is hardly in accord with what the people now living on these old Eastern farms report for the conditions of agriculture in the times of their ancestors.”

“Oh, yes, I know people are always talking about their ancestors, and especially Virginians; but, Caesar!  I wonder what their ancestors would think of them!  You can’t afford to take any stock in the ancestry of these old Virginians.”

“I call to mind that the historical records give much information along this line,” said Percy.  “It is recorded that mills for grinding corn and wheat were common, that the flour of Mount Vernon was packed under the eye of Washington, and we are told that barrels of flour bearing his brand passed in the export markets without inspection.  History records that the plantations of Virginia usually passed from father to son, according to the law of entail, and that the heads of families lived like lords, keeping their stables of blooded horses and rolling to church or town in their coach and six, with outriders on horseback.  Their spacious mansions were sometimes built of imported brick; and, within, the grand staircases, the mantles, and the wainscot reaching from floor to ceiling, were of solid mahogany, elaborately carved and paneled.  The sideboards shone with gold and silver plate, and the tables were loaded with the luxuries from both the New and the Old World, and plenty of these old mansions still exist in dilapidated condition.”