body could have been better fitted than myself. I had been an Indian trader for seventeen years, and I had been in the woods with a pack on my back nearly all the time. When night came, I laid down and went to sleep. If it was in the snow, it made no difference to me. And I never weighed over one hundred and forty-nine in all that time. Hard labor agreed with me, and I could do as much as any man I ever had on my farm. I raised a hundred acres of wheat the first year, and got 3,950 bushels. That was a first-class year. Emigration was just coming into the country and filling it up, and I was able to sell my wheat at my barn for a dollar a bushel.

A voice I would ask you how you threshed that wheat at that time?

Mr. Clark-I threshed about two thousand bushels of it with a flail. The rest of it a man came along with a'thresher — cylinder, without any separator. I threshed it, and cleaned it up on the barn floor with a fanning mill. The greatest trouble I had was to get it ready for seed as fast as the farmers wanted it; but the Almighty did a great deal for me; the soil was good and the climate was good, and the season was good.

The next year, I raised on the same ground 3,650 bushels plowed it right up as soon as I took the wheat off, and sowed it again and was able to dispose of that to emigrants coming into the country. They wanted bread and they wanted seed, and they had to have it. After that I was never able to sell any wheat at a profit. To go into the dairy business was impossible, because we had no means of transporting our products to market. My neighbors, a great many of them, were obliged, of course, to sell their grain somewhere, and they used to haul it to Milwaukee. We had in the winter time the worst prairie road for snow drifts you ever heard of, but in the woods the road was good. In the summer season, the road was almost impassable in the woods, and very good on the prairie. There was no season of the year when we really had a good road to Milwaukee. To take wheat a hundred miles in wagons to Milwaukee, and get forty or fifty cents a bushel for it, didn't pay very well. I have known a great many of my neighbors to go to Milwaukee

The expense

with a load of wheat, and return without a cent. took the whole. I once sold a man a thousand bushels of good white winter wheat for twenty-five cents a bushel, and he made money. He had six yoke of oxen; he hauled it to Milwaukee a hundred bushels at a load, and hauled out five or six thousand weight of goods for merchants around in the country for which he got a dollar a hundred; and he said that the profit on the wheat, over and above what he paid me, more than paid his expenses; because he never stopped at any house. The country was open and he always found land that was not occupied, and he camped on that land.

It did not cost as much to raise a bushel of wheat at that time as it does now. It didn't cost as much to raise anything as it does now. A great disadvantage that we labored under at that time was that we had no means of transportation, and the land was almost worthless for farming purposes, for grain raising; and of course for dairy purposes also. I made what money I made on my farm after the second year, entirely out of hogs. I had a great many acres of burr oak openings where hogs lived. very cheaply, and I sold them at a very high price. I often had twenty-five dollars apiece for four months old pigs. I think my friend Mr. Hazen is aquainted with Mr. Osborne, who is a farmer near Ripon. I sold him a pig once for which I think he gave me about forty dollars. I tried to get him to do some breaking for me which I would have paid forty dollars for, cheerfully, but he said he had more than he could do. He happened to go out to the pen and see a litter of pigs there by my old sow which I got from Mr. Clay. I brought those two pigs in a stage from Ashland to Louisville and from there by steamer, and took them home to Fort Winnebago, and when I went on my farm I took them with me. He wanted to know what I would take for that pig. I told him it was not for sale. The sow was a Cheshire. The boar was a Berkshire. They were as fine pigs as ever were in the world; I never saw a finer animal in my life, and never saw a picture of one that was finer. He says, "I will break that land for that pig." I says, "That will do." And he did.

Before railroads were built to Ripon, a man came to me to buy

eighty acres of land. I had more land than I wanted.

I men. tion this to show that the great disadvantage we labored under was that we had no means to get our products to market. The roads were so shameful all this time between our place and Milwaukee that it was almost impossible to haul a load. He wanted to buy eighty acres of land. I told him he could have it for six dollars an acre. He said, "I will give you five." I said, "You shan't have it." $1.25 an acre.

I had purchased the land at the land sale for That was in 1856. In 1857 the railroad was completed to Ripon, and in the fall of the year I sold the same land for thirty-two dollars and a half an acre. That was because we had the means of sending our produce to market. I had at the 'time the railroad was completed to Ripon, over three thousand bushels of wheat in my barn that I could not sell at any price at all; and I sold it to Mr. Shepard in Ripon as soon as the railroad began to carry our wheat, for eighty-two cents a bushel. We labored under greater disadvantages for want of the means of transportation, than from any other cause whatever.

I kept an exact account of the wheat raised on that hundred acres the second year, and it cost me less than twenty cents a bushel to raise it. And it was all cut with a cradle, and I raked and bound one-half of it myself. I had a young Englishman who raked and bound the other half. We had two cradlers, and we followed them until the wheat was cut. That is very hard work. I know that now a reaper will start out and cut the grain, half a dozen men will follow and bind without raking. Consequently the farmers don't have to work near as hard now as we did at that time. The threshing of my grain after this man came into the neighborhood with his cylinder, cost three cents a bushel. We cleaned it up afterwards rainy days and Sundays. (Laughter.) I had to board him and his men. The farmers all about the country were situated precisely as I was, only once in a while I found a man who was a little more pious than I was.

I recollect on one occasion I had about fifty acres of wheat out, and it was in good condition to stack; and I got some extra men and teams, and one Sunday morning I commenced to put it in stack. A neighbor of mine, who was a Methodist, came along

and scolded me about it; he said that I never would be able to get any wheat out of those stacks. Something terrible would happen. After I got it pretty much all into the stacks, that night there came a rain, and it lasted about five days. All his grain grew in the shock. in the shock. And I made up my mind that the Almighty intended we on the frontier should take care of our produce. As Col. Judy says, if a man is engaged in any business, attend to his business, and do it with all his might. I thought I had better get my grain in when it was fit to put in, and I did so.

Farming got to be such very poor business after a while that I turned agriculturist. (Laughter.) Gov. Ludington said just now as he was going out that he was an agriculturist. Some of you would like to know the difference between an agriculturist and a farmer. A farmer lives on his farm and makes it support him and his family. An agriculturist works very hard at some other branch of business, and spends every cent he can raise on his farm. That was my case.

For the last seven years that I was on my farm, I was practicing law; and my business was worth about twelve hundred dollars a year. I managed with that business to pay my taxes, and it was pretty tough to do that. So I concluded after a while, that I would leave the farm; besides I had fallen among thieves. My neighbors who settled about me in the same school-district,. were all from northern Indiana, and as one old man said, "I made a fortune without any education, and I guess my children can do the same." They determined if they had any school, that a girl must teach for a dollar a week, and board around the neighborhood. Of course we could not get a girl who would do that who was competent to teach my children. The first year I was clerk myself and hired a very competent teacher, boarded her without charge, and gave her every cent of money there was in the treas ury. The next time I got one vote for clerk. That was Bill Dakin's, and Bill Dakin got one vote for director. That was mine. He paid taxes on sixteen hundred acres of land, and I paid taxes on over six hundred acres; these other fellows on about eighty acres apiece. We couldn't have a school, and I

made up my mind to leave. So I moved away to where I am. now, and for the chief reason to send my children to school.

Now, Mr. President, I believe I have said all about the manner we used to farm it forty years ago that is necessary for me to say. There are a great many people here to-day who were here nearly forty years ago, and indeed I have seen some, and conversed with them; and all over this state the same difficulty occurred that

of a want of facilities to get their products to market. Since the days of railroads, and during the prosperous times, except the time of the panic, farmers all over this state have really done very well, if they attended to their business.

2 P. M.

Convention met in the Senate Chamber by the courtesy of the Honorable the Senate of Wisconsin.

J. M. Smith, President of the State Horticultural Society,in the chair.

AFTER THE SEED TIME, THE HARVEST.

BY MRS. A. A. ARNOLD, GALESVILLE, WIS.

When the sky has put off its cold gray color and assumed the cheerful hue of azure; when the air is filled with the melody of hundreds of winged songsters, returned to their northern home; when all nature, released from her icy fetters, and habited in the lovely green of the spring time, rejoices in the warm sunlight, the husbandman goes forth with his plow to mellow the soil and make it a fit receptacle for the tiny seeds. He is watchful that it be in proper condition - not too wet nor too dry: that the plowing be not too shallow nor too deep; neglects nothing that will make his land the more productive. He realizes that should he fail in this needful preparation, but a poor return will be given. He then brings the seed that was selected in the autumn and stored where the dampness could not injure, and plants it carefully. Ere many days each seed vessel is throbbing and flushing