“Well, I can tell you where to look for it, if you’re in earnest; and ’tain’t so very far off, either,” said the farmer, as he raised the jug of milk to his mouth.
Fred indicated by his attitude that he was all attention, while the farmer took a long drink.
“In the ground,” said he, as he sat down the jug with one hand, and brushed the other across his mouth. “There’s no wealth but what comes out of the ground in some way. All the trees and plants, all the grains, and grasses, and garden-sass, all the brick and stone, all the metals—iron, gold, silver, copper—everything comes out of the ground. That’s where man himself came from, according to the Bible: ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’ And the first primary foundation of it all is agriculture. Hewson, the blacksmith, pretends to say it’s iron; and he maintained that side in the debating club at the last meeting. But I maintained it was agriculture, and I maintain so still. Says I, ‘Mr. President, what’s your tailor, and your sailor, and your ship-builder, and your soldier, and your blacksmith going to do without something to eat? [Here the farmer made a vigorous gesture by bringing down his fist upon his knee.] They can’t eat needles, nor spikes, nor guns, nor anvils. The farmer’s got to feed ’em, every one on ’em. And they’ve got to have a good breakfast before they can do a good day’s work, and a dinner in the middle of it, and a supper at the end of it. Can’t plow without iron?’ says I. ‘Why, Mr. President, in Syria and thereabouts they plow with a crooked limb of a tree to this day. The gentleman can see a picture of it in Barnes’s Notes, if he has access to that valuable work.’ And says I, ‘Mr. President, who was first in the order of time—Adam the farmer, or Tubal Cain the blacksmith? No, sir; Adam was the precursor of Tubal Cain; Adam had to be created before Tubal Cain could exist. First the farmer, and then the blacksmith;—that, Mr. President, is the divine order in the great procession of creation.’”
Here the farmer stopped, and cut a piece of meat with his pocket-knife.
“Boy,” he continued, “if you want a fortune, you must dig it out of the ground. You won’t find one anywhere else.”
Fred thought of his recent unpleasant experience in digging for a fortune, and asked, “Isn’t digging generally pretty hard work.”
“Yes,” said the farmer, as he took up his hoe, and rose to his feet; “it is hard work; but it’s a great deal more respectable than wandering around like a vagrant, picking up old horse-shoes, and hollering ‘Money!’ at falling stars.”
Fred thought the man was somehow getting personal. So he took his bundle, climbed the fence, and said good-bye to him.
He walked on until he came to a fork of the road, and there he stopped, considering which road he would take. He could find no sign-board of any sort, and was about to toss one of his pennies to determine the question, when he saw a white steeple at some distance down the right hand road. “It’s always good luck to pass a church,” said he, and took that road.
When he reached the church, he sat down on the steps to rest. While he sat there, thinking over all he had seen and heard that day, a gentleman wearing a black coat, a high hat, and a white cravat, came through the gate of a little house almost buried in vines and bushes, that stood next to the church. He saw Fred, and approached him, saying,—