"But they seem to pay little attention to grass."
"True. It is a splendid cheese country, as I have proved, but our people are not up to that as yet."
"They will grow tobacco. I saw some fine timber sacrificed for the sake of new-ground tobacco."
"And why not? A man gets tired of paying taxes for twenty or thirty years on timber which yields him nothing."
I smiled an invisible smile, reverting in my thoughts to an assault I had made the week before upon my kinsman in Buckingham. "William," said I, "why will you Southside people continue to exhaust your land with tobacco?"
"Dick," he replied, "you are the doggonedest fool out of jail. You, raised in Virginia, and ask a question like that! Wheat is uncertain, corn doesn't pay, we are too far from market for vegetables, too poor to put our lands in grass, and tobacco is the only thing that will fetch money. As for exhausting land, plenty of tobacco is raised in Ohio and Connecticut, and you never hear anybody talk about exhausting land there."
"Yes, but there they manure heavily, giving back to the land as much as they take, or more."
"Well, old-field pine is good enough manure for a man who has plenty of land and can take his time."
Thus in two instances my anti-tobacco wisdom turned out to be about as profitable as King James's memorable Counterblast against the beloved weed of Virginia.
"But, general," said I, "surely your neighbors don't want to retain such vast tracts of land."