Chapter II: Part 2

It was evidently a startling apparition that thus suddenly appeared in the road in front of the Federal cavalry, for they came abruptly to a halt, and for a moment seemed undecided as to what it was, or what to do, for the old horse had his busiest end towards them and they could see, what must have appeared to them, a dozen or more horses’ tails flirting up and down, around and around in the air (for the old brute was swinging it vigorously and with lightning rapidity), and a countless number of heels and legs flying out of this cloud of horse hair in all directions. At the same time a shapeless bundle of something gray, was bouncing about on top, for Mike in his gymnastic exercise in holding on assumed many inconceivable attitudes, all of which were enveloped in a thin yellow cloud that certainly was not dust, and out of which came curses, groans, squeals, and snorts. The old horse did everything but lie down to rid himself of the torture. Finally he made up his mind to run, and such running—a streak of lightning would have been distanced at the rate he went. He looked as if he was literally flying and would only touch the earth at intervals long enough to sling his heels out in vicious kicks, first on one side and then the other. At this part of the performance Mike would bounce up a frightful distance, but always managed to come down on the neck, back, or side of his horse. I never in my life saw such running, and can truthfully say no circus ever gave a greater variety of styles in riding.

As soon as the horse stretched out into a run, and the enemy could see what it was in front of them, they unslung their carbines, fired a volley at Mike and a half dozen or them darted out at full speed after him. As they passed I heard one fellow call out:

“Look at the damned rebel how he rides, will you?” And a sergeant mounted on a big gray horse shouted:

“It’s Anderson himself, boys, come on!” and he drove the spurs in the sides of his horse.

They were too intent on catching, as they thought, the noted captain and expert rider in front of them, to notice us in the brush, but being quite familiar with their methods, I was satisfied they would at once throw out flankers to prevent an ambush, so I moved back promptly to a safe position, and after following and watching them for several miles, and getting all the information desired, finally locating them on the proper road, all of which I reported to the colonel from time to time by sending a man back, I rejoined the command myself just in time to take a part in the wind-up of a sharp little fight that was claimed a draw by both sides. We held the ground, but the enemy was drawing off in good order down the road they had advanced on. We lost some men and had killed and captured some of theirs. Amongst the latter I recognized the sergeant, on the big gray horse, who had been so intent that morning on capturing Mike, thinking it was Anderson. He was battered up a little, had caught a pistol ball in his bridle-arm and evidently from the cut on his head had been knocked off of his big gray in the skirmish by some of our fellows.

Mike and I were standing by while his wounds were being dressed by our surgeon. He happened to be a countryman of Mike’s, and with that never failing, but indescribable bond of sympathy that the gallant sons of the Emerald Isle always have for each other, it matters not under what sky or flag they meet, they were soon engaged in an animated, but amicable discussion as to the merits of the two respective armies. With the truthfulness of a saint depicted on his countenance, Mike made the most startling and exaggerated statement concerning the strength and resources of our troops, and turning toward Captain Anderson, who had just walked up, he said: “I’ll l’ave it to Cap’n Anderson if I’m not right.”

At the mention of Anderson’s name and rank, the prisoner turned quickly and with much curiosity expressed in his face, critically eyed, over and over, the light but sinewy figure of the noted captain and skillful rider. Anderson noticed that he was being closely scrutinized, but without knowing any special cause therefor, he nodded pleasantly at the captive trooper and remarked: “That was a pretty sharp rap some of our fellows gave you over your head, sergeant.”

“Right ye are, Cap’n,” he replied, “but it’s meself that would be afther takin’ tin times as many, only to have caught ye this mornin’, whin we chased ye down the road.”

I had not yet mentioned to the captain any of the minor details of my morning’s work, so he knew nothing of Mike’s adventure with the hornets, for that worthy gentleman, when he joined the command at the end of his wild ride, had simply reported that we had met the Yankees unexpectedly at a bend in the road and they had chased him some distance, but that I, with the rest of the men, was yet in the brush and would get all of the information wanted. The other men that I sent in afterwards, had reported direct to the colonel and were at once sent off by him to hurry up different detachments consequently, Mike’s last feat in horsemanship had not yet gained circulation.

Anderson looked at the prisoner when he made the above statement, and shook his head doubtfully. Mike looked at me and shook his head slyly.

“You are mistaken, my man,” said Anderson. “I admit I have had to show you my heels occasionally, but it was not on the cards to-day. That don’t look like it, does it?” he added, as he pointed down the road to the cloud of dust that marked the retreat of our late adversaries.

The sergeant was not to be denied, however, for he had seen him, as he thought, with his own eyes and had shot at him; lowering his voice to a half whisper he said:

“Faith, Cap’n, and it’s no shame to ye that ye run, for didn’t we have the howl command at our back? But it’s a beautiful rider ye are to be sure; it’s yourself that can tache the best one that iver sthradled a horse, and Jim Sullivan would give a month’s pay to see ye do it again and take a dozen more knocks like this on his head besides.”

Anderson turned to me with a look of bewilderment on his face and asked: “What is the fellow talking about? What does he mean?”

“Ask Mike,” was all I could say, for I was convulsed with suppressed laughter. With a sly wink at Anderson and a droll look on his dusty, smoke-begrimed face, Mike replied:

“To be sure, Cap’n, it was meself that did the thrick on horseback this mornin’ the fellow is sp’aking of, jist for me own devarsion, and to show the bloody divils how ye have taught your men to ride as well as fight.” And he gave another confidential and assuring wink at Anderson.

“Why, of course—certainly, Mike—certainly,” said Anderson, anxious to confirm any statement Mike would make, but not yet certain of his ground.

“It’s the blissid truth I’m afther tilling ye, Jim Sullivan, if that’s yer name,” continued Mike, turning to the sergeant, with a face as serious as a Quaker’s prayer meeting, “whin I say I’m the poorest rider in the company, bad luck to the old horse for the same, but as ye had the least bit of a taste this mornin’ of what I can do in the saddle, whin I’m a mind to, jist scratch yer head and think what the cap’n and the rest of the boys can do whin they thry.”

The sergeant looked with open-eyed astonishment from Anderson to Mike, then grasping the latter’s hand with a proud look on his face he said:

“It’s ould Ireland, me lad, that can bate the world. Ye may be a poor rider in your company, but ye can make the best man in the ould Fifth (his regiment) ashamed of himself in the saddle, and by the same token some of’m were rocked, whin babies, in horse troughs for cradles.”

The captain and myself left Mike and his countryman discussing horses and how to ride them, but we were satisfied Mike would change the subject as soon as possible, for he knew no more about either than a Digger Indian does of the Greek alphabet.

It was not long after this before Mike had his “innings” on our friends in blue, although he did not come out as scathless as in the two scrapes above mentioned.

Our pickets reported a body of Federal cavalry advancing towards LaGrange from Helena, on the St. Francis road. Our regiment was badly scattered, having to picket some twelve or fifteen miles of country, but at the sounds of “boots and saddle” a hundred and forty or fifty men “fell in,” and with the colonel at our head we went trotting through LaGrange to meet the enemy.

Some two or three miles below the little village, the road ran through one of those large cotton plantations common in that section, with a high rail fence on either side. In the woods just at the end of this lane there was a thick, heavy growth of young paw-paws. Dismounting Weatherly, who had in the meantime been promoted to a captaincy, and thirty-five or forty of his men, were placed in ambush along the road with instructions to open fire on the enemy as soon as they came up. The colonel took the rest of the command, skirted the plantation and came to the lane a half mile further down and in their rear. We had scarcely reached this position and formed in the timber before Weatherly’s guns opened. We swung by fours out into the lane and with a yell went at them under full speed, Colonel Dobbins and Captain Anderson (the latter’s company being in front), leading the charge on the right and left of the column. The road was as open and level as a billiard table, every man was driving the steel in his horse, and we were going at racing speed. The rear companies of the Federal squadron promptly wheeled to meet us and poured a steady fire from their carbines on us as we came up. I happened to be one of the first fours and was within a few feet of the colonel, when I saw him glance over his shoulder, slacken his speed somewhat, throw up his hand and call to Captain Anderson: “Let the men close up!” At the rate we had been coming, we were necessarily badly strung out, and the Federals were standing solid across the entire road, not more than seventy-five yards from us.

I pulled up my horse slightly and had half turned my head to look back, when, like a red streak, a trooper dashed by me. There was no mistaking the rider. The reins were flying loose, the old horse’s blood was up, and so was Mike’s. He couldn’t have stopped him if he would and he wouldn’t if he could, for “Charge” to Mike meant “go in” whether there was one man or a thousand at his back. He was unslinging his gun for action as he passed (a double-barrel shotgun loaded with buck and ball, and, by the way, the best weapon cavalry could be armed with in those days for close work). I had only time to notice this before our rear had closed up and the colonel again gave the order to charge. The delay was only the fractional part of a second, but Mike was then flying fifty yards in front of us. I saw two puffs of smoke fly over his shoulder and he disappeared in the cloud. The next instant we were “mixing with ’em.” The action was short, sharp and fierce, the Federals using the sabre, we six-shooters, and was too hot to last long. Their rear gave way, we went through, joined Weatherly, and never gave them time to reform until they were driven inside of their lines.

I was hurrying back to the place where I had last seen Mike, when I came up on our surgeon gouging into a poor fellow after a ball and inquired if he had found Mike.

“Yes.”

“Dead?”

“No, but wounded and on ahead in an ambulance.”

I didn’t have an opportunity to see him until some time after midnight. I found him stretched out on some straw, with others, in a barn that had been converted into a hospital. His head was swathed in bandages and looked as big as a half bushel. His face was so swollen he could not see, and the poor fellow was delirious.

From the surgeon I learned that Mike had marched a couple of prisoners up to him, saying: “Take charge of ’em, Doc,” when he keeled over at his feet with an empty six-shooter in his hand. An examination showed that his head had been terribly beaten; the cuts were to the skull in five different places.

I afterwards learned from Mike, as soon as he was able to crawl out and suck his cob pipe, that after emptying both barrels of his gun, he did not have time to draw his pistol before he was wedged in the Federal column, and clubbing his gun, he was “knocking the spalpeens” right and left, when some “dirty blackguard” struck him over the head, knocking him from his horse. In falling he was caught between the horses of a couple of Federal troopers, his arms pinned to his sides as the horses were crowded together in the lane, and the last thing he remembered they were beating a tattoo on his head. When he recovered consciousness he was lying in the timber and two Federal soldiers were standing close by, their command gone and they undecided whether to try and escape or surrender. Mike decided the question for them. Struggling to his feet and taking a pistol from the ground, having lost his own, doubtless in his tumble, he promptly ordered them to throw up their hands, which they did, and were marched back as above stated. Neither Mike nor his prisoners knew at the time that the pistol he pointed at them was empty.

Mike was a great favorite with the colonel, who, like the rest of us, would occasionally joke him about his riding. Shortly after the incident just mentioned Mike was out sunning himself. The colonel passed by and began to rig him about letting his horse run away in the charge, and carry him into the Yankee lines. “Run away, is it,” said Mike. “Och, colonel, now it’s yerself that’s fond of a joke. Whin we swung out in the lane ’n ye told us to charge, if ye had jist tipped me a wink, and said, ‘Mike, me lad, I don’t mane it, I’m only joking,’ me head would be as sound this minit as your own.”

The laugh was on the colonel, and he enjoyed it most heartily.

Dear old Mike! He answered the last “roll call” only a few years ago, and “passed over the river.”

The first time I met him after the war was at the general reunion of the U. C. V. Association in this city in 1897. I had gone to the headquarters of the Arkansas veterans looking for him, and learned he was out looking for me. There were a number of the old company present, and as I stood chatting with them about the old days, some one remarked, “Yonder comes Kelley now.” Looking up the street we saw him coming, with his hat off, mopping the perspiration from his face.

“Let’s see if he will know him, boys,” said one, as they clustered around me.

“Find him, Mike?” one of them asked, as he came up.

“No, bad luck to it; but I’ve been hot on his thrail these two hours past, ’n have nearly run the legs uv me off intirely. The little devil is as hard to catch now as he was thirty years ago, when he was riding that old gray horse,” he answered, as he threw himself down in the shade with a grunt of disgust.

There was a general laugh, but my heart was in my throat, and I did not join in until the others had ceased. In an instant he was on his feet. “I would know that laugh in a thousand,” he exclaimed, looking eagerly around. I pushed my way through and stood before him.

The steel-gray eyes I had so often seen flash defiance in the face of death were dim with tears as his hand clasped mine, and when I felt his arm around my shoulder, his bearded cheek against mine, there were drops that were not perspiration falling from my own face.

Maudlin sentiment of two old men, you say? Yes, if you choose to call it such; but a sentiment formed and welded together over and over and over again in the fiery crucible of battle and one that death alone can break.

Crop Residue and Its Benefit to the Soil

BY WILLIAM DENNISON, FARGO, N. D.

How varied, great and wonderful are the blessings which a beneficent Creator showers universally upon this cosmos of ours for the benefit of mankind, and is it not strange that a majority of us fail to see these blessings, which are everywhere before our eyes? One of these blessings which the tillers of the soil are the recipients thereof, and which very few of them recognize, is the beneficial results derived therefrom. That is the importance of crop residue as a help in maintaining the fertility of the soil. Nature is a great economist—she allows nothing to go to waste. Everything is turned to some account in the grand, economic plan. Even the stubble which is left after the grain is harvested, there is a use for it. Yet many of our farmers fail to see it. The farmers in the great wheat-raising states of the Northwest burn up their straw stacks when they want to plow the land for another wheat crop. This ought not to be. Nature has an important use for this crop residue. It ought to be returned to the land as manure. It was prodigality on their part to have sold the fertility of their land in the wheat. But it was compounding the offense when they burned up their crop residue. Because the axiom is, the more crop, the more crop residue, and the more crop residue the more dead vegetable matter to be oxidized. But for this wise provision made by an all-wise Creator, humanity would long since have perished with hunger from off the face of the earth. We do not wish to give out the impression that crop residue alone will maintain the fertility of the land, but to convey the idea of the importance of crop residue as a help in delaying the period when land which has been under cultivation for years, without manure (which is the rule in the United States) ceases to be profitable to cultivate.

“It is a fact both of scientific interest and of great practical importance, that the enrichment of a soil with nitrogen is confined to certain limits, which can, with great difficulty, be exceeded. The limit varies according to the conditions in which the soil is placed. A familiar instance of the limit is afforded by a pasture.

“We have seen when the arable land is laid down in grass an accumulation of nitrogen takes place in the surface soil. This accumulation may be slow or rapid, according to the treatment of the field, but in the case of an ordinary meadow the accumulation does not pass a certain point. After a certain number of years no further rise in nitrogen appears in the soil, although the external conditions of the meadow remain precisely the same as they were when the former accumulation of nitrogen took place. The influence of crop residue, Prof. Warington says, “where the ammonium salts were applied without ash constituents the produce was the smallest, and so was the nitrogen in the soil, and this nitrogen, like the crops, was a diminishing quantity. Where superphosphate was supplied with the ammonia the crop was considerably increased, and so was the nitrogen of the soil, which has shown little change in sixteen years. Where the ammonia was used with a full supply of phosphate and potash the produce was the largest; the nitrogen, too, of the soil was largest, and shows a tendency to rise.” “We see here at once a relation between the amount of the crop and the rise or fall of the nitrogen in the soil. The quantity of nitrogenous matter in a surface soil can only be maintained when the crop grown on the soil reaches a certain annual amount. There is, in fact, an annual waste of the nitrogenous capital of the soil, and if the proportion of the nitrogen of the soil is to be maintained there must be an equal annual addition of fresh nitrogenous organic matter. This is furnished to the soil in the form of crop residue, consisting of dead roots, leaves and stubble of a former crop, and the dead matter of weeds. When this crop residue is of large amount, as in the cultivation of red clover or in any case of green manuring, or when smaller residues are left untouched by the plow and allowed to accumulate, as in the case of a pasture, the conditions for an increase in the nitrogen of the soil are present. When, on the other hand, the crop residue is nil, as in the case of a bare fallow, or very small, as upon unmanured land, there is either none, or an insufficient replacement of the annual loss of organic matter in the soil, and the nitrogen of the soil consequently falls.” “The proportion of nitrogen in a soil can only be maintained when the supply of ash constituents (phosphates and potash) is sufficient to furnish the necessary amount of crop and crop residue.”

The nitrogenous organic matter contained in soils is for the most part an insoluble substance, a fact of the greatest importance for the maintenance of the fertility of the soil. While in this condition it is of little use to the higher order of plants among which our ordinary crops are included. To become available as plant food, it must be oxidized and rendered soluble, but as soon as this step is effected it becomes liable to be lost by drainage. Not many years ago we would have been satisfied in explaining the oxidation which occurs in soil as due to a simple contact with oxygen. We now take a different view of these changes. We know that the organic matter of a soil is split up and oxidized by means of living agents. A fertile soil is, in fact, teeming with life of many kinds. Many of these living agents are quite invisible to our eyes, and yet are performing changes on a great scale, upon the accomplishment of which the growth of our food crops depends.

The living agents which attack the organic matter of soil may be classed as (1) animal life—worms and insects; (2) fungi; (3) bacteria. The worms, beetles, larvae, etc., in a surface soil feed on the recently dead vegetable matter left by the crop or weeds which previously had possession of the soil. The carbon of this vegetable food is oxidized in their bodies and exhaled as carbonic acid, while the nitrogen is excreted in simple forms of combination. The fungi also feed on the nitrogenous organic matter of soil; carbon is oxidized in their cells and exhaled as carbonic acid, while their dead nitrogenous tissues restore to the soil a great part of the nitrogen which they had assimilated.

The conditions which favor the complete oxidation effected by bacteria are aeration of the soil by tillage, the presence of a suitable amount of water and of calcium carbonate, and a high temperature.

It has been mentioned above of the natural limits to the accumulation of nitrogen in the soil. Prof. Warington thinks he can now perceive some of the causes of such limits.

“The addition of organic matter to a soil either as crop or weed residue, or as farmyard manure, at once makes that soil a suitable home for the animal life—the fungi—and the bacteria, whose function it is to reduce organic matter to the condition of inorganic matter. An increase of organic plant residue or manure thus creates some of the conditions favorable to its own destruction. The rate of oxidation in the soil is now no longer what it was; the oxidizing agents have increased with the material to be oxidized. If, therefore, a soil is laid down in pasture or receives an annual dressing of farmyard manure, the nitrogen in that soil will only increase so long as the annual increment of organic matter exceeds the annual decrement by oxidation. If this increment is a limited quantity it will be met before long with an army of destroyers competent to effect its destruction. The richest soils are thus the most liable to waste and demand the greatest exercise of the farmer’s skill to preserve their condition. When the conditions of the soil are changed, when the pasture is plowed up or the arable land is left without manure, there is at first a rapid loss of nitrogen, but the rate of loss soon diminishes. The organic matter most easily attacked has disappeared. The army of oxidizing organisms has been reduced to starvation. A partial equilibrium is established when the annual destruction of organic matter amounts to little more than the annual residue of crop and weeds; but an absolute equilibrium is reached only when the annual loss by nitrogen is equaled by the atmospheric supply. In every case nature seeks to establish an equilibrium.”

For the American farmer to obtain good heavy crops, and consequently, large crop residues, there is only one way to do it. Invest some money in ground phosphate rock, and after applying it, plant a legume—cow peas, red clover, etc., and the investment will pay you the biggest dividend you ever received in your life.

Alfalfa-Growing in the South

BY JOSEPH E. WING, MECHANICSBURG, OHIO.

(Ed. Note—Mr. Joseph E. Wing is regarded as the best authority
in the United States on Alfalfa. He was born in 1861, took a
common school education and worked with his father on a stock
farm. Went to the Rocky Mountains when twenty-five years old,
and became a cowboy, learning the business thoroughly and
becoming manager of a large ranch. While in the West he saw
the wonderful value of the alfalfa plant growing there, and
determining to grow it in Ohio he came back to that State,
bought the old home and went to work. He enriched and drained
the old farm, laying fourteen miles of tile underdrain in
a 320-acre farm. Last season he grew on that farm 400 tons
of alfalfa hay. His two brothers, Charles and Willis, are
partners with him on the farm, and they made last year, besides
the alfalfa and other products, 50,000 pounds of lamb wool.—Ed.
Trotwood’s.)

Alfalfa will grow as well in the South, under right conditions, as it will in any country in the world without irrigation. Alfalfa sown in the South under wrong conditions will prove a discouraging failure. So, therefore, it is far from any desire of mine to encourage unwise experimentation or lead men to make unavailing efforts to grow alfalfa upon unfit soils or with wrong methods.

Let us consider the few essential things that alfalfa demands. First, a soil that is not sour.

Next, a soil that is well enough drained so that water does not saturate it at any time of the year, unless for a day or two following very heavy rainfalls.

Then a soil that is rich in the mineral elements that go to make plants grow, phosphorus and potash, and well supplied, too, with nitrogen.

And, to crown all, a soil supplied with abundant vegetable matter or “humus.”

Given these things, and the South’s sun and skies, alfalfa will grow in most any part of the South and will yield annually four or five cuttings a year of the richest forage either to feed green, or to cure into hay.

An acre of proper soil devoted to alfalfa will produce double the total amount of available food for animals that an acre of corn will, and of a higher class of nutrients. That is because the alfalfa is so rich in protein, the muscle and blood-building elements that are so much needed in a ration for all young animals, for dairy cows or any animals giving milk to their young.

To prepare an acre of land for alfalfa may in some instances involve considerable labor and expense. If the work is rightly done it will be lavishly repaid by the grateful alfalfa plants, and after they have grown upon the soil for a series of years they will leave it richer than they found it.

If each farm in the South will grow alfalfa, even if no more than two or three acres, it will enormously increase its prosperity and wealth. There are sections of the South where easily there may be developed large alfalfa fields. There are other sections where to grow alfalfa will require thought, effort, expense and care. Success when reached will richly reward all this effort.

It is most unwise to sow alfalfa seed upon unfertile soils or without right preparation of the soil and attention to a few important details.

Nevertheless, the few things needful, are of easy attainment, for there is no mystery about alfalfa growing.

Let us take up the essentials of alfalfa growing: first, that the soil must be sweet.

It is a new thought to Southern farmers, perhaps, that soils are some times sour. They may be sour upon limestone land, but are more apt to be sour away from the lime.

If they are water-logged during part of the year, they are most apt to be sour. This acidity comes probably from the decay within the soil of vegetable matter, though some soils very deficient in humus are acid. An evidence of acidity is seen when clovers fail to thrive, and certain weeds appear in the meadows.

The appearance of “sorrel,” the little red-topped weed that is seen in so many meadows of recent years, is an indication of acidity. A surer indication is the gradual disappearance of red clover and the difficulty experienced in making it grow.

Lime is the cure of acid soils, though drainage is often needed along with lime. It may be applied to a freshly-plowed surface at the rate of from one to two tons per acre of air slaked or ground lime, and in some countries ground limestone is used with good results.

Lime is not itself a fertilizer, but it makes the land sweet so that clovers may grow and by their presence bring about enrichment of the soil.

Alfalfa is a clover, one of the best, since it is of very long life and surprising vigor upon proper soil.

The South needs the use of thousands of tons of lime, in connection with manures. Liming poor soils without manuring may not bring much benefit since there may be too little plant food even when the soil is sweetened.

The older regions of the world, where advanced agriculture has been practiced for centuries, use great amounts of lime. The writer has seen great chalk pits in England whence had been taken thousands of tons of chalk (a soft limestone) to enrich the adjoining farms.

In some parts of the South, however, where red clover thrives, the land has in it enough lime, and is in no need of sweetening. We will then consider the next requirement—drainage.

Alfalfa grows through the aid of little bacteria that inhabit its rootlets. These bacteria must have air. Therefore the flooding of the earth by complete saturation of water destroys the life of the bacteria and of the alfalfa itself.

If a post-hole dug three feet deep in the field where it is desired to sow alfalfa shows water standing in it for more than a few days in the year, that soil needs under-draining before being sown to alfalfa.

In general, the depth to the water level should be about forty feet. If there is a greater depth it is generally better.

Now, we will consider the matter of fertility. Alfalfa feeds deep in the soil after it gets established and it secures a part of its nitrogen through the aid of the bacteria from the air.

Nevertheless, it is a gross feeder upon phosphorus and potash and cannot secure these from the air. Nor will it at first secure all its needed nitrogen from the air.

Therefore, land destined to be sown to alfalfa should be rich when sown. If it is not rich it should be made rich before seed is consigned to it.

Next, comes the need of humus in the soil. Now “humus” is simply decayed vegetable matter, and is best supplied through turning under vegetable growths such as cowpeas, or through the use of stable manures. Humus in the soil does several very needed things.

First, it supplies a direct plant food through the nitrogen, phosphorus and potash that it contains, being especially rich in nitrogen.

Next, in decaying it forms compounds that attack the locked-up mineral elements of the soil and sets them free to be absorbed by the plants. Then it absorbs moisture and makes the soil more slow in drying, besides preventing the close packing that comes with puddling in clay soils deficient in humus.

And as important as anything, perhaps most important of all, it puts “life” into the soil. Soils with humus in them are really alive, for the decaying vegetable matter attracts bacteria of many sorts that in their life and death and decay form many compounds that the plants can absorb and thus directly increase fertility and make plants grow.

Good soils are truly “live” soils, filled with legions of microscopic forms of life, most of it beneficial to the higher orders of growing plants useful to men.

Poor soils, deficient in humus, cold, puddled clays, are literally “dead” soils and speak sadly of a dying civilization and decaying people.

Alfalfa, then, revels in a deep, rich, sweet soil. How are we to provide it in the South?

First, there are many river bottoms that are admirably adapted to alfalfa, being made up of rich alluvial loams, pervious to air and moisture, and not holding a surplus of moisture. On these soils alfalfa usually thrives splendidly.

Next, there are new lands freshly cleared where robber crops have not yet had time to take out the fertility. Often these newer soils will respond wonderfully with alfalfa. Some very steep mountain sides are growing alfalfa finely when sown on freshly-cleared surfaces.

Some lands are naturally fertile enough so that they will, with little aid, grow alfalfa very well. Nevertheless, even the best of the old cleared parts need manure before being sown to alfalfa.

We had best admit at the outset that most of the old fields of the South need enrichment to make them produce good alfalfa. And the best way to enrich them is with liberal coatings of stable manures.

Few farmers are aware of the great value of manures. They enrich far in excess of the actual potash phosphorus and nitrogen carried.

Liberal dressings, then, of barnyard manure, applied before it has leached in rain, is the best preparation for alfalfa sowing.

If one has not enough manure to prepare the soil for ten acres let him attempt to sow but five. If he can’t manure five let him content himself with two. Two acres of vigorous alfalfa will yield as much as ten acres of sickly, thin stuff on unprepared soil.

And the two acres will make forage enough to make a further supply of manure, so that he can next season enrich added acres and sow them to alfalfa. But while stable manure is the best thing and really almost indispensable to success in growing alfalfa upon old Southern fields, it can be greatly helped by being re-enforced by mineral fertilizers.

“Floats,” or finely-ground phosphatic rock not treated with sulphuric acid, is a very cheap supply of phosphorus. This phosphorus is not available when applied to some soils deficient in humus.

But when floats are mixed with stable manure in some way the phosphorus is made available and the plants can get it. Therefore, the wise farmer sprinkles his stables with floats which absorb the ammonia and makes the stable smell sweet, and when the manure is applied its value has been almost doubled. Stable manure fortified with floats is the thing to apply to the soil to make alfalfa grow.

This manure may be applied to a preceding crop of corn or tobacco, if it is applied heavily enough so that there is a large residue left.

Or it may be applied directly before the ground is plowed for alfalfa. This is a safe way. It may be turned under or harrowed in or disked in or left to lie on the surface through the winter and the land plowed in the early spring.

Just get it over the land in any way and as soon as convenient after it is made; it will do the work.

Apply as much as twenty-five tons to the acre and more if you have it. This will be a help, but in strong Southern clays there is no need to fear putting on an abundance; it will not leach away, and the more humus you get in that soil the better your alfalfa will be. Do not be discouraged by this information; you can afford to use the manure to start a crop that maintains itself and makes such a large amount of forage that will, if fed and the manure saved, in turn enrich yet other fields for many years.

Late in winter or early in spring the land may be plowed. It should be broken deep and as soon as the land is ready to work, it should be harrowed to a good seed bed.

Alfalfa wants a firm seed bed, so that the little rootlets find an unbroken way down into the moist earth beneath.

At a little later than time for sowing oats, say the last week in March, after danger of hard freezing is over, sow the seed. A peck of alfalfa seed, fifteen pounds, is enough to the acre; more is waste. There are in a bushel 14,448,000 individual alfalfa seeds. To sow fifteen pounds per acre would put on eighty-three seeds to the square foot. Twelve plants to the square foot are all that will grow to maturity.

The seed may be sown broadcast and harrowed in. It may be sown broadcast and covered by drilling in after it a bushel to the acre of spring barley, an excellent nurse crop. The beardless barley is the best. Or a half bushel of oats sown on an acre will serve as a nurse crop, only that in this case the oats must be cut for hay as soon as bloom appears and before they lodge.

The land after seeding must be left smooth so that the mower may be run over it close to the ground.

There may be sown fertilizer with the alfalfa to help the manure and it will probably be well repaid.

After the alfalfa is sown, if the land is very dry and cloddy it should be rolled. If it is moist, a plank drag should make it smooth and level.

At the time of sowing, if some earth from an old alfalfa field can be had, it is well to make it fine and sow it over the field at the rate of about 100 pounds to the acre, or soil on which sweet clover (mellilotus) has grown. The object of this is to transfer some of the bacteria that thrive on alfalfa roots to the new field. It is as the housewife puts yeast in her bread.

However, if the manure has been put into the soil and it is not sour, the seed itself will carry enough bacteria to shortly innoculate the field. These bacteria increase very rapidly in soils filled with humus.

A good test of whether a field will grow alfalfa or not is to observe whether it contains earthworms (fish worms). If it does not the condition is wrong for alfalfa culture.

After this sowing nothing should be done to the field until the barley is ripe or the oats in bloom. It may then be cut close to the ground. This close cutting is good for the young alfalfa, which needs clipping at this time.

Set the binder then to cut as close as possible, and if it must be cut high for any reason follow at once with the mower and clip the stubble close. Then let the alfalfa alone to make a second growth. If there should come rain it will grow rapidly for about forty-five days or a little longer. After that it may turn yellow and cease to grow.

That means that rust has struck it. Leaf rust is the pest of alfalfa in all Eastern States. The remedy for rust is mowing off the stems as close to the ground as practicable.

If there is enough hay to be worth saving rake it off and cure it. If weeds are the main growth, allow them to lie and mulch the land, supposing them not to be thick enough to smother it.

When winter sets in have a growth a foot high standing to protect the crowns and hold the snow. Do not ever pasture alfalfa the first season. Do not ever allow stock to tramp over it in cold weather, nor drive across it with wagons.

Oftentimes the fall is a good time to sow alfalfa in the South. When there is enough moisture in the land to start it well in August or September it may succeed well, sown alone. The manner would be to plow a wheat stubble as soon as possible after harvest, applying a light coat of manure, and immediately working it down to a good seed bed, using every care to prevent its drying out.

The way to do this is to have a harrow and roller in the field when the breaking is done. Let the plows run a quarter of a day and finish out that half day by rolling and harrowing the ground to bring it to a degree of fineness that will enable it to hold moisture.

No nurse crop is needed when alfalfa is sown in the fall; it must be about an inch deep and should not be sown when there is merely a little moisture in the ground with dry soil beneath, lest it sprout and perish before rains come.

Weeds will not trouble this fall-sown alfalfa much and it makes four crops of hay the next year, though not quite so heavy crops as the spring-sown alfalfa should make.

The time to make alfalfa hay is when it is about half in bloom and before the leaves have fallen from the stem. That will be about the tenth of May. Take this first crop off promptly to secure the hay while it is in its prime and to allow the next crop to come on.

Cure the hay by raking into small windrows while it is yet tough and cocking in rather tall and slender cocks so that the air may get at the hay. Do not delay raking until the hay is dry or you will lose many of the leaves, and they are worth as much, pound for pound, as wheat bran.

The hay may cure in the cocks if the weather is fine, or they may be opened out and sunned and again piled up and hauled to the barn. When only a few tons are put together the hay must be pretty dry else it may mould. When putting many tons in one rick or mow the hay need not be so well dried, as the heat prevents moulding.

Alfalfa hay will keep well in mow or rick, but when ricked it must be covered with wild grass, straw or boards, as it will not shed rain well. There will be four cuttings the second year, and these should be taken off when the proper stage of growth has been reached, whether the alfalfa is long or short. When it begins to bloom, the leaves to rust, and buds appear on the bases of the stems, it must be cut, else it will cease to grow and no subsequent crop need be looked for.

If, perchance from drought, the second or third crop happens to be very short, it must be mown off as promptly as though it was a good growth and then the succeeding crop, should there be rain, may be very much heavier than the poor one removed. Had it not been cut, however, this good crop would not have been secured.

On land rightly prepared, with favorable seasons of sufficient rain, alfalfa in the South may yield as much as six or eight tons to the acre. A yield of four to five tons may more confidently be expected.

Alfalfa will endure in profitable condition on suitable soils for from six to twelve years. Grasses encroach upon it and may be destroyed by disking after the roots are tough enough to endure it. A spike-toothed harrow to follow the disk will more surely tear out the grass. The harrow will not injure the alfalfa roots.

When once well established an annual drilling in of liberal amounts of phosphorus and potash will greatly stimulate growth on most soils and be repaid several times over in the increased yield.

When it is desired to plow the field it may be turned with a very sharp plow and strong team and the roots are readily killed when cut off. Any crop will yield very abundantly after alfalfa, corn and tobacco being perhaps best suited to follow alfalfa, since small grain may lodge because of the exceeding richness of the land.

After one or two crops have been taken off of the land it should again be manured and sown to alfalfa, which will take much more readily and yield much more abundantly than it did the first sowing.

In conclusion I ask the farmers of the South not to sow alfalfa upon poor or unprepared soil or in a wrong manner, since by so doing, failure is almost assured and the whole cause of alfalfa culture will receive a serious setback. I believe, however, that wherever a man has learned to grow alfalfa he will rejoice all his days and be the richer, more intelligent and better man for it and his neighborhood will be helped by the example of good farming.

How Old Wash Died

BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.

I had not seen the old man for several months, but I supposed he was still prospering on his little farm, when he walked in the other day without knocking, took his seat by the fire, and casually remarked that March was always a bad month on rheumatism.

“Why, how are you, old man?” I said, laying down my pen and seeing him for the first time. “I haven’t seen you for several months.”

“No, I don’t reck’n you is,” he said quietly, “an’ de reason is, I ain’t seed myself—I’ve been dead!”

“What!” I exclaimed—“dead—are you joking?”

I looked at him closely, but I saw no evidence of insanity—nothing to indicate that he had yet reached his dotage. However, I thought it best to pass him something for his rheumatism. He quaffed it off so naturally that I knew he was all right and would tell it in his own way.

“Ennything happened ter speak of sense I be’n dead?” he asked, indifferently enough, as he smacked his lips and wiped them on the back of his hand.

I was anxious to hear how he had died, but I knew any eagerness on my part would spoil it all, so I replied:

“Why, no, old man—nothing new. But you have heard of Jupiter Pluvius, perhaps, and his home above the clouds. Well, he has kept busy this spring with his watering pot.”

“Heard of ’im?” asked the old man, with a show of wrath—“why, I knowed ’im—he was a blue-gum nigger—that Jupiter was—that c’u’d pick five hundred pounds o’ cotton in a day, an’ he run off wid my secon’ wife an’ jined de Yankees. But he didn’t lib whar you placed de rickerlicshun ob his cohabitashun—he libbed up on Bear Creek. No, I got no hard feelin’s about it—for, onbeknownst to hisse’f he done me a great favor. No, I ain’t got nothin’ ag’in’ him, nur de Yankees, nur’r.”

“I guess not,” I said, “for since the Spanish war we are all Yankees now.”

“All Yankees now? Jes’ lemme tell you, sonny, dah’s one dat ain’t. No, suh, I am a S’uthern gemman, an’ I still b’leeves de nigger was made to belong to somebody dat ’uld feed ’im an’ mek ’im beehave. All Yankees now? Boss, I sho’ am ’shamed of you! De naixt thing you’ll hab us all Jews or Japs. Wal, dat’s all right, but I b’leeves I told you ’bout co’rtin’ dat ’ar widder—”

“You got her, didn’t you?”

“Boss, did you urver kno’ ennybody to go after a widder an’ not get her? I’ve got jes’ one rule fur co’rtin’—set up close, agree on all p’ints, an’ dat’ll fetch on love. Never ’spute wid a widder, ’specially ef you’re c’ortin’ her. Wait twell you’re marri’d an’ den bu’st a wash-bo’rd over her haid ef she don’t beehave.

“Did you urver notice, boss, how cu-is a widder is about dat ur c’ortin’ bus’ness? So diff’unt frum a gal. Now, when you co’rt a gal, she ain’t gwine say nuffin’ fur a long time. She let you co’rt her an’ co’rt her, an’ sum day, when she fin’ she lubs you, she’ll jes’ thro’ her arms aroun’ you’ neck an’ say, ‘Darlint, I am your’n—take me!’

“But wid a widder, nobody ain’t nurver got one of ’em to say ‘yes’ yit—but dey manage to git dar all de same.

“An’ dat wus de way wid dis heah widder I co’rted. De fus’ night I went to see her she ’lowed she hated de very groun’ I walked on, yet she lemme hol’ her han’ all de time. De nex’ night I was wuss’n p’lzen, yet she lemme squeeze her. De third time I was meaner ’n dog-fennel, yet I was good enuff to hug her. De nex’ time I cum she ’lowed I wus de mos’ contempt’us, po’ ignoble, bandy-legged has-been dat ever was, an’ stell I sho’ did kiss her. De las’ night she fix me—I didn’t think she’d hab me to save my life, an’ like a fool I begged her wuss’n a little weaned calf beggin’ fur milk. Dat wus jes’ whut she was layin’ fur, an’ so, entirely onbeknownst to me, she had de preacher wid de license dar hid in de closet, an’ I sw’ar ter goodness, boss, befo’ de cock crow twice dat ’ar ’oman had marri’d me thrice!

“An’ den I died,” he added solemnly. “Yes, boss, I died dead, too. You see, it all happen’ at de weddin’ supper. You see, boss, de ole man had allers been used ter drinkin’ sho’ nuff licker, but dat night dey dose me up wid a konkoction of pine-top, asserfederty an’ buzzard’s bre’f, an’ fo’ I knowed it I wus dead. Why, boss, dey burried me on de fus’ Sat’d’y arter de secon’ Sunday in January, an’ I didn’t rise ergin ’twell de Chusday arter de secon’ Sunday in March, an’ ef dat whiskey hadn’t er bin es good in its raisin’ grace as ’twas in its fallin’ grace, I’d er bin dar yit.”

“Would you like to kno’ what a man sees, an’ how he feels arter he’s dead, boss?”

Would I? I gave the old man another dose of the heaven-brewed to help him along.