we could reduce our aggregate of merchants of all grades by three-fourths, the remainder might thrive, while selling goods at one-half the profit now charged. And yet we believe the world never afforded larger or better opportunities for acquiring wealth than it does just now; and that there is no better place for trying than our own country affords. Let us give a few hints on this head to those who may need them.

"We will suppose the inquirer to be a young man of fifteen to five-and-twenty, whose educational advantages have been meager, and who is not thoroughly qualified for any field of productive labor. How shall he set about getting rich? We say :

"1. Consider whether you would prefer to be a farmer or an artisan; and, if the latter, of what trade. Having decided, keep your eye steadily on the pursuit you prefer, and find employment in it so soon as possible-doing meantime the best thing that offers, though that be chopping wood at two shillings per cord. Never be idle a secular day when there is any work to be had; and if there is absolutely none where you now are, keep in motion towards a less crowded locality till you find some. Having found work, stick to it heartily and faithfully, and, if it pays you but twenty-five cents per day, contrive some way of living upon twenty.

"Whenever you can find employment in the pursuit you mean to live by, accept it, unless withheld by the necessity of earning more at something else in order to pay your debts. And, in deciding where first to follow so as in time to master the calling you have chosen, prefer the place where you can learn most and fastest to that where you can obtain the largest pay.

"3. Be sure that work and thought go together. Keep your eyes wide open and your mind intent and active. Re

solve not only to keep trying till you know how to do everything just right, and then do it no otherwise than that, but to know why that is the best way—its reason in the nature of things. If you have chosen farming, be sure to find some time in each week to read the best treatises on that noble calling, and keep a keen eye on all the periodicals within reach that treat of it. Take the best one yourself, and study it carefully. In short, give the next two, three or four years to the vital work of mastering your chosen pursuit, so that thenceforth, through every day learning, you may confidently measure your strength in it with any competitor.

"4. Having thus mastered your calling, go to work in it for others for the best wages you can obtain, resolved so to earn them that you will be morally certain to command a larger sum next year. Thus persevere in industry, frugality and temperance, carefully economizing your time and means, until you shall have earned enough to strike out boldly for yourself.

"5. By this time you will have made friends, especially among those of kindred position and habits to your own; and now you can make that sympathy available for your mutual good. Have as many as possible join you in a purchase of land to be divided among you according to your several means and needs; whereby your wealth may be doubled in a month. For example: two or three hundred young men of twenty to thirty, knowing and trusting each other, and each of them a good, thrifty, likely farmer or mechanic, having severally earned and saved from $200 up to $2,000, resolve to buy and settle together. So they send out two or three of their number to look and buy lands for them-in any of the new or of the border Slave States, where even improved lands are cheaper than elsewhere on earth. They select and purchase from 2,000 to 10,000

acres of land, according to the price and their means, survey it into large and small farms and village lots, and sell it at auction to the highest bidder, each member being entitled to buy to the extent of his investment in the purchase, and as much more as he can pay for each being pledged to settle and improve his tract. The hour this is done and the tract all settled, the members' lands alone are worth double their cost-often much more. The farmers have thus secured lands at wilderness prices, and secured at the same time the vicinage of millers, merchants, mechanics, &c., which gives additional value to lands long since improved; while the carpenter, shoemaker, blacksmith, tailor, tinner, &c., &c., have acquired not merely homes, but life-long customers at the lowest possible prices. CONCERTED EMIGRATION is a plan by which the industrious can at least double their moderate means without making a profit out of anybody else; and there are millions of our people, especially of the young, who might speedily double their little properties by means of it.

"6. Having thus made a home, resolve to spend your remaining days there, and to be one of the best farmers or artisans to be found there or elsewhere. Work steadily but not immoderately; think, observe and read so as to make every blow tell. If your land is mainly timbered, contrive a way to make the timber, if possible, a source of profit; if the soil is rather lean, devote all the time not absolutely needed otherwise to making it richer. Sell only for pay down, and buy likewise for cash. Do not allow your wants to grow faster than your means. Make each mistake or failure a source of instruction and improvement. Form no bad habits-have no liquor on your premises, and no tobacco unless to repel vermin. Have no capital locked up in land that you do not use, unless it be woodland rapidly enhancing in value; nor in fat horses, showy turnouts,

nor any sort of fancy property-at least, not till you shall be out of debt, with good buildings, well fenced fields, and everything comfortable about you. Thus move on quietly and steadily; and if you have no bad luck, you may be beyond the reach or fear of want in five years, in comfortable circumstances by the end of ten, and as well off as a man need be within twenty.

"Do you say this seems a slow, humdrum, petty way of getting rich? Well, it is not quite so fast as gambling, or slave-trading, or making $100,000 in a month by cornering an adverse party in the stock market; but let two hundred young men try the course we have so rapidly outlined, against an equal number who try any radically different course-gold-mining, trading, speculating, or the professions and if our party do not, in the average, come out very far ahead, we shall be forced to conclude that the world is a lottery and that Chance is God."

CHAPTER VIII.

The Long Island Barrens―Their Condition, Price, and Crops.

WITHIN one to three hours' ride of the city of New York, by railroad, there lies a vast body of uncultivated land popularly known as "The Barrens." Why an area so extensive should have remained unappropriated and idle, within cheap and easy reach of a population of nearly a million of consumers, has long been a subject for wonder and speculation. But of late years the public attention has been more particularly turned in that direction, principally by publications of the Farmers' Club of the American Institute, the writings of Hon. John A. Dix, Mr. Thomas Schnebly, Dr. E. F. Peck and others, from whose examinations and reports the substance of the following account has been compiled.

It would perhaps be difficult to say exactly how these lands first acquired the damaging name of "Barrens." In the early settlement of Long Island they secured a very different character, and were held in the highest esteem by all who either described or lived upon them. The writers of two centuries ago referred to them as exceedingly fruitful, with a fine climate, and beautiful streams and bays abounding in all kinds of fish and water fowl. They enumerate the grains, the fruits, and the