"Yes, sir," said the Dakota man, as a crowd of agriculturists seated
themselves around a little table, "yes, sir; we do things on rather a
sizable scale. I've seen a man start out in the spring and plow a furrow
until fall. Then he turned around and harvested back. We have some big
farms up there, gentlemen. A friend of mine owned one on which he had to
give a mortgage, and the mortgage was due on one end before they could get
it recorded on the other. You see it was laid off in counties."
There was a murmur of astonishment, and the Dakota man continued:
"I got a letter from a man who lives in my orchard just before I left
home, and it had been three weeks getting to the dwelling house, although
it had traveled day and night."
"Distances are pretty wide up there, ain't they?" inquired one.
"Reasonably, reasonably," replied the Dakota man. "And the worst of it is,
it breaks up families so. Two years ago I saw a whole family prostrated
with grief. Women yelling, children howling, and dogs barking. One of my
men had his camp truck packed on seven four-mule teams, and he was going
around bidding everybody good-by."
"Where was he going?" asked a Gravesend man.
"He was agoing half-way across the farm to feed the pigs," replied the
Dakota man.
"And did he ever get back to his family again?"
"It isn't time for him yet," replied the Dakota man.--_Detroit Free
Press._