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Show Grant Ingenious on Farm He Hit Upon a Simple Method of Sowing the Grain and Harrowing It In at the Same Time. When Ulysses S. Grant flashed across the country's consciousness as the captor of Forts Donelson and Henry, there began to be circulated stories of his life on the Dent farm, near St. Louis, following his marriage with Miss Julia Dent. Today's anecdote anec-dote goes back to that period in the great general's life; and It was told by a Lieutenant Sappington to one of the present-day long-time residents of St. Louis, Henry C. Spore, Esq., who passed it on to me. "I lived not far from Captain Grant when he was cultivating a portion of the Dent farm," said Lieutenant Sappington, Sap-pington, who, like Mr. Dent's son-in-law, had served in the regular army. "Often I saw the captain at work in the fields, both early and late, and in this way I came to learn that he was a perfect master of horses. I remember re-member that upon one occasion I saw him trudging behind a pair of horses as he plowed a field which, I have been told, his father-in-law had given him for clearing it. "Some days after I had thus beheld Captain Grant earning his bread literally liter-ally by the sweat of his brow, I happened hap-pened to be passing his way again, when, while still some piece off, I saw something that made me stop and look in a sort of wonder. "Plainly enough, Grant was harrowing harrow-ing the field with the same horses he had plowed it with a few days before He also was riding one of the horses, but why was he swinging an arm Jn such energetic fashion? At first I thought he might be doing it to guide the horses, but they kept on in a straight line through the field, and I knew that my guess was wrong. 'Per-haps 'Per-haps he is using the lash on them,' I said to myself, but a moment later I made out that he had no whip In his hand. "By and by, as I stood watching ihi unusual sight,, the captain turned his team at a corner of the field, and then, for the first time, I saw what-he was up to. Upon the back of the horse which he was not riding he had fastened fas-tened a large sack containing seed-wheat, seed-wheat, I think it was, at this late date, though it may have been oats. Anyway, Any-way, with one eye upon the harrow, to see that it was working properly, and with the other unon hla hr,roo captain, with a sort of methodical rhythm, was thrusting a hand Into the sack of grain, withdrawing It filled with seed, and scattering the contents over the field with that energetic swing of his arm that had attracted my attention. He had hit upon a simple sim-ple plan of doing two days' work in one! "For a while after making this dis covery I stood watching him. As he neared me I heard him talking to his horses as though they were intelligent beings, and they seemed to obev him almost instinctively. And so, with a perfect understanding, as it were, established es-tablished between him and them the captain both harrowed nnri Or,-o',i f the same time, and, I presume in the course of the day had the field completely com-pletely harrowed and sown. Later in the year, I saw It as a flourishing field of grain; and afterwards, when I heard of Grant's strategy at Vicks-burg, Vicks-burg, which revealed to the country the man's ingenuity and strategy at their best, there came to my mind a vivid picture of a soldier-farmer, astride of a horse, harrowing a field' and at the same time, through the exercise ex-ercise of a little ingenuity, sowing that field with grain carried in a sack upon the back of the other horse hitched to the harrow." (Copyright. 1910, by E. J. Edwards.) |