Chronicles of Notre Dame du Lac
Edward Sorin, CSC -- Translated by John M. Toohey, CSC, 1895

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1841-1842

pg 29        employed in clearing eighty acres of land, and soon afterwards 
             they had a magnificent field of eighty acres planted with corn.  
             Unfortunately the Brothers, who had very little knowledge of 
             agriculture in this country, simply wore themselves out without 
             any benefit.  They were possessed with the idea they they knew 
             much better than the Americans what practical farming was, and in 
             all things they preferred their French ways to what they saw and 
             heard around them.  However, experience soon taught them that a 
             plan, excellent for a country like France, might be very 
             imperfectly adapted to the requirements of a strange soil, and 
             that precautions called for in France were mere waste of time in 
             the United States.  Here time is everything, land nothing; in 
             Europe it is just the contrary.  Hence, the immense difference 
             between the method of culture in France and that in America.  
             Thus, it appears that devotedness is not always the sole 
             requisite, but that an experienced guide is needed, otherwise 
             devotedness will wear itself out to little purpose.
                  During this first year our good Brothers did not spare 
             themselves, and yet they reaped but little.  They often employed 
             means of saving things that are saved in France, and they did not