MY FARM.

BY THE SAME A UTHOR.

Just Published, in neat pocket Edition*:

DREAM LIFE. A Fable of the Seasons. One vol. 18mo. Printed on fine tinted
paper, and bound in vellum cloth. Price $1.25.

REVERIES OF A BACHELOR. A Book of the Heart. One vol. l&mo. Printed on
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MY FARM

OF EDGEWOOD:

A COUNTRY BOOK.

BY THK ATTTHOK OP

REVERIES OF A BACHELOR.'

" it was all grorcn over with thorn*, and netlLon

covered the fact thereof, and the stone-wall thereof was broken down.
Then I saw and considered it well: 1 looked upon it, and received
instruction." PROYSBBS xxiv, 80.

NEW- YORK :

CHARLES SCRIBNER.

i 864.

ENTKBID, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by

CHARLES BCEIBNEE,

to tlw Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for tho
Southern District of New York.

JOBS P. TROW.

'•KIKTIR, STEHEOTVTKH, AND ELKCTROTVPIR,
60 Greene Street, New York.

TO

MY OLD FRIEND,

GEN. WILLIAM WILLIAMS,

OF NORWICH,

IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF HIS MANY KINDNESSES,

DATING FROM THE TIME

WHEN HE AIDED ME IN MY FIRST CARE OF A NEW ENGLAND PARK.
AND IN TOKEN OF MY RESPECT FOR HIB WORTS,

I DEDICATE

THIS TRANSCRIPT OF ANOTHER AND LATER
FARM EXPERIENCE.

PREFACE,

A FRIEND aflcs, — "Are you not tired, then, of that
fancy of Farming? Is it not an expensive amuse-
ment ; is it not a stupefying bufiness ?

" Do you find your brain taking breadth or color out
of Carrot-raifing, or Pumpkins ? Poultry is a pretty thing,
between Tumblers, and Muscovy ducks ; but can you not
buy cheaper than you raise, — without the fret of foxes and
vermin, — in any city market ?

" Shall I sell out and join you ? Shall I teach this boy
of mine (you know his physique and that gray eye of nis,
looking after some eidolon) to love the country — so far as
to plant himself there, and grow into the trade of farming ?
A viftory over the forces of nature, and of the seafons,— -
compelling them to abundance, — is no doubt large ; but is
not a viftory over the forces of mind, which can only

viii PREFACE.

come out of sharp contaft with the world, immcnfely
larger?"

In my reply, — loving the country as I do, and wifhing
to set forth its praifes ; and believing as I do, in the God-
appointed duty of working land to its top limit of pro-
ducing power, — I said a great deal that looked like a mild
Georgic.

And yet, with a feeling for his poor boy, and a re-
membrance of what crisp salads I had found in the city
markets, after mine were all mined and devoured by the
field-mice, — I wrote a great deal that had the twang of
Melibceus in the eclogue,

-EN IPSE CAPELLAS

PROTENUS JEGER AGO !

In short, in my reply, I beat about the bum : — so much
about the bufh in fact, that this book came of it.

EDGEWOOD, 1863.

CONTENTS

PAGE

•L—THE SEARCH AND FINDING, .

I

II.— TAKING REINS IN HAND.

AROUND THE HOUSE, .....

. 48

MY BEES, . . . . .......

. 49

CLEARING UP, ......

. 64

WHAT TO Do WITH THE FARM, . .

. 62

DAIRYING, ......

. CT

LABORERS, ......

. 78

A SUNNY FRONTAGE, .....

. 90

FARM BUILDINGS, .....

. 94

THE CATTLE, ......

. 101

111.— CROPS AND PROFITS.

. 118

. 128

. 182

AN OLD ORCHARD, .....

. 139

THE PEARS,

. 149

MY GARDEN, ........ 156

FINE TILTH MAKES FINE CROPS, .... 161

x CONTENTS.

TAGB

SEEDING AND TRENCHING, ...... 164

How A GARDEN SHOULD LOOK, . . . 167

THK LESSEE FRUITS. ....... 171

GEAPES, . . . . . . . . .179

PLUMS, APBICOTS, AND PEACHES, ..... 184

THE POULTRY, ...... .188

Is IT PROFITABLE* . ..... 196

DEBIT AND CEEDIT, .••.... 199

MONEY-MAKING FARMERS, . ..... 205

DOES FARMING PAY? 212

IV.— HINDRANCES AND HELPS.

THE ARGUMENT, ....... 221

AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY, ...... 228

A GYPSEOUS ILLUSTRATION, ...... 228

SCIENCE AND PRACTICE, ...... 284

LACK OF PRECISION, ....... 241

KNOWING TOO MUCH, ... ... 246

OPPORTUNITY FOR CULTURE, ...... 249

ISOLATION OF FARMERS, ...... 264

DICKERING, ....... . 260

THE BRIGHT SIDE, ....... 267

BUSINESS TACT, ....... 274

PLACE FOR SCIENCE, . . . . . . 278

ESTHETICS OF THB BUSINIS.'S ...... 283

WALKS, 288

SBRUBBBRT, ........ 292

KUKAL DECORATION, ....... 299

FLOWERS, ........ 805

L'Euvoi, . . 815

THE SEARCH AND FINDING.

TEE SEARCH AND FINDING.

IT was in June, 18 — , that, weary of a somewhat
long and vagabond homelessness, during which I
had tossed some half a dozen times across the Atlantic,
— partly from health-seeking, in part out of pure va-
grancy, and partly (me tcedet meminisse) upon official
errand — I determined to seek the quiet of a homestead.
There were tender memories of old farm days in
my mind ; and these were kindled to a fresh exuber-
ance and lustiness by the recent hospitalities of a
green English home, with its banks of laurestena,
its broad-leaved rhododendrons, and its careless
wealth of primroses. Of course the decision was for
the country ; and I had no sooner scented the land,
after the always dismal sail across the fog banks of
Georges' shoal, than I drew up an advertisement for
the morning papers, running, so nearly as I can recall

it, thus : —

1

2 MY FARM.

" "Wanted — A Farm, of not less than one hundred
acres, and within three hours of the city. It must
have a running stream, a southern or eastern slope, not
less than twenty acres in wood, and a water view."

To this skeleton shape, it was easy, with only a
moderately active fancy, to supply the details of a
charming country home. Indeed, no kind of farm
work is more engaging, as I am led to believe, than
the imaginative labor of filling out a pleasant rural
picture, where the meadows are all lush with ver-
dure, the brooks murmuring with a contented babble,
cattle lazily grouped, that need no care, and flowers
opening, that know no culture. This kind of farm
work is not, to be sure, very profitable ; and yet, as
compared with a great deal of the gentleman-farm-
ing which I have had occasion to observe, I should
not regard it as extravagant. Perhaps it would not
be rash to put down here some of the pictures which
I conjured out of the advertisement.

At times, it seemed to me that an answer might
come from some Arcadia lying upon the cove banks of
an inland river : the cove so land-bound as to seem like
a bit of Loch Lomond, into which the north shores sunk
with an easy slope, whose green turf reached to the
margin, and was spotted here and there with old and
mossy orcharding ; the west shore rose in a stiff bluff

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 3

that was packed close with hemlocks and maples ;
while beyond the bluff a rattling stream came down
over mill dykes and through swift sluices, and sent its
whirling bubbles far out into the bosom of the little
bay. West of the bluff lay the level farm lands ; and
northward of the green slope which formed the
northern shore, it seemed to me that wooded hills
would rise steep and ragged, with such wildness in
them as would make admirable setting for the sloping
grass land below, and the Sunday quiet of the cove.
It seemed to me that possibly there might be an
oyster bed planted along the shore, which would help
out the salads that should be planted above ; and,
possibly, a miniature dock might be thrust out into
the water, at which some little pinnace might float,
with a gay pennant at her truck.

Possibly it does ; possibly there is such a place ;
but for me it was only a picture.

Again, it seemed to me that the farm house
would nestle in some little glen upon the banks of
a river, where every day crowded boats passed, surg-
ing up against the current ; or gliding down with a
meteor-like swiftness.

In this case, the slopes were many : a slope east-
ward from the house door to the banks of a little
brook that came sauntering leisurely out from the
wood, at the bottom of the glen ; a slope from the

4 MY FARM.

house up to the hills piling westward ; slopes on
either margin of the glen ; and above them, upon
higher ground, pasture lands dotted with stately
trees ; while a fat meadow seemed to lie by the river
bank, where the little brook came sauntering in.
There, and thereabout, whisking their sides, stood
the cattle, as in a Flemish picture — as true, as still,
and just as real. There may be such cattle whisking
their tails, but they are none of mine.

Then, it seemed the home should be upon an isl-
and, looking down and off to the sea, where ships short-
ened sail, and bore up for the channel buoys, which
lay bobbing on the water. There, the farm land end-
ed in a pebbly beach, on which should lie a great
drift of sea weed after every southeaster. The wood
was a stately grove of oaks, taking the brunt of the
northwesters that roared around the house in autumn,
and making grateful lee for the pigeons that dashed
in and around the gables of the barn. The brook
seemed here a mere creek, which at high water should
be flooded, even with the banks of sedge ; and when
the tide was out, showed half a dozen gushing springs
which plied their work jantily till the ebb came, and
then, after coquetting and toying with their lover,
the sea — were lost in his embrace.

Only a fancy ! If there be such a lookout

from farm windows, the ships come and go with-

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 5

out my knowledge ; and the springs gush, and die in
the flow of the tide, unknown to me.

Again, it seemed that answer would come from
some remote valley side, away from the great high-
ways of travel, where neither sail nor steamer ob-
truded on the eye ; — where indeed a sight of the sea
only came to one who climbed the tallest of the hills
which sheltered the valley. Half down the hills an
old farm house, with mossy porch, seemed to rest
upon a shelf of the land. A cackling, self-satisfied,
eager brood of fowls were in a party-colored cloud
about the big barn doors ; a burly mastiff loitered in
the sun by the house steps, mild-eyed cows were feed-
ing beyond the pasture gate ; a brook that was half
a river, came sweeping down the meadows in full
sight — curving and turning upon itself, and fretting
over bits of stony bottom, and loitering in deep
places under alluvial banks, where I knew trout must
lie — then losing itself, upon the rim of the farm, in
tangled swamp lands ; where, in autumn, I knew, if the
farm should be mine, I could see the maples all turned
into feathery plumes of crimson. But I did not ;
plumes of crimson I see indeed each autumn, but
they are at my door ; and a great reach of water
comes streaming to my eye without lifting from my
chair.

It was not from mere caprice that my advertise-

6 MY FARM.

ment had been worded as it was. For the mere estab-
lishment of a country home, one hundred acres might
seem an unnecessarily large number, as indeed it is.
But I must confess to having felt an anxiety to test
the question, as to whether a country liver was really
made the poorer by all the acres he possessed beyond
the one or two immediately about his homestead.
Indeed I may say that I felt a somewhat enthusiastic
curiosity to know, and to determine by actual experi-
ment, if farm lands were simply a cost and an annoy-
ance to any one who would not wholly forswear books,
enter the mud trenches valorously, and take the pig
by the ears, with his own hands.

A half dozen acres, which a man looks after in the
intervals of other business, and sets thick with his
fancies, in the shape of orchard houses, or dwarf
pear trees, or glazed graperies, offer no solution. All
this is in most instances, only the expression of an
individualism of taste, entered upon with no thought
of those economies which Xenophon has illustrated
in his treatise, and worse than useless as a guide to
any one who would make a profession of agricultural
pursuits.

With fifty or a hundred acres, however, steaming
under the plough, and with crops opening successively
into waving fields of green, — into feathery blossom, —
into full maturity ; too large for waste ; too consid-

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 7

erable fcr home consumption ; enough, in short, to
be brought to that last test of profit — a market, and
a price ; then the culture and its costs have a plain
story to tell. The basis will not be wanting for an in-
telligent decision of the question — whether a man is
richer in the cultivation of a hundred acres, or of ten ;
whether, in short, farming is a mere gross employ-
ment, remunerative, like other manual trades, to
those immediately concerned ; or whether it is a pur-
suit subject to the rules of an intelligent direction,
and will pay the cost of such direction, without every-
day occupancy of the field.

My advertisement named three hours' distance
from the city, as one not to be exceeded. Three
hours in our time means eighty miles ; beyond that
distance from a great city, one may be out of the ed-
dies of its influence ; within it, if upon the line of
some connecting railway, he is fairly in a suburb.
Three hours to come, and three to go, if the necessity
arise, leave four hours of the pith of the day, and of
its best sunshine, for the usurers of the town. Double
four hours of distance, and you have a journey that
is exhausting and fatiguing ; double two hours, or
less, and you have an ease of transit that leads into
temptation. If a man then honestly determines to be
a country liver, I hardly know a happier mean of dis-
tance than three hours from the city. If, indeed, he

8 MY FARM.

enters upon that ambiguous mode of life which is
neither city nor country, which knows of gardens only
in the night time, and takes all its sunshine from the
pavements, which flits between the two without tast-
ing the full zest of either — of course, for this mode
of life, three hours is too great a distance. The man
who is content to live in grooves on which he is shot
back and forth year after year — the merest shuttle
of a commuter, — will naturally be anxious to make the
grooves short, and the commutation small.

I bespoke in my advertisement no less than twenty
acres of woodland. The days of wood fires are not ut-
terly gone ; as long as I live, they never will be gone.
Coal indeed may have its uses in the furnace which
takes off the sharp edge of winter from the whole
interior of the house, and keeps up a night and day
struggle with Boreas for the mastery. Coal may be-
long in the kitchens of winter ; I do not say nay to
this : but I do say that a country home without
some one open chimney, around which in time of
winter twilight, when snows are beating against the
panes, the family may gather, and watch the fire
flashing and crackling and flaming and waving,
until the girls clap their hands, and the boys shout,
in a kind of exultant thankfulness, is not worthy the
name.

And if such a fiery thanksgiving is to crackle out

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 9

its praises — why not from a man's own ground ?
There is no farmer but feels a commendable pride
in feeding his own grain, in luxuriating upon his own
poultry, in consuming his own hay — why not burn
wood of his own growing ? It is not an extravagant
crop. Thirty years of rocky, wild land, else unser-
viceable, will mature a good fire-crop ; and if there be
chestnut growth, will ensure sufficient size for farm
repairs and fencing material. A half acre of average
growth will supply at least one roaring winter's fire,
beside the chestnut for farm purposes. And thus
with twenty acres of wood, cut over each year, half
acre by half acre, I have forty years for harvesting
my crop ; and then, the point where I entered upon
my wood field is more than ready for the axe again.
Indeed, considering that thirty years are ample for the
growth of good-sized fire wood, I have a margin of
ten years' extra growth, which may go to pin money ;
or may be credited to some few favorite timber trees
that stand upon the edge of the pasture, and pay
rental in the picture they give of patriarchal grace, —
to say nothing of an annual harvest of chestnuts.

Woodland, again, gives dignity to a country place ;
it shows a crop that wants a man's age to ripen it ; a
company of hoary elders — conservatives, if you will —
to preside amid the lesser harvests, and to parry the
rage of tempests. Mosses plant their white blight, as
1*

10 MY FARM.

gray hairs come to a man ; but the core is sound, and
the life sap swift, and in it are the juices of a thou-
sand leaves.

A \vood, too, for a contemplative mind is always
suggestive. Its aisles swarm with memories ; the
sighing of the boughs in the wind brings a tender
murmur from the farthest days of childhood, when
leaves rustled all the long summer at the nurse's win-
dow. Bird-nesting boyhood comes again to sit astride
the limbs — to hunt for slippery elm, or the fragrant
leaves of young wintergreen, or the aromatic roots of
sassafras.

This scarred bole, so straight and true, reminds
of still larger ones in the forest of Fontainebleau ; the
chestnuts recall the broad-leaved ones of the Apen-
nines ; the hemlocks bring to memory the kindred
sapin of the Juras, under whose shade I sat upon an
August day, years ago, panting with the heat, and
looking off upon the yellow plains which stretch be-
yond the old French town of Poligny, and upon the
shadows of clouds, that flitted over the far and
" golden sided " Burgundy.

Next, the coveted place was to have its quota of
running water. It would be a very absurd thing
to go far to find reasons for the love of a brook.
There are practical ones of which every farmer
knows the force ; and of which every farmer's boy,

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. l\

who has ever driven a cow to water, or wet a line in
the eddies, could be exponent.

And in the romantic aspect of the matter, I "be-
lieve there is nothing in nature which so enlaces one's
love for the country, and binds it with willing fetters,
as the silver meshes of a brook. N"ot for its beauty
only, but for its changes ; it is the warbler ; it is the
silent muser ; it is the loiterer ; it is the noisy
brawler ; and like all brawlers beats itself into angry
foam ; and turns in the eddies demurely penitent,
and runs away to sulk under the bush. A brook, too,
piques terribly a man's audacity, if he have any eye
for landscape gardening. It seems so manageable,
in all its wildness. Here in the glen a bit of dam
will give a white gush of waterfall, and a pouring
sluice to some overshot wheel ; and the wheel shall
have its connecting shaft and whirl of labors. Of
course there shall be a little scape-way for the trout to
pass up and down ; a rustic bridge shall spring across
somewhere below, and the stream shall be coaxed into
loitering where you will — under the roots of a beech
that leans over the water — into a broad pool of the
pasture close, where the cattle may cool themselves in
August. In short, it is easy to see how a brook may
be held in leash, and made to play the wanton foi you,
summer after summer. I do not forget that poor
Shenstone ruined himself by his coquetries with the

12 MY FARM.

trees and brooks at Leasowes. I commend the story
of the bankrupt poet to those who are about laying
out country places.

Meantime our eye shall run where the brooks are
running — to the sea. It must be admitted that a sea
view gives the final and the kingly grace to a coun-
try home. A lake view and a river view are well in
their way, but the hills hem them ; the great reach
which is a type, and as it were, a vision of the future,
does not belong to them. There is none of that joy-
ous strain to the eye in looking on them which a sea
view provokes. The ocean seems to absorb all nar-
rowness, and tides it away, and dashes it into yeasty
multiple of its own illimitable width. A man may be
small by birth, but he cannot grow smaller with the
sea always in his eye.

It is a bond with other worlds and people : the
sail you watch has come from Biscay ; yesterday it
was white for the eye of a Biscayan ; your sympathies
touch by the glitter of a sail.

The raft of smoke drifting from some steamer in
the offing is as humanizing, though it be ten miles
away, as the rattle of your neigbor's wagon by the
door.

You live near a highroad to take off the edge
from loneliness and isolation ; but a travelled sea,
where all day long white specks come and go, is

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 13

the highway of the world ; and though you do not see
these neighbors' faces, or catch their words, the
drifted vapor, and the sheen of the sails, and the
streaming pennants yield a sense of nearness and com-
panionship that gives rein and verge to a man's hu-
manity.

Then, physically, — what reach ! Heaven and earth
touch their great circles in your eye ; the touch that
bounds human vision wherever you may go. No
height can lift you to a grander touch, or alter one
iota its magnificent proportions. With a land hori-
zon, it may be an occasional hill that conceals the
outmost bound, — a temple or a tree ; it is various and
uncertain ; even upon the prairie a harvest of flowers
may fringe it with an edge that the autumn fires con-
sume, or which a trampling herd may beat down ;
but where sea touches sky, there, forever, is the line
immutable, which runs between our home and the
spacious heaven, that buoys, and bears us. And
thence, with every noontide, the sun pours a fiery
profusion of gold up to your feet ; and there, every
full moon paves a broad path with silver.

So, with each of the features I have claimed,
come kingly pictures ; — not least of all to the gentle
slope south or eastward, which should catch the
first beams of the morning, and the first warmth of
every recurring spring.

14 MY FARM.

In a mere economic point of view, such slope is
commended in every northern latitude by the best
of agricultural reasons. In all temperate zones two
hours of morning are worth three of the afternoon.
I do not know an old author upon husbandry who
does not affirm my choice, with respect, to all tem-
perate regions. If this be true of European countries,
it must be doubly true of America, where the most
trying winds for fruits, or for frail tempers, drive
from the northwest.

And with the slope, as with the wood and with
the sea, come visions ; — visions of sloping shores of
bays, into whose waters the land dips with every
recurring tide ; and where, as the gentlest of tides
fall (so upon the Adriatic coast), an empurpled line
of fine sea mosses lies crimped upon white sand, and
pearly shells glitter in the sun. Or, — of lake shores,
gentle as Idyls (so of Windermere), with grassy
slopes so near and neighborly to the water, that the
mower, as he clips the last sentinels in green, sweeps
his blade with a bubbling swirl of sound, quite into
the margin of the lake.

Southern slopes, again, suggest luscious ripeness.
The first figs I ever gathered, were gathered on such
a slope in a dreamy atmosphere of Southern France,
with the blue of the Mediterranean in reach of the

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 15

eye, and the sweetest roses of Provence lending a
balmy fragrance to the air.

Sheltered slopes recall too, always, what is most
captivating in rural life. You never see them or look
for them even, in Dutch-land — in Poland, never ; in
Prussia, or on the highways of travel in France,
never. And no rural poems, or pictures that haunt
the memory, were ever rhymed or sketched in those
regions. Theocritus lived where lie the sweetest of
valleys ; Tibullus and Horace both knew the purple
shadows that lay in the clefts of the Latian hills. De-
lille chased his rural phantoms beyond the Burgundian
mountains, before they had taken their best form.

But in the English Isle — by Abergavenny, by Mer-
thyr, under the Tors of Derbyshire, in the lea of the
Dartmoor hills, — abreast of Snowdon — what sheltered
greenness and bloom ! What nestling homesteads !

I must not forget to give a sequence to my story.
I had entered my advertisement. Was it possible
that any one in the possession of such a place as I
had roughly indicated, would be willing to sell ?

For twenty-four hours I was in a state of doubt ;
after that time, I may say the doubt was removed.
I must frankly confess that I was astounded to find
what a number of persons, counting not by tens, but
by fifties, and even hundreds, were anxious to dis-

16 MY FARM.

pose of a " situation in the country " which fully
corresponded to my wishes (as advertised.)

"Were the people mad, that they showed such
eagerness to divest themselves of charming places?
Or were my fine pictures possibly overdrawn ? And
yet, who could gainsay them ; are not trees, trees —
and brooks, brooks — and the sea, always itself?

I think my New York friend, to whom I had or-
dered all replies to be addressed, may have handed
me a peck of letters ; — blue letters, square letters,
triangular letters, pink letters (in female hand), and
soberly brown letters.

It was a mortification to me to reflect that so
many fine places should be thrown upon the market
at the first hint of a purchaser ; " places most con-
venient ; " places on a " lovely shore ; " places by
rivers ; places with commanding views ; places on
prospective railways ; places innumerable.

Not a few of the propositions contained in these
letters were, at first sight, plainly inadmissible ; as
where a sanguine gentleman suggested that I should
make a slight change of programme, so far as to plant
myself on the shores of the Great Lakes, or in a
pretty retiracy, among the fine forests along the Erie
railroad.

Another, "in case I found nothing to suit else-
where," could recommend " a small place of ten

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 17

acres, in a thriving country town, two minutes' walk
from the post office, house forty by thirty-five, and ten
feet between joints, stages passing the door three times
a day, large apple trees in the yard newly grafted, and
the good will of a small grocery, upon the corner, to
be sold, if desired, with the goods, and healthy."

Inadmissible, of course ; and the letter passed over
into the hat of my friend. Another letter, from a
widow lady, invited attention to the admired place
of her late husband : he had " an unusual taste for
country life, and had expended large sums in beauti-
fying the farm ; marble mantels throughout the
house, Gothic porticos, and some statuary about the
grounds. There was a gardener's cottage, and a far-
mer's house, as well as another small tenement for an
under-gardener, and twenty acres of land, of which
six in shrubbery and lawns." The architecture seemed
to me rather disproportionate to the land ; inadmis-
sible upon the whole, as a desirable place on which to
test the economies of a quiet farm-life.

I can conceive of nothing so shocking to a hearty
lover of the country, as to live in the glare of another
man's architectural taste. In the city or the town
there are conventional laws of building, established
by custom, and by limitations of space, to which all
must in a large measure conform ; but with the width
of broad acres around one, I should chafe as much at

18 MY FARM.

living in the pretentious house of another man's or-
dering and building, as I should chafe at living in
another man's coat. Country architecture, whose
simplicity or rudeness is so far subordinated to the
main features of the landscape as not to provoke
special mention, may be of any man's building ; but
wherever the house becomes the salient feature of the
place, and challenges criticism by an engrossing im-
portance as compared with its rural surroundings,
then it must be in agreement with the tastes and
character of the occupant, or it is a pretentious false-
hood.

Perhaps I ought to beg the reader's pardon for
this interpolation here, of a law of adjustment in re-
spect to the country and country houses, which would
have more perfect place in what I may have to say
upon the general subject of rural architecture.

At present I return to my stock of pleasant advi-
sory letters :

A tasteful gentleman, of active habits, calls my
attention to a park of which he is the projector, and
within which several desirable places, with admirable
views, remain unsold ; while land in the neighborhood
might be secured at a reasonable valuation, for such
farm experiments as I might be tempted to enter
upon. Attention is particularly called to the social
advantages of such a neighborhood, where none but

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 19

gentlemen of character would be permitted to pur-
chase, and where the refinements of city intercourse
would be, &c., &c.

Now it so happens that I never heard of a park upon
this mutual method, where there did not arise within
a few years a smart quarrel between two or more of
the refined occupants. The cows, or the goats, or the
adjustment of water privileges, are sure to form the
bases of noisy differences, in the management of
which, I am sorry to say, the amenities of the town
are not greatly superior to the amenities of the coun-
try. Aside from this danger, I have not much faith
in the marketable coherence of those rural tastes
which would belong to a promiscuous circle of buy-
ers. A community of cooks, or of coal-heavers, I can
conceive of, but a community of ruralists, or of ama-
teur farmers, quite passes my comprehension. I say
amateur farming, for I know of no farming which is
so amatory in the beginning, and so damnatory in the
end, as that which delights in a suburban house, and
in a sufficient quantity of ground a few miles away,
where, under the wary eye of some sagacious Dutch-
man or Irishman, the cows are to be fed, the weeds
pulled, the chickens plucked, and the new industry
and profit developed generally. It is veiy much as
if a man were to enter upon the business of whaling
by taking rooms at the Pequod House, and negotiat-

20 MY FARM.

ing with some enterprising skipper to tow a few tame
whales into harbor, to be slashed up, and tried, and
put into clean casks, on some mild afternoon of
June.

In the latter case, we should probably have the
oil and the bone ; and in the other, we should per-
haps have the butter and the eggs ; in both, we cer-
tainly should have the bills to pay.

If a man would enter upon country life in earnest,
and test thoroughly its aptitudes and royalties, he
must not toy with it at a town distance ; he must
brush the dews away with his own feet. He must
bring the front of his head to the business, and not
the back side of it ; or, as Cato put the same matter
to the Romans, near two thousand years ago, Frons
oecipitio prior est.

But while I was thus compelled to discard certain
propositions at their first suggestion, there were
others which wore such a roseate hue as challenged
scrutiny and compelled a visit. Thus, a veiy straight-
forward and business-like letter from a Wall-street
agent informed me that his esteemed client, Mr. Van
Heine, " was willing to dispose of a considerable coun-
try property thirty miles from the city, in a favorable
location. The house was not large or expensive, pos-
sibly not extensive enough ; there was old wood upon
the place, the surface charmingly diversified, and in

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 21

addition to other requisites, it possessed a mill site,
mill, and small body of water, which, in the hands of
taste, he had no doubt," &c., &c.

The agent regretted that he could give me no de-
finite information in regard to the exact size of the
property, or tenns of sale, but begged me to pay a
visit to the place before deciding.

The description, though not particularly definite,
was yet sufficiently piquant and suggestive to induce
me to comply with the hint of the agent. I liked the
man's nomenclature — " a considerable country proper-
ty ; " it conveyed an impression of dignified quiet and
retirement. The dwelling was probably a modest
farmhouse, grown mossy under the shade of the old
wood ; possibly some Dutch affair of stone, with Van
Heine gables, which it would be hardly decorous to
pull down. I might add a little to its size, and so
make it habitable ; or, if well placed, it might — who
knew — be turned into a cottage for the miller. There
remained, after all this agreeable coloring, the small
body of water and the diversified surface, which were
enough in themselves to form the outlines of a very
captivating picture.

I determined to pay Mr. Van Heine a visit. Ob-
taining all needed information from his agent, in re-
gard to the locality and its approaches from the city,
I set off upon a charming morning of June by one

22 MY FARM.

of the northern railways, and after an hour's ride,
was put down at a station some five miles distant
from the property. I drove across the countiy at a
leisurely pace, stopping here and there upon a hilltop
to admire the far-off views, and speculating upon
possible improvements that might be made in the
badly conditioned road. The neighborhood was not
populous : indeed, it was only after having measured,
as I fancied, the fifth mile, that I for the first time
saw a party from whom I might ask special direc-
tions. I may describe this party as a tall man in red
beard and red fur cap, with a black-stemmed porce-
lain pipe in his mouth, and pantaloons thrust into
stout cowhide boots. He was striding forward in the
same direction with me, and at nearly an equal pace.

" Did he possibly know of a Mr. Van Heine in
this region ? "

" Yah — yah," and the man, who may have been an
emigrant of only four or five years of American na-
tionality, pointed toward himself with a pleased and
grim complacency.

" This was Mr. Van Heine, then, who has a coun-
try property to sell ? "

" Yah — yah," and his smile has now grown eager
and familiar.

His place is a little farther ; and I ask him to a
seat beside me.

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 23

" It is a farm he has to sell ? "

" Yah— yah, farm."

I ask if the view is good.

" Yah — view — yah."

I venture a question in regard to the mill.

" Yah— mill— yah."

" Grist mill ? " I ask.

" Yah— miU."

" For sawing ? " I add, thinking possibly he might
misunderstand me.

" Yah — sawing."

I venture to ask after his crops.

" Crops— yah."

The conversation was not satisfactory : we were
driving along a dusty highway, and had entered upon
a sombre valley, where there was no sign of cultiva-
tion, and where the only dwelling to be seen, was
one of those excessively new houses of matched
boards, perched immediately upon the side of the
high-road, and with its pert and rectangular "join-
ery " offending every rural sentiment that might have
grown out of the blithe atmosphere and the morning
drive.

" Dish is de place," said my friend of the red
beard and porcelain pipe ; and I could not doubt it ;
there was a poetic agreement between man aud
house ; but the mill remained — where was the mill ?

24 MY FARM.

Van Heine was only too happy : across the way-
only at a distance of a few rods, not removed from
the dust of the high-road, was the mill, and the " body
of water." The new scars in the hillsides, from
which the earth had been taken to dam the brook,
were odiously apparent: but the investment had
clearly not proven a profitable one : the capacity of
the brook had been measured at its winter stage;
even now, the millpond at its upper end showed a
broad, slimy flat, which was alive with frogs and
mudpouts. A few scattered clumps of dead and
seared alders broke the level, and a dozen or more of
tall and limbless trees that had been drowned by the
new lake, rose stragglingly from the water — making,
with the dead bushes, and the loneliness of the place,
a skeleton and ghostly assemblage.

Mr. Yan Heine had newly filled his pipe, and was
puffing amiably, as I stood looking at the property,
and at the sandy hills which rolled up from the fur-
ther side of the pond, tufted with here and there a
spreading juniper. The whole aspect of the property
was so curiously and amazingly repugnant to all the
rural fancies I had ever entertained, whether esthetic,
or purely agricultural, that I was excessively interest-
ed. My red-bearded entertainer clearly saw as much,
and with violent and persuasive puffs at his porcelain
pipe, and occasional iterative " dams " in his talk,

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 25

(which had very likely sprung of unpleasant familiar-
ity with the dam actual) he became explosively de-
monstrative and earnest.

I hinted at the shortness of the water ; there was
no denial on his part ; on the contrary, frank avowal.

" Yah — dam — short," said he ; " dat ish — enough
for der farm — yah ; but for der mill — dam — nichts "
(puff).

I spoke in an apologetic way of the advertisement,
.and of certain requisites insisted upon ; he had per-
haps seen it ?

" Advertisement — yah (puff) — yah."

I hinted at the slope.

" Yah— der slope."

" The slope to the south ? "

" Oh yah— south (puff)— yah."

I explained by a little interpolation of his own
tongue.

" Dam — yah — dis ish it ; der is de pond ; dish is
south ; dat ish der slope — to der pond — dam — yah."

" And the lands opposite ? "

" Oh, dat ish not mine ; der mill, der house, der
pond, der land, vat you call der slope — dis ish mine."

I suggested the mention of a water view in the
advertisement.

" View," said my red-bearded friend ; " vat you
call view ? "
2

26 MY FARM.

I explained as I could, teutonically.

" Dam ! der vater view ! (with emphasis) ; dis ish
it ; der pond, ish it no vater ? — hein ! — dam (puff)."

Even now I look back with a good deal of sel f-
applause upon my success in extricating myself from
the merciless and magnetic earnestness of the red-
bearded Mr. Van Heine ; I think of my escape from
the dusty high-road, the angular joinery of the house,
the bloated hills, blotched with junipers, the strag-
gling trunks of the drowned trees, and the imper-
turbable insistance of the German, with his expletive
dam and his black-stemmed porcelain pipe, as I think
of escapes from some threatening pestilence.

Another country place was brought to my atten-
tion, under circumstances that forbade any doubt of
its positive attractions. There was wood in abun-
dance, dotted here and there with a profuse and care-
less luxuriance ; there were rounded banks of hills,
and meadows through which an ample stream came
flowing with a queenly sweep, and with a sheen that
caught every noontide, and repeated it in a glorious
blazon of gold. It skirted the hills, it skirted the
wood, and came with a gushing fulness upon the
very margin of the quiet little houseyard that com-
passed the dwelling. And from the door, underneath
cherry trees, one could catch glimpses of the great

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 27

stretch of the Hudson into which the brook passed ;
and the farther shores were so distant, th. t the Hud-
son looked like a bay of the sea. A gaunt American
who was in charge of the premises did the honors of
the place, and in the intervals of expressing the juices
from a huge quid of tobacco that lay in his cheek, he
enlarged upon the qualities of the soil.

To him the view or situation was nothing, but
the capacity for corn or rye was the main " p'int."

" Ef yer want a farm, Mister, yer want sile ; now
this 'ere (turning up a turf with a back thrust of his
heel) is what I call sile ; none o' yer dum leachy stuff;
you put manure into this 'ere, and it stays ' put.' "

" Grows good crops, then," I threw in, by way
of interlude.

" I guess it dooz, Mister. Corn, potatoes, garden
sass, — why, only look at this 'ere turf ; see them clo-
vers, and this blue grass. Ef you was a farmer —
doan't know but you be, but doan't look jist like one
— you'd know that 'tain't every farm can scare up
such a turf as that."

" Very true," I remark ; while my lank friend ad-
justs his quid for a new bit of comment.

" Now here's Simmons on the hill — smart man
enough, but doan't know nothing 'bout farmin' — •
them hills he's bought doan't bear nothin' but penny-
rial ; ten acres on't wouldn't keep a good cosset

28 MY FARM.

sheep." And my friend expectorates with a good
deal of em^nasis.

I suggested that many came into the country for
good views and a fine situation.

" I know it, sir," said my lank friend ; " this's a
free country, and a man can do as he likes, leastwise
we used to think so ; but as for me, give me a good
black sile 'bout seven inches thick, and good turf top
on't, and a good smart team, and I take out my
views, along in the fall o' the year, in the corn crib.
Them's my sentiments."

I think I won upon my tall friend by expressing
my approval of so sound opinions ; and in the course
of talk, we found ourselves again upon the dainty
lawn by the doorstep, near to which the brook
surged along, brimful and deep, to the river. Over-
deep, indeed, it seemed, for so near neighborhood to
the house. An expression of mine to this effect was
amply confirmed by the tall farmer. Only a year or
so gone, a little child had tumbled in, and was
" drownded."

And this was perhaps the reason why the family
left so attractive a place, I suggested.

" Oh Lord, no, sir ; 'twas a pesky little thing, be-
longed down to the landin'. Fever-'nager o'wnat driv
the folks off, in my opinion."

" Ah, they do have the fever about here, then?"

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 29

" Gosh — Smithers here — p'raps you doan't know
Smithers — no ; waal, he's got it, got it bad, that's so ;
and what's wus, his chil'en s'got it, and his wife s'had
it ; and my wife here, a spell ago, what does she do,
but up and takes it, s'bad s'enny on 'em ; 'ts a dum
curi's keind o' thing. You doan't know nothin' when
Jts oomin' ; and you doan't know no more when 'ts
goin' ; and arter 'ts dun, 'tain't no small shakes of a
thing ; a feller keeps keinder ailin'."

Upon a sudden the place took on a new aspect
for me ; its cool shade seemed the murky parent of
miasma ; the wind sighed through the leaves with a
sickly sound, and the brook, that gave out a little
while before a roistering cheerfulness in its dash,
now surged along with only a quick succession of
sullen plashes.

I must recur to one other disappointment in re-
spect of a country place, which possessed every one
of the features I had desired in unmistakable type ;
and yet all these so curiously distraught that they
possessed no harmony or charm. I ought perhaps to
except the sea view, which was wide to a fault, and
so near that on turbulent days of storm, it must have
created the illusion that you were fairly afloat.

A sight of the sea, to temper a fair landscape, and
lend it ravishing reach to a far-off line of glistening

30 MY FARM.

horizon, is a very different thing from that bold,
broadside, every-day nearness, which outroars all the
pleasant land sounds, making your country quietude
a mere fiction, and the broad presence of ocean the
engrossing reality. So it was with the place of which
I speak ; beside this, the slope was slight and
gradual — only one billowy lift — as if the land had
some time caught the undulations of the sea after
some heavy ground swell, and kept the uplift after
the sea had settled to its fair-weather proportions.
The brook was of an unnoticeable flow, that idled
from a neighbor's grounds, and the wood, such as it
was, only a spur of silver poplars that had stolen
through from the same neighbor's territory, and had
shot up into a white and tangled wilderness.

The occupant and owner of the place — of may be
seventy acres — was one of those wiry, energetic, rest-
less young men of New England stock, thrifty,
shrewd, spurning all courtesies, bound to push on in
life ; a type of that nervous unrest by which God has
peopled the West and California. Never gaining,
but always despising, the calm that comes of satisfied
endeavor, whether in the establishment of a home, or
the accumulation of money, these fast ones are very
confident in their ability withal, and in their judg-
ment ; making light of difficulties, full of contempt
for all knowledge which has not shown practical and

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 31

palpable conquests. The owner had planted his farm
to vegetables — not an acre of it but bristled with
some marketable crop ; nearness to the city had war-
ranted it, and " there was money in the business."
To talk with such a man about comparative views, or
situations, would have been to talk French with him.
An unknown advertiser had demanded the very fea-
tures embraced in his farm ; there they were — sea
enough, brook, wood, and slope. If I wished them
enough to pay his price, I could have them. He felt
quite sure that I should find nothing that came nearer
the mark, and he argued the matter with a strenuous,
earnest vehemence, that fairly enchained my atten-
tion ; and while my admiring aspect seemed to yield
assent to every presentation he made of the subject,
and while, as in the case of the red-bearded German,
there was a sort of magnetism that bound me to outer
acquiescence, at the same time all my inner feeling
was kindled into open revolt against the man's pre-
sumption, and his turnips, and his lines of cabbages,
and his poplars, and near breadth of sea.

He did not sell to me ; but I have no doubt that
he sold ; I have no doubt that he made money by his
turnips, and more money by the sale of his land ; and
it would not surprise me to see him some day, if I go
in that direction, speaker of the house of representa-
tives iu the State of Iowa, or Minnesota. There are

32 MY FARM.

men who carry in their presuming, restless energy the
brand of success — not always an enviable one, still
less frequently a moral one, but always palpable and
noisy. Such a man makes capital fight with danger
of all sorts ; he knows no yielding to fatigues — to any
natural obstacles, or to conscience. It is hard to con-
ceive of him as dying, without a sharp and nervous
protest, which seems conclusive to his own judgment,
against the absurd dispensations of Providence. Who
does not see faces every day, whose eager, impas-
sioned unrest is utterly irreconcilable with the calm
long sleep we must all fall to at last ?

But this story of unsuccessful experiences grows
wearisome to me, and, I doubt not, to the reader. One
after another the hopes I had built upon my hatful
of responses, failed me. June was bursting every day
into fuller and more tempting leafiness. The stifling
corridors of city hotels, the mouldy smell of country
taverns, the dependence upon testy Jehus, who plun-
dered and piloted me through all manner of out-of-
the-way places, became fatiguing beyond measure.

And it was precisely at this stage of my inquiry,
that I happened accidentally to be passing a day at
the Tontine inn, of the charming city of N" — h — . (I
use initials only, in way of respectful courtesy for the
home of my adoption.) The old drowsy quietude of

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 33

the place which I had known in other days, still lin-
gered upon the broad green, while the mimic din of
trade rattled down the tidy streets, or gave tongue
in the shrill whistle of an engine. The college still
seemed dreaming out its classic beatitudes, and the
staring rectangularity of its enclosures and build-
ings and paths seemed to me only a proper expres-
sion of its old geometric and educational traditions.

Most people know this town of which I speak,
only as a scudding whirl of white houses, succeeded
by a foul sluiceway, that runs along the reeking backs
of shops, and ends presently in gloom. A stranger
might consider it the darkness of a tunnel, if he did
not perceive that the railway train had stopped ; and
presently catch faint images of a sooty stairway, be-
grimed with smoke — up and down which dim figures
pass to and fro, and from the foot of which, and the
side of which, and all around which, a score of belch-
ing voices break out in a passionate chorus of shouts ;
as the eye gains upon the sootiness and gloom, it
makes out the wispy, wavy lines of a few whips mov-
ing back and forth amid the iiproar of voices ; it
lights presently upon the star of a policeman, who
seems altogether in his element in the midst of the
hurly-burly. Becloaked and shawled figures enter
and pass through the carriages ; they may be black, or
white, or gray, or kinsfolk — you see nothing but be-
2*

34 MY FARM.

cloaked figures passing through ; portmanteaus fall
with a slump, and huge dressing cases fall with a
slam, upon what seems, by the ear, to be pavement ;
luggage tracks keep up an uneasy rattle ; brakemen
somewhere in still lower depths strike dinning blows
upon the wheels, to test their soundness ; newsboys,
moving about the murky shades like piebald imps,
lend a shrill treble to the uproar ; the policeman's
star twinkles somewhere in the foreground ; upon
the begrimed stairway, figures flit mysteriously up
and down ; there is the shriek of a steam whistle
somewhere in the front ; a shock to the train ; a new
deluge of smoke rolls back and around newsboys, po-
lice, cabmen, stairway, and all ; there is a crazy shotit
of some official, a jerk, a dash — figures still flitting up
and down the sooty stairway — and so, a progress into
day (which seemed never more welcome). Again
the backs of shops, of houses, heaps of debris, as if
all the shop people and all the dwellers in all the
houses were fed only on lobsters and other shellfish ; a
widening of the sluice, a gradual recovery of position
to the surface of the ground — in time to see a few tall
chimneys, a great hulk of rock, with something glis-
tening on its summit, a turbid river bordered with
sedges, a clump of coquettish pine trees — and the
conductor tells you all this is the beautiful city of
N— h— .

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 35

The natural impression of a stranger would be
that the city was situated upon a considerable emi-
nence, which had required deep boring for the proper
adjustment of levels. The impression would be an
unjust one ; in all that dreary sink of a station, there
is no height involved except the height of corporate
niggardliness.* The town is as level as Runnimede.

A friend called upon me shortly after my arrival,
and learning the errand upon which I had been scour-
ing no inconsiderable tract of country, proposed to
me to linger a day more, and take a drive about the
suburbs. I willingly complied with his invitation ;
though I must confess that my idea of the suburbs,
colored as it was by old recollections of college walks
over dead stretches of level, in order to find some
quiet copse, where I might bandy screams with a
bluejay, in rehearsal of some college theme — all this,
I say, moderated my expectations.

It seems but yesterday that I drove from among
the tasteful houses of the town, which since my boy

* The mere fact that the roadbed is beneath the general level, ia
a source of great convenience, but affords no reason for converting
the station into a reeking cellar. The purchase of certain adjoining
premises, and the transfer to them of offices and refreshment rooms,
and the glazing of the roof, would enable the company to pour down
a flood of light upon the dreary depot, and give it a height and
breadth and airiness, which so rich a corporation fairly owes to the
comfort of the public, as well as the reputation of the city.

36 MY FARM.

time had crept far out upon the margin of the plain.
It seems to me that I can recall the note of an oriole,
that sang gushingly from the limbs of an overreach
ing elm as we passed. I know I remember the stately
broad road we took, and its smooth, firm macadam.
I have a fancy that I compared it in my own mind,
and not unfavorably, with the metal of a road, which
I had driven over only two months before in the en-
virons of Liverpool. I remember a somewhat stately
country house that we passed, whose architecture
dissolved any illusions I might have been under, in
regard to my whereabouts. I remember tui'mng
slightly, perhaps to the right, and threading the ways
of a neat little manufacturing village, — catching
views of waterfalls, of tall chimneys, of open pasture
grounds ; and remember bridges, and other bridges,
and how the village straggled on with its neat white
palings, and whiter houses, with honeysuckles at the
doors ; and how we skirted a pond, where the pads
of lilies lay all idly afloat ; and how a great hulk of
rock loomed up suddenly near a thousand feet, with
dwarfed cedars and oaks tufting its crevices — tufting
its top, and how we drove almost beneath it, so that
I seemed to be in Meyringen again, and to hear the
dash of the foaming Reichenbach ; and how we as-
cended again, drifting through another limb of the
village, where the little churches stood ; and how we

THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 37

sped on past neat white houses, — rising gently, — skirt
ed by hedgerows of tangled cedars, and presently
stopped before a grayish-white farmhouse, where the
air was all aflow with the perfume of great purple
spikes of lilacs. And thence, though we had risen so
little I had scarce noticed a hill, we saw all the spires
of the city we had left, two miles away as a bird
flies, and they seemed to stand cushioned on a broad
bower of leaves ; and to the right of them, where
they straggled and faded, there came to the eye a
white burst of water which was an arm of the sea ;
beyond the harbor and town was a purple hazy
range of hills, — in the foreground a little declivity,
and then a wide plateau of level land, green and
lusty, with all the wealth of June sunshine. I had
excuse to be fastidious in the matter of landscape,
for within three months I had driven on Richmond
hill, and had luxuriated in the valley scene from the
cote of St. Cloud. But neither one or the other for-
bade my open and outspoken admiration of the view
before me.

I have a recollection of making my way through
the hedging lilacs, and ringing with nervous haste at
the door bell ; and as I turned, the view from the step
seemed to me even wider and more enchanting than
from the carriage. I have a fancy that a middle-aged
man, with iron-gray whiskers, answered my summons

38 JfY FARM.

in his shirt sleeves, and proposed joining me directly
under some trees which stood a little way to the
north. I recollect dimly a little country coquetry
of his, about unwillingness to sell, or to name a price ;
and yet how he kindly pointed out to me the farm-
lands, which lay below upon the flat, and the valley
where his cows were feeding just southward, and
how the hills rolled up grandly westward, and were
hemmed in to the north by a heavy belt of timber.

I think we are all hypocrites at a bargain. I sus-
pect I threw out casual objections to the house, and
the distance, and the roughness ; and yet have an un-
easy recollection of thanking my friend for having
brought to my notice the most charming spot I had
yet seen, and one which met my wish in nearly every
particular.

It seems to me that the ride to town must have
been very short, and my dinner a hasty one : I know
I have a clear recollection of wandering over those
hills, and that plateau of farmland, afoot, that very
afternoon. I remember tramping through the wood,
and testing the turf after the manner of my lank
friend upon the Hudson. I can recall distinctly the
aspect of house, and hills, as they came into view on
my second drive from the town ; how a great stretch
of forest, which lay in common, flanked the whole, so
that the farm could be best and most intelligibly

THE SEARCH AND FINDING, 89

described as — lying on the edge of the wood ; and it
seemed to me, that if it should be mine, it should
wear the name of Edgewood.

It is the name it bears now. I will not detail the
means by which the coyness of my iron-gray-haired
friend was won over to a sale ; it is enough to tell
that within six weeks from the day on which I had
first sighted the view, and brushed through the lilac
hedge at the door, the place, from having been the
home of another, had became a home of mine, and a
new stock of Lares was blooming in the Atrium.

In the disposition of the landscape, and in the
breadth of the land, there was all, and more than I
had desired. There was an eastern slope where the
orchard lay, which took the first burst of the morn-
ing, and the first warmth of Spring ; there was an-
other valley slope southward from the door, which
took the warmth of the morning, and which keeps
the sun till night. There was a wood, in which now
the little ones gather anemones in spring, and in au-
tumn, heaping baskets of nuts. There was a strip of
sea in sight, on which I can trace the white sails, as
they come and go, without leaving my library chair ;
and each night I see the flame of a lighthouse kin-
dled, and its reflection dimpled on the water. If the
brook is out of sight, beyond the hills, it has its

40 JfY FARM.

representative in the fountain that is gurgling and
plashing at my door.

And it is in full sight of that sea, where even
now the smoky banner of a steamer trails along the
sky, and in the hearing of the dash of that very foun-
tain, and with the fragrance of those lilacs around
me, that I close this initial chapter of my book, and
lay down my pen.

TAKING REINS IN HAND

II.

TAKING REINS IN HAND.

Around the House.

ALTHOUGH possessing all the special requisites
of which I had been in search, yet the farm was
by no means without its inaptitudes and roughnesses.
There was an accumulation of half-decayed logs in
one quarter, of mouldering chips in another, — being
monumental of the choppings and hewings of half a
score of years. Old iron had its establishment in
this spot; cast-away carts and sleds in that; walls
which had bulged out with the upheaval of — I know
not how many — frosts, had been ingeniously mended
with discarded harrows or axles ; there was the usual
debris of clam shells, and there were old outbuild-
ings standing awry, and showing rhomboidal angles
in their outline. These approached the house very
nearly, — so nearly, in fact, that in one direction at

44 MY FARM.

least, it was difficult to say where the province of
the poultry and calves ended, and where the human
occupancy began.

There was a monstrous growth of dock and bur-
dock about the outer doors, and not a few rank
shoots of that valuable medicinal herb — stramonium.
There were the invariable clumps of purple lilacs, in
most unmanageable positions ; a few straggling
bunches of daffodils ; an ancient garden with its
measly looking, mossy gooseberries; a few straw-
berry plants, and currant bushes keeping up inter-
ruptedly the pleasant formality of having once been
set in rows, and of having nodded their crimson tas-
sels at each other across the walk. There were some
half dozen huge old pear trees, immediately in the
rear of the house, mossy, and promising inferior na-
tive fruit ; but full of a vigor that I have since had
the pleasure of transmuting into golden Bartletts.
There were a few plum trees, loaded with black
knot ; a score of peach trees in out of the way places,
all showing unfortunate marks of that vegetable
jaundice, the yellows, which throughout New Eng-
land is the bane of this delicious fruit.

There was the usual huge barn, a little wavy in
its ridge, and with an aged settle to its big doors ;
while under the eaves were jagged pigeon holes, cut
by adventurous boys, ignorant of curvilinear har-

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 45

monies. Upon the peak was a lively weather-cock
of shingle, most preposterously active in its motions,
and trimming to every flaw of wind with a nervous
rapidity, that reminded me of nothing so much as of
the alacrity of a small newspaper editor. There was
the attendant company of farm sheds, low sheds,
high sheds, tumble-down sheds, one with a motley
array of seasoned lumber, well dappled over with
such domestic coloring as barn-yard fowls are in the
habit of administering ; another, with sleds and
sleighs, — looking out of place in June — and sub-
mitted to the same domestic garniture. There was
the cider mill with its old casks, and press, seamy and
mildewed, both having musty taint. A convenient
mossy cherry tree was hung over with last year's
scythes and bush-hooks, while two or three broken
ox chains trailed from the stump of a limb, which
had suffered amputation. Nor must I forget the
shop, half home-made, half remnant of something
better, with an old hat or two thrust into the broken
sashes — with its unhelved, gone-by axes, its hoes
with half their blade gone, its dozen of infirm rakes,
its hospital shelf for broken swivels, heel-wedges
and dried balls of putty.

I remember passing a discriminating eye over the
tools, bethinking me how I would swing the broad
axe, or put the saws to sharp service ; for in bargain

46 MY FARM.

ing for the farm, I had also bargained for the imple-
ments of which there might be immediate need.

Directly upon the roadway, before the house,
rose a high wall, supporting the little terrace that
formed the front yard ; the terrace was a wilderness
of roses, lilacs, and undipped box. The entrance
way was by a flight of stone steps which led through
the middle of the terrace, and of the wall ; while
over the steps hung the remnants of an ancient arch-
way, which had once supported a gilded lantern ;
and I was told with an air of due reverence, that this
gilded spangle of the town life, was a memento of
the hospitalities of a certain warm-blooded West
Indian, who in gone by years had lighted up the
country home with cheery festivities. I would have
cherished the lantern if it had not long before dis-
appeared ; and the steps that may have once thronged
under it, must be all of them heavy with years now,
if they have not rested from their weary beat alto-
gether. Both wall and terrace are now gone, and a
gentle swell of green turf is in their place, skirted
by a hedge and low rustic paling, and crowned by a
gaunt pine tree, and a bowering elm.

The same hospitable occupant, to whom I have
referred, had made additions to the home itself, so as
to divest it of the usual, stereotyped farm-house look,
by a certain quaintness of outline. This he had done

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 47

by extending the area of the lower story some
teii feet, in both front and rear, while the roof of
this annex was concealed by a heavy balustrade,
perched upon the eaves ; thus giving the effect of
one large cube, surmounted by a lesser one ; the
uppermost was topped with a roof of sharp pitch,
through whose ridge protruded two enormous chim-
ney stacks. But this alteration was of so old a dale
as not to detract from the venerable air of the house.
Even the jaunty porch which jutted in front of
all, showed gaping seams, and stains of ancient leak-
age, that forbade any suspicion of newness.

Within, the rooms had that low-browed look
which belongs to country farm-houses ; and I will
not disguise the matter by pretending that they are
any higher now. I have occasional visitors whom I
find it necessary to caution as they pass under the
doorways ; and the stray wasps that will float into
the open casements of so old a country house, in the
first warm days of Spring, are not out of reach of my
boy, (just turned of five,) as he mounts a chair, and
makes a cut at them with his dog-whip, upon the
ceiling.

I must confess that I do not dislike this old hu-
mility of house-building ; if windows, open chimney
places, and situation give good air, what matters it,
that your quarters by night are three or four feet

48 MY FARM.

nearer to your quarters by day ? In summer, if some
simple trellised pattern of paper cover the ceiling, you
enjoy the illusion of a low branching bower ; and of
a winter evening, the play of the fire-light ou the
hearth flashes over it, with a kindly nearness.

I know the outgoing parties found no pleasant
task in the leave-taking. I am sure the old lady who
was its mistress felt a pang that was but poorly con-
cealed ; I have a recollection that on one of my fur-
tive visits of observation, I unwittingly came upon
her — at a stand-still over some bit of furniture that
was to be prepared for the cart, — with her hand-
kerchief fast to her eyes. It cannot be otherwise at
parting with even the lowliest homes, where we have
known of deaths, and births, and pleasures, and little
storms that have had their sweep and lull ; and
where slow-pacing age has declared itself in gray
hair, and the bent figure. It is tearing leaf on leaf
out of the thin book where our lives are written.

Even the farmer's dog slipped around the angles
of the house, as the change was going forward, with
a fitful, frequent, uneasy trot, as if he were disposed
to make the most of the last privileges of his home.
The cat alone, of all the living occupants, took mat-
ters composedly, and paced eagerly about from one
to another of her disturbed haunts in buttery and
kitchen, with a philosophic indifference. I should not

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 49

wonder indeed if she indulged in a little riotous
exultation at finding access to nooks which had been
hitherto cumbered with assemblages of firkins and
casks.. I have no faith in cats : they are a cold-blooded
race ; they are the politicians among domestic ani-
mals ; they care little who is master, or what are the
over-turnings, so their pickings are secure ; and what
are their midnight caucuses but primary meetings ?

My Bees.

A SHELF, on which rested five bee-hives with their
buzzing swarms, stood beside a clump of lilacs,
not far from one of the side doors of the farm house.
These the outgoing occupant was indisposed to sell ;
it was " unlucky," he said, to give up ownership of
an old-established colony. The idea was new to me,
and I was doubly anxious to buy, that I might give
his whimsey a fair test. So I overruled his scruples
at length, moved the bees only a distance of a few
yards, gave them a warm shelter of thatch, and
strange to say, they all died within a year.

I restocked the thatched house several times after-
ward ; and there was plenty of marjoram and sweet
clover to delight them ; whether it was that the mis-
fortunes of the first colony haunted the place, I know
not, but they did not thrive. Sometimes, I was told,
8

50 MY FARM.

it "was the moth that found its way into their hires ;
sometimes it was an invasion of piratical ants ; and
every summer I observe that a few gallant king birds
take up their station near by, and pounce upon the
flying scouts, as they go back with their golden
booty.

I have not the heart to shoot the king birds ; nor
do I enter very actively into the battle of the bees
against the moths, or the ants ; least of all, do I
interfere in the wars of the bees among themselves,
which I have found, after some observation, to be
more destructive and ruinous, than any war with
foreign foes.* I give them fair play, good lodging,
limitless flowers, willows bending (as Virgil advises)
into the quiet water of a near pool ; I have even read
up the stories of poor blind Huber, who so loved the
bees, and the poem of Giovanni Rucellai, for their
benefit : if they cannot hold their sceptre against the
tender-winged moths, who have no cruel stings, or
against the ants, or the wasps, or give over their
satanic quarrels with their kindred, let them abide
the consequences. I will not say, however, but that

* The Rev. Charles Butler, in his " Feminine Monarchic " (Lon-
don, 1609), after speaking in Chapter VII of "Deir Enemies,"
continues: "But not any one of dese, nor all dese togeder, doo
half so rnuc harm to de Bees, as de Bees. Apis api, ut homo homi-
m, Lupus. Dey mak de greatest spoil bot of bees and of hoom'e.
Dia robbing is practised all de yeer."

TAKING REIN8 IN HAND. 61

the recollection of the sharp screams of a little " curl
pate " that have once or twice pierced iny ears, as
she ventured into too close companionship, has indis-
posed me to any strong advocacy of the bees.

My experience enables me to say that hives should
not be placed too near each other ; the bees have a
very human propensity to quarrel, and their quarrels
are ruinous. They blunder into each other's homes,
if near together, with a most wanton affectation of
forgetfulness ; and they steal honey that has been
carefully stored away in the cells of sister swarms,
with a vicious energy that they rarely bestow upon a
flower. In their field forays, I believe they are
respectful of each other's rights ; but at home, if
only the order is once disturbed, and a neighbor
swarm shows signs of weakness, they are the most
malignant pirates it is possible to conceive of.

Again, let no one hope for success in their treat-
ment, unless he is disposed to cultivate familiarity ;
a successful bee-keeper loves his bees, and has a way
of fondling them, and pushing his intimacy about
the swarming time, which I would not counsel an
inapt or a nervous person to imitate.

Gelieu, a Swiss authority, and a rival of Huber in
his enthusiasm, says : " Beaucoup de gens aiment les
abeilles ; je n'ai vu personne qui les aima mediocre
ment / on se passionne pour elles."

52 MY FARM.

I have a neighbor, a quiet old gentleman, who is
possessed of this passion ; his swarms nmltiply indefi-
nitely; I see him holding frequent conversations
with them through the backs of their hives ; all the
stores of my little colony would be absorbed in a
day, if they were brought into contact with his lusty
Bwai'ms.

Many of the old writers tell pleasant stories of
the amiable submission of their favorites to gentle
handling ; but I have never had the curiosity to put
this submission to the test. I remember that Van
Amburgh tells tender stories of the tigers.

I have observed, however, that little people listen
with an amused interest to those tales of the bees,
and I have sometimes availed myself of a curious bit
of old narrative, to staunch the pain of a sting.

" Who will listen," I say, " to a story of M.
Lombard's, about a little girl, on whose hand a whole
swarm of bees once alighted ? "

And all say " I " — save the sobbing one, who
looks consent.

M. Lombard was a French lawyer, who was
for a long time imprisoned in the dungeons of Robes-
pierre ; and when that tyrant reformer was beheaded,
this prisoner gained his liberty, and went into the coun-
try, where he became a farmer, and wrote three or four
books about the bees : among other things he says :

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 53

" A young girl of ray acquaintance was greatly
afraid of bees, but was completely cured of her fear
by the following incident. A swarm having left a
hive, I observed the queen alight by herself, at a
little distance from the apiary. I immediately
called my little friend, that I might show her this
important personage ; she was anxious to have a
nearer view of her majesty, and therefore, having
first caused her to draw on her gloves, I gave the
queen into her hand. Scarcely had I done so, when
we were surrounded by the whole bees of the swarm.
In this emergency, I encouraged the trembling girl to
be steady, and to fear nothing, remaining myself
close by her, and covering her head and shoulders
with a thin handkerchief. I then made her stretch
out the hand that held the queen, and the bees in-
stantly alighted on it, and hung from her fingers as
from the branch of a tree. The little girl, experien-
cing no injury, was delighted above measure at the
novel sight, and so entirely freed from all fear, that
she bade me uncover her face. The spectators were
charmed at the interesting spectacle. I at length
brought a hive, and shaking the swarm from the
child's hand, it was lodged in safety without inflict-
ing a single sting."

As I begin the story, there is a tear in the eye of
the sobbing one, but as I read on, the tear is gone,

54 JfT FARM.

and the eye dilates ; and when I have done, the sting
is forgotten.

I have written thus at length, at the suggestion
of my thatch of a bee house, because I shall have
nothing to say of my bees again, as co-partners with
me in the flowers, and in the farm. I have to charge
to their account a snug sum for purchase money, and
for their straw housing — a good many hours of bad
humor, and the recollection of those little screams
to which I have already alluded. Thus far, I can
only credit them with one or two moderately sized
jars of honey, and a pleasant concerted buzzing with
which they welcome the first warm weather of
the Spring. Even as I write, I observe that a few of
my winged workers are alight upon the mossy
stones that lie half covered in the basin of the foun-
tain, and are sedulously exploring the water.

Clea/i*ing Up.

OF course one of the first aims, in taking posses-
sion of such a homestead as I have partially de-
scribed, was to make a clearance of debris, of unne-
cessary palings, of luxuriant corner crops of nettles
and burdocks, of mouldering masses of decayed vege-
table matter, of old conchologic deposits, and ferru-
ginous wreck ; all this clearance being not so much

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 55

agricultural employment, as hygienic. There seems
to have been a mania with the old New England
householders, in the country, for multiplying enclo-
sures,— front yards, back yards, south and north
yards, — all with their palings and gates, which grow
shaky with years, and give cover to rank and worth-
less vegetation in corners, that no cultivation can
reach. Of this multitude of palings I made short
work : good taste, economy, and all rules of good
tillage, unite in favor of the fewest possible enclo-
sures, and confirm the wisdom of making the palings
for such as are necessary, as simple as their office of
defence will allow.

So it happened under my ruling that the little
terrace yard of the front lost its identity, and was
merged in the yard to the north, — with the lit-
tle bewildered garden to the south, — with the
straggling peach orchard in the rear ; and all these
merged again, by the removal of a tottling wall,
with the valley pasture that lay southward; where
now clumps of evergreen, and azalias, and lilacs
crown the little swells, and hide the obtrusive angles
of barriers beyond ; so that the children may race,
from the door, over firm, clean, green sward, for a
gunshot away. This change has not been only
to the credit of the eye, but in every particular
economic. The cost of establishing and repairing the

56 MY FARM.

division palings has been done away with ; the inac-
cessible angles of enclosures which fed monstrous
wild growth, are submitted to even culture and crop-
ping ; an under drain through the bottom of the val-
ley lawn, has absorbed the scattered stones and the
tottling wall of the pasture, and given a rank growth
of red-top and white clover, where before, through
three months of the year, was almost a quagmire.
This drain, fed by lesser branches laid on from time
to time through the springy ground of the peach
orchard, and by the waste way of the fountain at the
door, now dischai'ges into a little pool (once a mud
hole) at the extremity of the lawn, where a willow
or two timidly dip their branches, and the frogs wel-
come every opening April with a riotous uproar of
voices. Even the scattered clumps of trees stand
upon declivities where cultivation would have been
difficult, or they hide out-cropping rocks which were
too heavy for the walls, or the drains. So it has
come about that the old flimsy pasture, with its
blotches of mulleins, thistles, wax myrtles, and the
ill shapen yard, straggling peach orchard (long since
gone by), have made my best grass field, which needs
only an occasional top dressing of ashes or compost,
and a biennial scratching with a fine-toothed harrow,
to yield me two tons to the acre of sweet-scented
hay.

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 57

I may remark here, in way of warning to those
who undertake the renovation of slatternly country
places, with exuberant spirits, that it is a task which
often seems easier than it proves. More especially
is this the case where there is an accumulation
of old walls, and of unsightly, clumsy-shaped rocks
to be dealt with. They may indeed be transferred
to new walls ; but this involves an expenditure, often-
times, which no legitimate estimate of a farm revenue
will warrant ; and I propose to illustrate in this book
no theories of improvement, whether as regards orna-
mentation or increased productiveness, which a
sound economy will not authorize. Agricultural suc-
cesses which are the result of simple, lavish expendi-
ture, without reference to agricultural returns, are
but empty triumphs ; no success in any method of
culture is thoroughly sound and praiseworthy, except
it be imitable, to the extent of his means, by the
smallest farmer. The crop that is grown at twice its
market value to the bushel, may possibly suggest a
hint to the scientific theorist ; but it will never be
emulated by the man whose livelihood depends upon
the product of his farm. Those who transfer the
accumulated fortunes of the city to the country, for
the encouragement of agriculture, should bear in
mind, first of all, that their endeavors will have
healthy influence, only so far as they are imitable ;
3*

58 MY FARM.

and they will be imitable only so far as they are sub-
ordinated to the trade laws of profit and loss. Farm-
ing is not a fanciful pursuit ; its aim is not to
produce the largest possible crop at whatever cost ;
but its aim is, or should be, taking a series of years
together, to produce the largest crops at the least
possible cost.

If my neighbor, by an expenditure of three or
four hundred dollars to the acre in the removal of
rocks and other impedimenta, renders his field equal
to an adjoining smooth one, which will pay a fair
farm rental on a valuation of only two hundred dol-
lars per acre, he may be congratulated upon having
extended his available agricultural area, but he can-
not surely be congratulated on having made a profit-
able transaction.

The weazen faced old gentlemen who drive by in
their shirt sleeves, and call attention to the matter
with a gracious wave of their hickory whipstocks,
allow that — " it's fine ; but don't pay." Such obser-
vers— and they make up the bulk of those who have
the country in their keeping — must be addressed
through their notions of economy, or they will not
be reached at all.

In the case supposed, I have, of course, assumed
that only ordinary farm culture was to be bestowed :
although there may be conditions of high tillage,

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 59

extraordinary nicety of culture, and nearness to a
large market, which would warrant the expenditure
of even a thousand dollars per acre with profitable
results.

But rocky farms, even away from markets, are
not without their profits, and a certain wild, yet sub-
dued order of their own. I have never seen sweeter
or warmer pasture ground, than upon certain hillsides
strown thick with great granite boulders, spangled
with mica, and green-gray mosses ; nor was the view
unthrifty, with its fat, ruffle-necked merino ewes
grazing in company; nor yet unattractive to other
than farm-eyes — with its brook bursting from under
some ledge that is overhung with gnarled birches,
and illuminated with nodding, crimson columbines —
then yawing away between its green banks, with a
new song for every stone that tripped its flow.

One of the daintiest and most productive fruit
gardens it was ever my pleasure to see, was in the
midst of other gray rocks ; the grape vines so trained
as to receive the full reflection of the sun from the
surface of the boulders, and the intervals occupied
with rank growing gooseberries and plums, all faith-
fully subject to spade culture. The expense of the
removal of the rocks would have been enormous ;
and I doubt very seriously if the productive capacity
would have been increased. Again, I have seen a

60 MY FARM.

ridge of cliff with its outlying slaty debris, in the
very centre of a garden, which many a booby leveller
would have been disposed to blast away, and trans-
mute into walls, — yet under the hand of taste, so
tressed over with delicate trailing plants, and so
kindled up with flaming spikes of salvia, and masses
of scarlet geranium, as to make it the crowning at-
traction of the place. All clearance is not judicious
clearance.

But I have not yet cleared the way to my own
back door ; though at a distance of only a few rods
from the highway, I could reach it, on taking occu-
pancy, only by skirting a dangerous looking shed,
and passing through two dropsical gates that were
heavy with a mass of mouldy lumber.

These gates opened upon a straggling cattle yard,
whose surface was so high and dense, as to distribute
a powerful flow of yellow streamlets in very awk-
ward directions after every shower. One angle of
this yard it was necessary to traverse before reaching
my door. My clearance here was decisive and
prompt. The threatening shed came down upon the
run ; the mouldering gates and fences were splin-
tered into kindling wood ; the convexity of the cattle
yard was scooped into a dish, with provision for
possible overflow in safe directions. A snug compact
fence blinded it all, and confined it within reasonable

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 61

limits. A broad, free, gravelly yard, with occasional
obtrusive stones, now lay open, through which I
ordered a loaded team to be driven by the easiest
track from the highway to the door, and thence to
make an easy and natural turn, and pass on to the
stable-court. This line of transit marked out my
road : what was easiest for the cattle once, would be
easiest always. There is no better rule for laying
down an approach over rolling ground — none so
simple ; none which, in one instance out of six, will
show more grace of outline. The obtrusive stones
were removed ; the elliptical spaces described by the
inner line of track, which were untouched, and which
would need never to be touched by any passage of
teams, were dug over and stocked with evergreens,
lilacs, and azalias.

These are now well established clumps, in which
wild vines have intruded, and under which the brood
of summer chickens find shelter from the sun, and the
children a pretty cover for their hoydenish " hide and
go seek."

Thus far I have anticipated those changes and
improvements which immediately concerned the com-
fort and the order of the home. "With these pro-
vided, and the paperers and painters all fairly turned
adrift, and the newly planted flowers abloom, the
question occurs — what shall be done with the Farm ?

62 MY FARM.

What to Do with the Farm.

riRHERE are not a few entertaining people of the
JL cities, who imagine that a farm of one or two
hundred acres has a way of managing itself ; and that
it works out crops and cattle from time to time, very
much as small beer works into a foamy ripeness, by
a law of its own necessity.

I wish with all my heart that it were true ; but it
is not. For successful fanning, there must be a well
digested plan of operations, and the faithful execu-
tion of that plan. It is possible, indeed, to secure the
services of an intelligent manager, upon whom shall
devolve all the details of the business, and who shall
shape all the agricultural operations, by the rules of
his own experience ; but however extended this expe-
rience may have been, the result will be, in nine cases
out of ten, most unsatisfactory to one who wishes to
have a clear and intimate knowledge of the capabili-
ties of his land ; and very disagreeably unsatisfactory
to one who has entertained the pleasing illusion that
farm lands should not only be capable of paying
their own way, but of making respectable return
upon the capital invested. Your accomplished farm
manager — usually of British birth and schooling, but
of a later American finish, — is apt to entertain the

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 63

conviction that an employer who gives over farm
land to his control, regards such farm land only as a
pleasant parade ground for fine cattle and luxuriant
crops, which are to be placed on show without much
regard to cost. And if he can establish the owner in
a conspicuous position on the prize lists of the Coun-
ty or State Societies, and excite the gaping wonder-
ment of old-fashioned neighbors by the luxuriance
of his crops, he is led to believe that he has achieved
the desired success.

The end of it is, that the owner enjoys the honors
of official mention, without the fatigue of relieving
himself of ignorance ; the manager is doubly sure of
his stipend ; and the inordinate expense under a
direction that is not limited by commercial proprie-
ties or proportions, weakens the faith of all onlookers
in " improved farming."

I am satisfied that a great deal of hindrance is
done in this way to agricultural progress, by those
who have only the best intentions in the matter. My
friend, Mr. Tallweed, for instance, after accumulat-
ing a fortune in the city, is disposed to put on the
dignity of country pursuits, and advance the inter-
ests of agriculture. He purchases a valuable place,
builds his villa, plants, refits, exhausts architectural
resources in his outbuildings, all under the advice
of a shrewd Scotchman recommended by Thorburn,

64 MY FARM.

and can presently make such show of dainty cattle,
and of mammoth vegetables, as excites the stare of
the neighborhood, and leads to his enrolment among
the dignitaries of the County Society.

But the neighbors who stare, have their occasional
chat with the canny Scot, from whom they learn that
the expenses of the business are " gay large ; " they
pass a quiet side wink from one to the other, as they
look at the vaulted cellars, and the cumbrous ma-
chinery ; they remark quietly that the multitude of
implements does not forbid the employment of a
multitude of farm " hands ; " they shake their heads
ominously at the extraordinary purchases of grain ;
they observe that the pet calves are usually indulged
with a wet nurse, in the shape of some rawboned
native cow, bought specially to add to the resources
of the fine-blooded dam ; and with these things in
their mind— rthey reflect.

If the results are large, it seems to them that the
means are still more extraordinary ; if they wonder
at the size of the crops, they wonder still more at the
liberality of the expenditure ; it seems to them, after
full comparison of notes with the " braw " Scot, that
even their own stinted crops would show a better
balance sheet for the farm. It appears to them that
if premium crops and straight-backed animals can
only be had by such prodigious appliances of men

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 65

and money, that fine farming is not a profession to
grow rich by. And yet, our doubtful friends of the
homespun will enjoy the neighborhood of such a
farmer, and profit by it ; they love to sell him " likely
young colts ; " they eagerly furnish him with butter
(at the town price), and possibly with eggs ; his own
fowls being mostly fancy ones, bred for premiums,
and indisposed to lay largely ; in short, they like to
tap his superfluities in a hundred ways. They admire
Mr. Tallweed, particularly upon Fair days, when he
appears in the dignity of manager for some special
interest ; and remark, among themselves, that " the
Squire makes a thunderin' better committee-man,
than he does farmer." And when they read of him
in their agricultural journal — if they take one — as a
progressive, and successful agriculturist, they laugh a
little in their sleeves in a quiet way, and conceive, I
am afraid, the same unfortunate distrust of the farm
journal, which we all entertain — of the political ones.

Yet the Squire is as innocent of all deception, and
of all ill intent in the matter, as he is of thrift in his
farming. "Whoever brings to so practical a business
the ambition to astonish by the enormity of his
crops, at whatever cost, is unwittingly doing discredit
to those laws of economy, which alone justify and
commend the craft to a thoroughly earnest worker.

Having brought no ambition of this sort to my

66 MY FARM.

trial of country life, even if I had possessed the
means to give it expression, I had also no desire to
give over all plans of management to a bailiff, how-
ever shrewd. The greatest charm of a country life
seems to me to spring from that familiarity with the
land, and its capabilities, which can come only from
minute personal observation, or the successive devel-
opments of one's own methods of culture. I can
admire a stately crop wherever I see it ; but if I have
directed the planting, and myself applied the dress-
ing, and am testing my own method of tillage, I
look upon it with a far keener relish. Every week it
unfolds a charm ; if it puts on a lusty dark green, I
see that it is taking hold upon the fertilizers ; if it
yellows in the cool nights, and grows pale, I bethink
me if I will not put off the planting for a week in the
season to come ; if it curl overmuch in the heats
of later June, I reckon up the depth of my plough-
ing ; and when the spindles begin to peep out from
their green sheaths day after day, and lift up, and
finally from their feathery fingers shake down pollen
upon the silk nestling coyly below, I see in it all a
modest promise to me — repeated in every shower —
of the golden ears that shall by and by stand blazing
in the October sunshine.

But all this only answers negatively my question
of — what to do with the Farm ?

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 67

At least, it shall not be handed over absolutely to
the control of a manager, no matter what good char-
acter he may bring ; and I will aim at a system of
cropping, which shall make some measurable return
for the cost of production.

Dairying.

ANY judicious farm-system must be governed in
a large degree by the character of the soil, and
by the nearest available market. It is not easy to
create a demand for what is not wanted ; nor is it
much easier so to transmute soils by culture or by
dressings, as to produce profitably those crops to
which the soils do not naturally incline. I am fully
aware that in saying this, I shall start an angry buzz
about my ears, of those progressive agriculturists,
who allege that skilful tillage will enable a man to
produce any crop he chooses : I am perfectly aware
that Tull, who was the great farm reformer of his
day, ridiculed with unction what he regarded as
those antiquated notions of Virgil, that soils had
their antipathies and their likings, and that a farmer
could not profitably impress ground to carry a crop
against its inclination. But I strongly suspect that
Tull, like a great many earnest reformers, in his ad-
vocacy of the supreme benefit of tillage, shot beyond

68 MY FARM.

the mark, and assumed for his doctrine a universality
of application, which practice will not warrant. 1
am perfectly confident that no light and friable soil
will carry permanent pasture or meadow, with the
same profit which belongs to the old grass bottoms
of the Hartford meadows, of the blue-grass region,
and of Somersetshire. I am equally confident that no
stiff clayey soil will pay so well for the frequent work-
ings which vegetable culture involves, as a light
loam.

Travellers who are trustworthy, tell us that the
grape from which the famous Constantia wine is
made, at the Cape of Good Hope, is grown from the
identical stock which, on the Rhine banks, makes an
inferior and totally different wine : and my own obser-
vation has shown me that the grapes which on the
Lafitte estate make that ruby vintage whose aroma
alone is equal to a draught of ordinary Medoc — only
across the highway, and within gunshot, produce a
wine for which the proprietor would be glad to
receive a fourth only of the Lafitte price.

Lands have their likings then, though Mr. Tull be
of the contrary opinion. Any crop may indeed be
grown wherever we supply the requisite conditions
of warmth, moisture, depth of soil, and appropriate
dressings ; but just in the proportion that we find
these conditions absent in any given soil, and are

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 69

compelled to supply them artificially, we diminish the
chances of profit.

My own soil was of a light loamy character, and
the farm lay within two miles of a town of forty
thousand inhabitants.

Such being the facts, what should be the general
manner of treatment ?

Grazing, which is in many respects the most invit-
ing of all modes of farming, was out of the question,
for the reason that the soil did not incline to that firm,
close turf-surface, which invites grazing, and renders
it profitable. Nor do I mean to admit, what many
old-fashioned gentlemen are disposed to aifirm, that
all land which does not so incline, is necessarily infe-
rior to that which does. If grazing were the chiefest
of agricultural interests, it might be true. But it
must be observed that strong grass lands have gen-
erally a tenacity and a retentiveness of moisture,
which forbid that frequent and early tillage, that
is essential to other growths ; and upon careful
reckoning, I doubt very much, if it would not appear
that some of the very light lands in the neighborhood
of cities, pay a larger percentage upon the agricultu
ral capital invested, than any purely grazing lands in
the country. Again, even supposing that the soil
were adapted to grazing, it is quite doubtful if the
best of grazing lands will prove profitable in the

70 MY FARM.

neighborhood of large towns ; doubtful if beef and
mutton cannot be made cheaper in out-of-the-way
districts, where by reason of distance from an every-
day market, lands command a low price.

For kindred reasons, no farm, so near a large town
of the East, invites the growth of grain : on this
score there can be no competition with the West,
except in retired parts of the country, where land is
of little marketable value.

What then ? Grazing does not promise well ;
nor does grain-growing. Shall I stock my land with
grass, and sell the hay ? Unfortunately, this experi-
ment has been carried too far already. A near mar-
ket, and the small amount of labor involved, always
encourage it. But I am of opinion that no light
land will warrant this strain, except where manures
from outside sources are easily available, and are
applied with a generous hand. Such, for instance, is
the immediate neighborhood of the sea shore, where
fish and rockweed are accessible ; or, what amounts
to the same thing, such disposition of the land as
admits of thorough irrigation. In my case, both
these were wanting. I must depend for manurial
resources upon the consumption of the grasses at
home.

And this suggests dairying : dairying in its ordi-
nary sense, indeed, as implying butter and cheese

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 11

making, involves grazing ; and can be most profitably
conducted on natural grass lands, and at a large dis-
tance from market, since the transport of these com-
modities is easy. But there remains another branch
of dairying — milk supply — which demands nearness
to market, which is even more profitable, and which
does not involve necessarily a large reach of grazing
land ; the most successful milk dairies in this coun-
try, as in Great Britain, being now conducted upon
the soiling principle — that is, the supply of green
food to the cows, in their enclosures or stalls.

What plan then could be better than this?
Transportation to market was small ; the demand
constant ; the thorough tillage which the condition of
the soil required, was encouraged ; an accumulation
of fertilizing material secured.

The near vicinity of a town suggests also to a
good husbandman, the growth of those perishable
products which will not bear distant transportation,
such as the summer fruits and vegetables. These
demand also a thorough system of tillage, and a
light friable soil is, of all others, best adapted
to their successful culture. But on the other hand,
they do not in themselves furnish the means of
recuperating lands which have suffered from inju-
dicious overcropping. Their cultivation, unless upon
fields which are already in a high state of tilth,

72 M7 FARM.

involves a large outlay for fertilizing materials and
for labor — which at certain seasons must be at ab-
solute command.

In view of these considerations, which I com-
mend, to the attention and to the criticism of tho
Agricultural Journals, I determined that I would
have my herd of milch cows, and commence profes-
sional life as milkman ; keeping, however, the small
fruits and the vegetables in reserve, against the time
when the land by an effective recuperative system,
should be able to produce whatever the market might
demand.

Happily, too, a country liver is not bound to a
single farm adventure. If the cows stand sweltering
in the reeking stables, it shall not forbid a combing
down of the ancient pear trees, and the tufting of all
their tops with an abounding growth of new wood,
that shall presently be aglow with the Bonne de Jer-
sey, or with luscious Bartletts.

If there is a rattle of tins in the daily, the blue-
birds are singing in the maples. If an uneasy milker
kicks over the pail, there is a patch of Jenny Linds
that make a fragrant recompense. If the thunder
sours the milk, the nodding flowers and the rejoicing
grass give the shower a welcome.

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 73

Laborers

HAYING decided upon a plan, the next thing to
be considered is the personal agency for its
administration.

There was once a time, if we may believe a great
many tender pastorals and madrigals such as Kit
Marlowe sang, when there were milkmaids : and the
sweetest of Overbury's " Characters " is his little
sketch of the ' faire damsel, ' who hath such fingers
" that in milking a cow, it seemes that so sweet a
milk-presse makes the milk the whiter or sweeter."
But milkmaids now-a-days are mostly Connaught
men, in cowhide boots and black satin waistcoats,
who say "begorra," and beat the cows with the
milking stool.

Overbury says of the ancient British type — " Her
breath is her own, which sents all the yeare long of
June, like a newmade haycock."

And I may say of the present representative —
His breath is his own, which ' sents all the yeare
long ' of proof spirits, like a newmade still.

Overbury tenderly says — " Thus lives she, and all
her care is she may die in the spring time, to have
store of flowers stucke upon her winding sheet."

And T, as pathetically : — Thus fares he, and all
4

74 M? FARM.

his care is he may get his full wage, and a good
jollification ' nixt St. Parthrick's day. '

This is only iny way of introducing the labor
question, which, in every aspect, is a serious one to
a party entering upon the management of country
property. If such party is anticipating the employ-
ment of one of Sir Thomas Overbury's milk-maydes,
or of the pretty damsel who sang Marlowe's song to
Izaak Walton, let him disabuse his mind. In place
of it all, he will sniff boots that remind of a damp
cattle yard, and listen to sharp brogue that will be a
souvenir of Donnybrook Fair. In briefest possible
terms, the inferior but necessary labor of a farm
must be performed now, in the majority of cases, by
the most inefficient of Americans, or by the rawest
and most uncouth of Irish or Germans.

There lived some twenty or thirty years ago in
New England, a race of men, American born, and
who, having gone through a two winters' course of
district school ciphering and reading, with cropped
tow heads, became the most indefatigable and inge-
nious of farm workers. Their hoeing was a sleight of
hand ; they could make an ox yoke, or an axe helve
on rainy days ; by adroit manipulation, they could re-
lieve a choking cow, or as deftly, hive a swarm of bees.
Their furrows indeed were not of the straightest, but
their control of a long team of oxen was a miracle

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 75

of guidance. They may have carried a bit of Caven-
dish twist in their waistcoat pockets ; they certainly
did not waste tune at lavations ; but as farm workers
they had rare aptitude ; no tool came amiss to them ;
they cradled ; they churned, if need were ; they
chopped and piled their three cords of wood between
sun and sun. With bare feet, and a keen- whetted
six-pound Blanchard, they laid such clean and broad
swaths through the fields of dewy herdsgrass,
as made " old-country-men " stare. By a kind of
intuition, they knew the locality of every tree, and
of every medicinal herb that greAv in the woods.
Rarest of all which they possessed, was an acuteness
of understanding, which enabled them to comprehend
an order before it was half uttered, and to meet occa-
sional and unforeseen difficulties, with a steady assur-
ance, as if they had been an accepted part of the
problem. It was possible to send such a man into a
wood with his team, to select a stick of timber, of
chestnut or oak, that should measure a given amount ;
he could be trusted to find such, — to cut it, to score it,
to load it ; if the gearing broke, he could be trusted
to mend it ; if the tree lodged, he could be trusted to
devise some artifice for bringing it down ; and finally,
• — for its sure and prompt delivery at the point indi-
cated. Your Irishman, on the other hand, balks at
the first turn ; he must have a multitude of chains ;

76 MY FARM.

he needs a boy to aid him with the team, and another
to carry a bar ; he spends an hour in his doubtful
estimate of dimensions ; but " begorra, its a lumpish
tree," and he thwacks into the rind a foot or two
from the ground, so as to leave a ' nate ' Irish stump.
Half through the bole, he begins to doubt if it be
indeed a chestnut or a poplar ; and casting his eye
aloft to measure it anew, an ancient woodpecker
drops something smarting in his eye ; and his howl
starts the ruminating team into a confused entangle-
ment among the young wood. Having eased his
pain, and extricated his cattle, he pushes on with his
axe, and presently, with a light crash of pliant
boughs, his timber is lodged in the top of an adjoin-
ing tree. He tugs, and strains, and swears, and splits
the helve of his axe in adapting it for a lever, and
presently, near to noon, comes back for three or four
hands to give him a boost with the tree. You return
• — to find the team strayed through a gate left open,
into a thriving cornfield, and one of your pet tulip
trees lodged in a lithe young hickory.

" Och ! and it's a toolip — it is ! and I was thinkin'
'twas niver a chistnut ; begorra, it's lucky thin, it
didn't come down intirely."

These and other such, replace the New-Englander
born, who long ago was paid off, wrapped his savings
in a dingy piece of sheepskin, scratched his head re-

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 77

flectingly, and disappeared from the stage. He has
become the father of a race that is hewing its way
in Oregon, or he is a dignitary in Wisconsin, or
thwacking terribly among the foremost fighters of
the war.

Here and there remains an aged representative
of the class, with all his nasal twang and his apti-
tude for a score of different services ; but the chances
are, if he has failed of placing himself in the legis-
lative chambers of the West, or of holding ownership
of some rough farm of his own, that he has some
moral obliquity which makes him an outcast.

Certain it is, that very few native Americans of
activity and of energy are to be decoyed into the
traces of farm labor, unless they can assume the full
direction. American blood is fast, and fast blood is
impatient with a hoe among small carrots. It is well,
perhaps, that blood is so fast, and hopes so tall.
These tell grandly in certain directions, but they are
not available for working over a heap of compost.
The American eagle is (or was) a fine bird, but he
docs not consume grasshoppers like a turkey.

In view of the fact that dexterous labor is not
now available, there is a satisfaction in knowing that
the necessity for it is year by year diminishing.
Upon the old system of growing all that a man
might need within his own grounds, a proper farm

78 M7 FARM.

education embraced a considerable knowledge of a
score of different crops aad avocations. The tend-
ency is now, however, to centralize attention npon
that line of cropping which is best suited to the land ;
this limits the range of labor, while the improved
mechanical appliances fill a thousand wants, which
were once only to be met by a dexterous handicraft
at home. None but a few weazen-faced old gentle-
men of a very ancient school, think now-a-days of
making their own ox yokes or their own cheese presses ;
or, if their crop be large, of pounding out their grain
with a flail. And it is noticeable in this connection,
that the implements in the use of which the native
workers were most unmatchable, are precisely the ones
which in practical farming are growing less and less
important every year ; to wit, the axe and the scythe :
the first being now confined mostly to clearings of
timber, and the second is fast becoming merely a
garden implement for the dressing of lawns.

I perceive, very clearly, from all this, that I am
not to be brought in contact with a race of Arcadians.
Melibceus will not do the milking, nor Tityrus, —
though there shall be plenty of snoozing under the
beech trees. It is also lamentably true that the un-
couth and unkempt Irish or Germans, whom it be«
comes necessary to employ, place no pride or love in
their calling like the English farm laborers, or like

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 79

;hat gone-by stock of New England farm workers at
t^hom I have hinted.

Your Irish friend may be a good reaper, he may
possibly be a respectable ploughman (though it is
quite doubtful) ; but in no event will he cherish any
engrossing attachment to country labors ; nor will he
coine to have any pride in the successes that may
grow out of them.

Every month he is ready to drift away toward any
employment which will bring increase of pay. He is
your factotum to-day, and to-morrow may be shoul-
dering a hod, or scraping hides for a soap boiler.
The German, too, however accomplished a worker
he may become, falls straightway into the same
American passion of unrest, and becomes presently
the dispenser of lager bier, or a forager " mit Sigel."

There is then no American class of farm workers
in the market — certainly not in the Eastern markets.
The native, if he possess rural instincts, is engrossed,
as I have said, with some homestead of his own, or
is trying his seed-cast among the Mormons, or on
the prairies. All other parties bring only a divided
allegiance, and a kind of makeshift adhesion to the
business ; in addition to which, they bring an inno-
cency that demands the supervision of a good farm
teacher.

Such a teacher your foreman may be, or he may

80 MY FARM.

not be ; if the latter, and he tave no capacity to con-
vert into available workers, such motley materials,
the sooner you discharge him the better ; but if he
have this capacity, and is, besides, so far cognizant of '
your ownership, as not to take offence at your pres-
ence, and to permit of your suggestions — cherish
him ; he has rare virtues.

From the hints I have already dropped in regard
to the qualities and characteristics of the available
"milkmaids" and ploughmen, it will naturally be
inferred that I would not be anxious to entertain a
large squad of such, under the low-browed ceilings
of the country home I have described.

And here comes under observation that romanti-
cism about equality of condition and of tastes, which
many kindly and poetically-disposed persous are in-
clined to engraft upon their ideal of the farm life.
There is, indeed, a current misjudgment on this head,
which is quite common, and which the exaggerated
tone of rural literature generally, from Virgil down,
has greatly encouraged. The rural writers dodge all
the dirty work of the farm, and regale us with tho
odors of the new-mown hay. The plain truth is,
however, that if a man perspires largely in a corn-
field of a dusty day, and washes hastily in the horse
trough, and eats in shirt sleeves thnt date their clean! i«
ness three days back, and loves fat pork and cabbago

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 81

" iieat," he will not prove the Arcadian companion at
dinner, which readers of Somerville imagine, — neither
on the score of conversation, or of transpiration.
Active, every-day farm labor is certainly not congru-
ous with a great many of those cleanly prejudices
which grow out of the refinements of civilization.
We must face the bald truth in this matter ; a man
who has only an hour to his nooning, will not squan-
der it upon toilet labors ; and a long day of close
field-work leaves one in very unfit mood for apprecia-
tive study of either poetry or the natural sciences.

The pastoral idea, — set off with fancies of earth-
en bowls, tables under trees, and appetites that are
sated with bread and milk, or crushed berries and
sugar, and with the kindred fancies of rural swains,
who can do a good day's work and keep their linen
clean, — is all a most wretched phantasm. Pork, and
cabbage, and dirty wristbands, are the facts.

Plainly, the milkmaids must have a home to them-
selves, where no dreary etiquette shall -oppress them.
This home, which is properly the farmer's, lies some
eighth of a mile southward, upon the same highway
that passes my door. For a few rods the road keeps
upon a gravelly ridge, from which, eastward, stretches
away the wide-reaching view I have already noted ;
and westward, in as full sight, is the little valley

lawn, where the shadows of the copses lie splintered
4*

82 MY FARM.

on the green. So it is, for a breathing space of level ,
then the gravelly road makes sudden plunge under a
thicket of trees ; a rustic culvert is crossed, which is
the wasteway of the pool at the foot of the lawn ;
and opposite on a gentle lift of turf, all overshad-
owed with trees, is the farmery. Here, as before
described, were outlying sheds, and leaning gables,
and a wreck of castaway ploughs and carts ; and the
scene alive with the cluck of matronly hens, conduct-
ing broods of gleesome chickens, and with the side-
long waddle of a bevy of ducks, I have a recollec-
tion, too, of certain long-necked turkeys, who eyed
me curiously on my first visit, with an oblique twist
of their heads, and of a red-tasselled Tom, who
sounded a gobble of alarm, as I marched upon the
premises, and met me with a formidable strut. These
birds are very human. I never go to the town but I
see men who remind me of the gobblers ; and I never
see my gobblers but they remind me pleasantly of
men in the town.

Immediately beyond the gates, which opened upon
the farmery, was a quaint square box of red trimmed
off with white (whose old-fashioned coloring I mam-
tain), being a tenant house of most venerable age,
and standing in the middle of a wild and ragged
garden. The road has made two easy curves up to
this point, and skirts a great hill that rises boldly on

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 83

the right ; on the left, and beyond the red tenant
house with its clustering lilacs, and shading maples,
is a mossy orchard ; and with the mossy orchard on
the left, and the sudden hills piling to the right, the
border of the land is reached.

The wooden farmhouse, which lay so quietly
under the trees, at the foot of the hill, when I first
saw the place, is long since burned and gone. It was
the old story of ashes in a wooden kit — very lively
ashes, that one night kindled the kit, and thence
spread to the shed, and in a moment half the house
was in flame. It was a picturesque sight from my
window on the hill ; but not a pleasant one. A wild,
sweeping, gallant blaze, that wrapped old powder-
post timbers in its roar, and licked through crashing
Bashes, and came crinkling through the roof in a hun-
dred wilful jets, and then lashed and overlaid the
whole with a tent of vermilion, above which there
streamed into the night great, yellow, swaying pen-
nants of flame. But the burnt house is long since
replaced by another. It would have been a simple
and easy task to restore it as before : a few loads of
lumber, the scheme of some country joiner, and the
thing were done. But I was anxious to determine by
actual trial how far the materials which nature had
provided on the farm itself, could be made available.

The needed timber could, of course, be readily

84 MY FARM.

obtained from the farm wood ; and from the same
source might also be derived the saw logs for exterior
covering. But from the fact that pine is very much
more suitable and durable for cover, than the ordi-
nary timber of New England woods, the e'conomy of
such a procedure would be very doubtful ; nor would
it demonstrate so palpably and unmistakably, as I
was desirous of doing, that the building was of home
growth. I had seen very charming little farmhouses
on the Downs of Hampshire, made almost entirely
from the flints of the neighboring chalkbeds ; and in
Cumberland and Westmoreland very substantial and
serviceable cottages are built out of the rudest stones,
the farm laborers assisting in the work. Now, there
were, scattered along the roadside, as along most
country roadsides of New England, a great quantity
of small, ill-shapen stones, drawn thither in past years
from the fields, and serving only as the breeding
ground for pestilent briars. These stones I deter-
mined to convert into a cottage.

Of course, if such an experiment should involve a
cost largely exceeding that of a simple wooden house
of ordinary construction, its value would be partially
negatived ; since I was particularly anxious to demon-
strate not only the possibility of employing the humblest
materials at hand, but also of securing durability and
picturesqueness in conjunction with a rigid economy.

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 85

I need not say to any one who has attempted a
similar task, that the builders discouraged me : the
stones were too round or too small ; they had no
face ; but I insisted upon my plan — only yielding
the use of bricks for the corners, and for the window
jambs.

I further insisted that no stone should be touched
with a hammer ; and that, so far as feasible, the mossy
or weather sides of the stones should be exposed.
The cementing material was simple mortar, made of
shell lime and sharp sand ; the only exception being
one course of five or six inches in depth, laid in water
cement, six inches above the ground, and intended to
prevent the ascent of moisture through the mason
work. The house walls were of the uniform height
of ten feet, covered with a roof of sharp pitch. The
gables were carried up with plank laid on vertically,
and thoroughly battened ; and to give picturesque
effect as well as added space upon the garret floor,
the gables overhang the walls by the space of a foot,
and are supported by the projecting floor beams,
which are rounded at their ends, but otherwise left
rough. This feature, as well as the sharp pent roof,
was an English one, and a pleasant reminder of old
houses I had seen in the neighborhood of Gloucester.

To avoid the expense of a great number of win-
dow jambs, which, being of brick, were not of home

86 MY FARM.

origin, I conceived the idea of throwing two or three
windows into one ; thus giving, for purely economic
reasons, a certain Swiss aspect to the building, and a
pleasant souvenir of a sunny Sunday in Meyringeu.
These broad windows, it must be observed, have no
cumbrous lintels of stone — for none such were to be
found upon the farm ; but the superincumbent wall is
supported by stanch timbers of oak, and these dis-
guised or concealed by little protecting rooflets of
plant. Thus far, simple economy governed every
part of the design ; but to give increased architectural
effect, as well as comfort, a porch, with peak corre-
sponding in shape to the gable, was thrown out over
the principal door to the south ; and this porch was
constructed entirely, saving its roof, of cedar un-
stripped of its bark. If it has not been removed,
there is a parsonage house at Ambleside in the lake
country of Westmoreland, which shows very much
such another, even to the diamond loophole in its
peak.

Again, the chimneys, of which there are two,
instead of being completed in staring red, were car-
ried up in alternate checkers of cobbles and brick,
the whole surmounted by a projecting coping of
mossy stones. In view of the fact that this architec-
tural device demanded dexterous handling, I cannot
allege its economy ; but its extra cost was so trifling,

TAKING REINS IN HAND. si

and its pleasant juxtaposition of tints was so sugges-
tive of the particolored devices that I had seen on
the country houses of Lombardy, that the chimneys
have become cheap little monuments of loiterings in
Italy.

The plank of the gables, wholly unplaned, has
been painted a neutral tint to harmonize with the
stone, and the battens are white, to accord with the
lines of mortar in the wall below ; the commingled
brick and stone of the house, are repeated in the
chimneys above ; the roof has now taken on a gray
tint ; the lichens are fast forming on the lower
stones ; a few vines, — the Virginia creeper chiefest
(Ampelopsis Hederacea), — are fastening into the crev-
ices, making wreaths about the windows all the
summer through, and in autumn hang flaming on the
wall. There is a May crimson, too, from the rose-
bushes that are trailed upon the porch. It is all
heavily shaded ; a long, low wall of gray, lighted with
red-bordered embrasures, taking mellowness from
every added year ; there are no blinds to repair ;
there is but little paint to renew ; it is warm in win-
ter ; it is cool in summer ; vines cling to it kindly ;
the lichens love it ; I would not replace its homeliness
with the jauntiest green-blinded house in the country.

Of course so anomalous a structure called out the
witticisms of my country neighbors. "Was it a

88 MY FARM.

blacksmith's shop ? " " Was it a saw mill ? " and with
a loud appreciatory " guffaw " the critics pass by.

Oar country tastes are as yet very ambitious ;
homeliness and simplicity are not appetizing enough.
But in time we shall ripen into a wholesome severity,
in this matter. I am gratified to perceive that the
harshest observers of my poor cottage in the begin-
ning, have now cojne to regard it with a kindly inter-
est. It mates so fairly with the landscape, — it mates
so fairly with its purpose ; it is so resolutely unpre-
tending, and carries such air of permanence and dura-
bility, that it wins and has won upon the most arrant
doubters.

The country neighbors were inclined to look upon
the affair as a piece of stupidity, not comparable with
a fine white house, set off by cupola and green blinds.
But it was presently observed that cultivated people
from the town, in driving past, halted for a better
view ; the halts became frequent ; it was intimated
that So-and-so, of high repute, absolutely admired the
homeliness. Whereupon the country critics under-
took an inquiry into the causes of their distaste, and
queried if their judgment might not have need of
revision. Did their opinion spring from a discerning
measurement of the real fitness of a country house,
or out of a cherished and traditional regard for white
and green ?

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 89

The final question, however, in regard to it, as a
matter of practical interest, is one of economy. Can
a house of the homely material and character de-
scribed be built cheaply ? Unquestionably. In my
own case the cost of a cottage fifty feet by twenty-six,
and with ten-feet walls — containing five serviceable
rooms, besides closets on its main floor, and two largo
chambers of good height under the roof, as well as
dairy room in the east end of the cellar — was be-
tween eleven and twelve hundred dollars. The esti-
mates given me for a wooden house, of the stereo-
typed aspect and similar dimensions, were within a
few dollars of the same sum.

It must be remembered, however, that any novelty
of construction in a particular district, costs by reason
of its novelty ; the mason, too, charges for the possi-
ble difficulties of overcoming his inexperience in the
material. The carpenter rates the rough joining at
the same figure with the old mouldings and finishing
boards, to which he is accustomed, and of which he
may have a stock on hand. Yet, notwithstanding
these drawbacks, the work was accomplished within
the limits of cost which the most economic .would
have reckoned essential to a building of equal capa-
city.

It is further to be considered that while I paid
skilful masons for this rough work the same price

90 MY FARM,

which they exacted for the nice work of cities, it
would have been quite possible for an intelligent pro-
prietor to commit very much of it to an ordinary farm
laborer, and so reduce the cost by at least one third.

I have dwelt at length upon this little architectural
experience, because I believe that such meagre details
of construction as I have given may be of service to
those having occasion to erect similar tenant houses ;
and again, because in view of the fact that we must
in time have a race of farm laborers among us, who
shall also be householders, I count it a duty to make
such use of the homely materials at hand, as shall
insure durability and comfort, while the simplicity
of detail will allow the owner to avail himself of his
own labor and ingenuity, in the construction.

A Sunny Frontage.

SUCH a farmhouse as I have described, should
have, in all northern latitudes, a sheltered position
and a sunny exposure. Of course, a situation conve-
nient to the fields under tillage, and to other farm
buildings, is to be sought ; but beyond this, no law
of propriety, of good taste, or of comfort, is more im-
perative than shelter from bleak winds, and a frontage
to the south. No neighbor can bring such cheer to
a man's doorstep as the sun.

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 91

There are absurd ideas afloat in regard to the front,
and back side of a house, which infect village morals
and manners in a most base and unmeaning way. In
half the country towns, and by half the farmers, it is
considered necessary to retain a pretending front
side upon some dusty street or highway, with tightly
closed blinds and bolted door ; with parlors only
ventured upon in an uneasy way from month to
month, to consult some gilt-bound dictionary, or Mu-
seum, that lies there in state, like a king's coffin. The
occupant, meantime, will be living in some back cor-
ner,— slipping in and out at back doors, never at ease
save in his most uninviting room, and as much a
stranger to the blinded parlor, which very likely en-
grosses the best half of his house, as his visitor, the
country parson. All this is as arrant a sham, and
affectation, as the worst ones of the cities.

It is true that every man will wish to set aside a
certain portion of his house for the offices of hospi-
tality. But the easy and familiar hospitalities of a
country village, or of the farmer, do not call for any
exceptional stateliness ; the farmer invites his best
friends to his habitual living room ; let him see to it
then that his living room be the sunniest, and most
cheerful of his house. So, his friends will come to
love it, and he, and his children — to love it and to
cherish it, so that it shall be the rallying point of the

92 MY FARM.

household affections through all time. No sea so dis-
tant, but the memory of a cheery, sunlit home-room,
with its pictures on the wall, and its flame upon the
hearth, shall haunt the voyager's thought ; and the
flame upon the hearth, and the sunlit window, will
pave a white path over the intervening waters, where
tenderest fancies, like angels, shall come and go. No
soldier, wounded on these battle fields of ours, and
feeling the mists of death gathering round him, but
will call back with a gushing fondness such glimpse
of a cheery and cherished hearthstone, and feel hope
and heart lighted by the vision — bringing to his last
hold on earth his most hallowed memories ; and so,
binding by the tenderest of links, the heartiest of the
Old life, to the bloody dawn of the New.

There is a deeper philosophy in this than may at
first sight appear. Who shall tell us how many a
breakdown of a wayward son, is traceable to the
cheerless aspect of his own home, and fireside ?

But just now I am no moralist — only housebuild-
er. In the farm cottage, whose principal features I
have detailed, I have given fifty feet of frontage to
the south, and only the gable end, with its windows,
to the street. As I enter the white wicket by the
corner, under the elm tree which bowers it, the distri-
bution counts thus : a miniature parlor with its look-
out to the street, and a broad window to the south i

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 93

next is the rustic porch, and a door opening upon the
hall ; next, a broad living-room or kitchen, with its
generous chimney, and this flanked Iby a wash room,
or scullery, from which & second outer door opens
upon the southern front. To this latter door, which
may have its show of tubs, tins, and drying mops, a
screen of shrubbery gives all needed privacy from the
street, and separates by a wall of flowering things
from the modest pretensions of the entrance by the
porch. At least, such was an available part of the
design. If the good woman's poultry, loving so sunny
a spot, will worry away the rootlets of the lower
flowering shrubs, and leave only a tree or two for
screen, it is an arrangement of the leafy furniture,
over which the successive occupants have entire con-
trol. The noticeable fact is, that the best face of the
cottage, and its most serviceable openings, whether
of window or door, are given to the full flow of the
sun, and not to the road side. What is the road
indeed, but a convenience ? Why build at it, or
toward it, as if it were sovereign, or as if we owed it
a duty or a reverence ? We owe it none ; indeed,
under the ordering of most highway surveyors, we
owe it only contempt. But the path of the sun, and
of the seasons, is of God's ordering ; and a south win-
dow will print on every winter's morning a golden
prayer upon the floor j and every summer's morning

94 MY FARM.

the birds and bees will repeat it, among the flowers at
the southern door.

Farm, Buildings.

HAVING looked after the farm cottage, I come
now to speak of the equally homely subject of
barns and outbuildings. Of these, such as they were,
I found abundance upon the premises, standing at all
imaginable angles, and showing that extraordinary
confusion of arrangement for which many of our old-
fashioned farmers have a wonderful aptitude. Should
they all be swept away, and a new company of build-
ings erected ? The stanch timbers and the serviceable
condition of many of them forbade this, as well as
considerations of prudence. Besides which, I have no
admiration for that incongruity which often appears
at the hands of those who are suddenly smitten with
a love for the country — of expensive and jaunty farm
architecture in contrast with a dilapidated farm. I
believe in a well-conditioned harmony between farm
products and the roofs that shelter them, and that
both should gain extent and fulness, by orderly pro-
gression. It has chanced to me to see here and there
through the countiy very admirable appliances of
machinery and buildings, which, on the score of both
cost and needfulness, were out of all proportion to the

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 95

fertility and the order of the fields. I see, too, not
unfrequently, very showy palings in the neighbor-
hood of a country house, which are flanked by the
craziest of slatternly fences ; whereat it always occurs
to me, that the expenditure would be far better dis-
tributed in giving a general neatness and effectiveness
to all the enclosures, rather than lavished upon a little
spurt of white splendor about the house. A fertility
too gross for the buildings, so as to bubble over in
ricks and temporary appliances, is to me a far more
cheery sight agriculturally, than buildings so grand as
utterly to outmatch and overshadow all productive
capacity of the land. A kernel too big for the nut,
promises to my taste a better relish than a nut too big
for the kernel.

These seem to me, at the worst, very plausible
reasons, if there had been no final, prudential ones,
for making the best of the old buildings at hand — by
re-arrangement, new grouping, and by shutting up
such gaps between the disjointed parts, as should
reduce the whole to a quadrangular order, and offer
sunny courts for the cattle.

If a sunny exposure, and grateful shelter from
harsh winds be good for the temper of the farm wife
and her household, they are even better for all the
domestic animals ; and it is an imperative condition
of the arrangement of all farm buildings in our cli-

96 MY FARM.

mate that they offer a sheltering lee, and have their
principal openings, specially of windows, to the south.
Protection against summer heats, if needed for stalled
animals, it is easy to supply ; but an equivalent for
the warmth of the winter's sun, I know no name for.

Another condition of all judicious arrangement,
which is even more important, is such disposition of
the yards and cellars, as shall prevent all waste of ma-
nurial resources of whatever kind, whether by undue
exposure, or by leakage. And in this connection, I
may mention that it is a question seriously mooted,
and worthy of full investigation — if the fertilizing
material of a farm will not warrant special shelter as
fully as the crops. All experience certainly confirms
the fact that such as is taken from under cover, pro-
vided only the moisture is sufficient, is worth the
double of that which has been exposed to storms.
What chemical laws relating to agriculture confinn
this fact, I may have occasion to speak of in another
chapter ; at present I note only the results of practical
observation, without reference to underlying causes.

The books would have recommended me to con-
struct an extensive tank, to which drains should con-
duct all the wash from the courts and stables. But
this would involve water carts, and other appliances,
liable to injury under rough handling ; besides de-
manding a nicety of tillage, and a regularity of dis-

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 97

tribution which, at first, could not be depended on.
That the liquid form is the one, under which manurial
material under a complete system of culture, will work
the most magical results, I have no doubt. But until
that system is reached, very much can be done in the
way of economizing the fertilizing elements of the
farmyard, short of the tank and the water cart ; and
this by modes so simple, and at an expense so small,
as to be within the reach of every farmer.

Let me illustrate, in the plainest possible manner,
by my own experience. The barn, as I have said,
was slatternly ; it had yielded a little to the pinching
northwesters, and by a list (as seamen say) to the south-
east, gave threat of tumbling upon the cattle yard.
This yard lay easterly and southerly, in a ragged,
stony slope, ending on its eastern edge with a quag-
mire, which was fed by the joint wash of the yard
and the leakage of a water trough supplied from a
spring upon the hills. The flow from this quagmire,
unctuous and fattening, slid away down a long slope
into the meadow, — at first so strong, as to forbid all
growth ; then feeding an army of gigantic docks and
burdocks ; and after this giving luxuriant growth to
a perch or two of stout English grass. But it was a
waste of wealth ; it was like a private, staggering
under the rations of a major-general. I cut off the

rations. With the stones which were in and about
5

98 MY FARM.

the yard, 1 converted its lazy slope into two level
courts ; and so arranged the surface, that the flow
from the upper should traverse the lower one ; from
which, in turn, the joint flow of fertilizing material
fell though a few tiles in the lower terrace wall, upon
the head of a long heap of compost, which was or-
dered to be always replaced, as soon as removed.
The leakage of the water trough being cured, its
overflow was conducted to the pasture below, where
the second overflow, — for the stream was constantly
running, — would do no injury, and would be available
as a foraging mudpool for the ducks. By this sim-
ple re-adjustment of surface, and of the water flow, I
have no question but I fully doubled the yearly value
of the manures.

I still further mended matters by carrying the
cow stables along all the northern frontier of the
yard, in such sort as to afford an ample sunny lee ;
and extending this new pile of building over the
eastern terrace wall, I gained an open cellar below for
my store pigs, who range over the ground where the
burdocks so thrived before, with occasional furtive
examinations of the compost heap which receives the
flow from above.

I do not name this disposition of buildings and of
surfaces, as one to be copied, or as the one which I
should have chosen to make, in the event of a thor-

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 90

ough reconstruction ; but only as one of those simple,
feasible improvements of the old conditions which
are met with everywhere ; improvements, moreover,
which involve little or no cost, beyond the farmer's
own labor, and no commitment to the theories of
Mechi or of Liebig. A ragged-coated man should be
grateful for a tight bit of linsey-wolsey to his back,
until such time as he comes to the dignity of broad-
cloth.

Four fifths of those who undertake farming, — not
as an amusement or simply as an oecupation, but as the
business of their life, and upon whom we are depend-
ent for our potatoes, veal, and cider (to say nothing
more), — are compelled to do the best they can with
existing buildings ; and Stephens' plans of a ' farm-
steading ' are as much Greek to them, as the ' Works
and Days ' of Hesiod. A hint, therefore, of judicious
adaptation of old buildings, may be all they can digest
with that practical relish with which a man accepts
suggestions that are within the compass of his means
and necessities.

Again, the British or Continental needs in tho
matter of farm constructions, are totally different
from American need, in all northern latitudes. The
British farmer can graze his turnips into January ;
and I have seen a pretty herd of Devon cows cropping
a fair bite of grass, under the lee of the Devon Tors,

100 MY FARM.

into February. We, on the contrary, have need to
store forage for at least six months in the year. Hay
begins to go out of the bays with the first of Novem-
ber at the latest, and there is rarely a good bite \ipon
the pastures until the tenth of May. For this reason
there is required a great breadth of barn room.

The high cost of labor, too, forbids that distribu-
tion of the farm offices over a considerable area of
surface, which is characteristic of the British stead-
ing. The tall buildings, which are just now so much
in vogue with enterprising American farmers, situated
by preference upon swiftly sloping land, and giving an
upper floor for forage, a second and lower one for
granary and cattle, and a third for manure pit, have
been suggested and commended chiefly for their great
economy of labor ; one man easily caring for a herd,
under these conditions of lodgment, which upon the
old system would demand two or three.

Machinery, too, which must presently come to do
most of the indoor work upon a well-managed farm
of any considerable size, will require for its effective
service compact buildings.

Let me repeat the conditions of good American
barns. They must suffice for ample protection of the
harvested crops ; ample and warm shelter for the ani-
mals ; security against waste of manurial resources ;
and such compactness of arrangement as shall war-

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 1Q]

rant the fullest economy of labor. With these ends
reached, they may be old or new, irregular or quad-
rangular— they are all that a good farmer needs in the
way of architecture, to command success.

The Cattle.

" "¥ \ THAT sort o' cattle d'ye mean to keep,
f T Squire ? " said one of my old-fashioned
neighbors, shortly after my establishment. " Squire "
used to be the New England title for whatever man,
not a clergyman or doctor, indulged in the luxury of
a black coat occasionally, upon work days. But in
these levelling times, I am sorry to perceive that it is
going by ; and I only wear the honor now, at a long
distance from home, in the ' up-country.'

To return to the cattle ; my neighbor's question
was a pertinent one. Not what cattle did I admire
most, or what cattle I thought the finest ; but what
cattle shall I keep ?

In this, as in the matter of the house, of the out-
buildings and of the roadway, I believe thoroughly in
adaptation to ends in view. If I had been under-
taking the business of a cattle breeder, I should
have sought for those of the purest blood, of what-
ever name ; if I had counted upon sales to the
butcher, my choice would have been different; if,

102 MY FARM.

again, butter had been the aim, I am sure I should
have made no great mistake in deciding for the sleek
Jersey cattle. But for mere supply of milk, under
ordinary conditions of feeding, I do not know that
any breed has as yet established an unchallenged
claim to the front rank. The Devons, Ayrshires, and
Shorthorns, each have their advocates ; for the lati-
tude and pasturage of New England, if I were com-
pelled to choose between the three, I should certainly
choose the Ayrshires ; but I am satisfied that a more
successful milk dairy can be secured by a motley herd
of natives, half-bloods, and animals of good promise
for the pail, than by limitation of stock to any one
breed. I am confirmed in this view by the examples
of most large dairies of this country, as well as by
many in Great Britain. I particularly remember a
nice little herd which I had the pleasure of seeing,
some years since, at the excellently managed farm of
Glas-Nevin in the environs of Dublin : sleek animals
all, and thoroughly cared for ; but showing a medley
of races ; the queen milker of all — as it chanced —
having lineage in which the Ayrshire, the Shorthorn
and Devon were all blended.

T know there are very many cattle fanciers, and
stanch committee men, who will not approve this
method of talking about mixed stables, and of a
medley of different races, — as if a farmer were at liber-

TAKING- REINS IN HAND. 103

ty to make his choice of cattle, with the same coolness
vith which he would make his choice of ploughs or
wagons, and to tie up together, if the humor takes
him, animals which the breeders have been keeping
religiously apart for a few score of years.

But I do not share in this punctiliousness. I be-
lieve that these animals all, whether of the Herd-book
or out of it, must be measured at last, not by their
pedigree or title, but by their fitness for humble farm
services. A family name may be a good enough test
of any animal — biped or other — from whom we look
for no particular duty, save occasional exhibition of
his parts before public assemblages ; but when our
exigencies demand special and important service, we
are apt to measure fitness by something more in-
trinsic.

The cattle breeders are unquestionably doing
great benefit to the agricultural interests of the coun-
try; but the essential distinction between the aims
of the breeder and farmer should not be lost sight of.
The first seeks to develop, under the best possible
conditions of food and shelter, those points in the ani-
mal which most of all make the distinction of the
race. The farmer seeks an animal, or should, which
in view of climate, soil, and his practice of husbandry,
shall return him the largest profit, whether in the
dairy, under the yoke, or in the shambles. He haa

104 MY FARM.

nothing to do with points, but the points that shall
meet these ends. There is no reason why he should
limit himself to one strain of blood, unless that strain
meets and fills every office of his farm economy, any
more than he should narrow his poultry range to pea-
fowl, or to golden pheasant.

I think I may have talked somewhat in this strain
to my old neighbor, who asked after the " squire's
cattle " — but not at such a length ; and I think that
he offered some such corollary as this :

" Squire, them English cows is handsome critturs
enough to look at ; but ye have to keep a follerin' on
'em up with a meal tub."

It is very easy to lay down a charming set of rules
for the establishment of a good herd (and for that
matter — of a good life) ; but — to follow them ?

I will be bound to say that there was never a pret-
tier flock of milch cows gathered in any man's stables
than the superior one which I conjured up in my
fancy, after an imaginative foray about the neighbor-
hood. But it was not easy to make the fancy good.
Mr. Flint, in his very capital book upon milch cows
and dairy farming, gives a full elucidation of that
theory of M. Guenon, by which the milking properties
of an animal can be determined by what is called the
escutcheon, — being certain natural markings, around
the udder upon the inner parts of the thighs. It is

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 105

perhaps needless to say, that such minute observation
as would alone justify a decision based upon this the-
ory, might sometimes prove awkward, and embar-
rassing. Upon the whole, I should counsel young
farmers in summer clothing, and away from home,
to judge of a cow by other indicia.

Still, the theory of M. Guenon* has its value ; and
I am persuaded that he was worthily adjudged the
gold medal at the hands of the Agricultural Society
of Bordeaux. But with this, and all other aids —
among which I may name the loose preemptory reflec-
tions and suggestions of certain adjoining fanners — I
was by no means proud of the appearance of the little
herd of twelve or 16urteen cows with which opera-
tions were to commence.

The popular belief, that all jockeyism and cheatery
is confined to horse dealings, is too limited. Whoever
will visit the cow stables in Robinson street, or near
to Third avenue, upon a market day, may observe a
score or two of animals with painfully distended ud-
ders (the poor brutes have not been milked in the last
forty-eight hours), throwing appealing glances about
the enclosure, and eyeing askance certain bullet-headed
calves, which are tied in adjoining stalls, but which

* The interested agricultural reader may consult " Choix dea
Vaches Laitieres, par M. Magne, Paris," for full exhibition of the
system.

5*

106 MY FARM.

have no more claim upon the maternal instincts of
the elder animals, than the drovers themselves. It is
all a bald fiction ; the true offspring have gone to the
butchers months ago ; and if the poor, surcharged
brutes accept of the offices of the little staggering
foundlings, it is with a weary poke of the head, that
is damning to the brutality of the drovers.

It would be too much to say that I have never
been deceived by these people ; too much to say that
honest old gentlemen of innocent proclivities did never
pass upon me certain venerable animals, with the tell-
tale wrinkles rasped out of their horns. One of this
class, of a really creditable figure, high hip bones,
heavy quarters, well marked milk veins, I was incau-
tious enough to test by a glance into her mouth.
Not a tooth in her old head !

I looked accusingly at the rural owner, who was
quietly cutting a notch in the top rail of his fence.

" Waal, yes — kinder rubbed off; but she bites
pooty well with her gooms."

Among the early purchases, and among the ani-
mals that promised well, was a dun cow, which it was
found necessary, after a few weeks of full feeding, to
cumber with a complicated piece of neck furniture, to
forbid her filching surreptitiously what properly be-
longed to the pail. Self-milkers are not profitable. I
have faith in the doctrine of rotation, and the quick

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 1Q7

reconversion of farm products Into the elements of
new growth. But here was a case of reconversion
so rapid, as to be fatal to all the laws of economy. It
suggested nothing so strongly, as that rapid issue of
government money, which finds immediate absorption
among the governmental officials. Does the govern-
ment really milk itself ; and can no preventive be
found in the way of neck machinery, or other ?

Another animal was admirable in every point of
view ; I found her upon one of the North River
wharves, and the perfect outline of her form and
high-bred action, induced a purchase, even at a long
figure ; but the beast proved an inveterate kicker.

The books recommend gentleness for the cure of
this propensity ; so does humanity ; I concurred with
both in suggesting that treatment to Patrick.

" Gintle is it ? And bedad, sir, she's too ould for
a cure. I'm thinking we must tie her legs, sir ; but
if ye orders it, bedad, it's meself can be gintle.

" Soh, Moolly — soh — soh (and a kick) ; soh, ye
baste (a little livelier), soh (and a kick) — soh, blast
ye ! — soA, Moolly — son, Katy — SOH (and a crash) ;
och, you ould baste ye — take that ! " and there is a
thud of the milking stool in the ribs.

The " gintleness " of Patrick is unavailing. But
the cow is an excellent animal, and not to be hastily
discarded. Milker after milker undertook the con«

108 M7 FARM.

quest, but with no better success. The task became
the measure of a man's long-suffering disposition ;
some gave over, and lost their tempers before the first
trial was finished ; others conjured down the spirit
by all sorts of endearing epithets and tenderness,
until the conquest seemed almost made ; when sud-
denly pail, stool, and man would lapse together, and
a stream of curses carry away all record of the ten-
derness. We came back at last to Patrick's original
suggestion ; the legs must be tied. A short bit of
thick rope passed around one foot and loosely knot-
ted, then passed around the second and tied tightly
in double knot, rendered her powerless. There was
a slight struggle, but it was soon at an end ; and she
made no opposition to the removal of the thong after
the milking was over. With this simple provision,
the trouble was all done away ; and for a whole year
matters went well. But after this, there came a re-
former into control of the dairy. The rope was bar-
barous ; he didn't believe in such things ; he had seen
kicking cows before. A little firmness and gentle-
ness would accomplish the object better ; God didn't
make cows' legs to be tied. The position was a
humane one, if not logical. And the thong was dis-
carded.

"Well Patrick," said I, two days after, "how
fares the cow ? "

TAKING REINS IN HAND. 109

" And begorra, it's the same ould baste, sir."

A few days later I inquired again after the new
regimen of gentleness and firmness.

" Begorra," said Patrick, " she's kicked him
again ! "

A week passed ; and I repeated the inquiries.

" Begorra, she's kicked him again ! " screamed
Patrick; "and it's a divil's own bating he's been
giving the ould baste."

Sure enough, the poor cow was injured sadly ;
her milking days were over; and in a month she
went to the butcher. And this advocate of gentle-
ness and firmness was one of the warmest and most
impassioned philanthropists I ever met with.

The moral of the story is, — if a cow is an inveterate
kicker, tie her legs with a gentle hand, or kill her.
Beating will never cure, whether it come in successive
thuds, or in an explosive outbreak of outrageous vio-
lence. I suspect that the same ruling is applicable to
a great many disorderly members of society.

Although the cases I have cited were exceptional,
and although my little herd had its quiet, docile,
profit-giving representatives, yet I cannot say that it
was altogether even with my hopes or intentions.

Two stout yoke of those sleek red cattle, for
which southern New England is famous, had their
part to bear in the farm programme, besides a sleek

HO MY FARM.

young Alderney bull, and a pair of Htnrdy horses.
There were pigs with just enough of the Suffolk blood
in them to give a shapely outline, and not so much as
to develop that red scurfy baldness, which is to niy
eye rather an objectionable feature of high breeding
and feeding — whether in men or pigs.

Ducks, turkeys, and hens, in a fluttering brood,
brought up the rear. With these all safely bestowed
about the farm buildings which I have briefly indi-
cated, and with a rosy-nosed, dapper little Somerset-
shire man, who wore his tall Sunday-beaver with a
slight cant to one side, established as lieutenant-gov-
ernor in the cottage, the reins seemed fairly in hand.

CROPS AND PROFITS.

III.

CROPS AND PROFITS.

The HUl Land.

BEFORE we keep company farther — the reader
and I — let me spread before him, as well as I
may, a map of the farm land. I may describe it, in
gross, as a great parallelogram, intersected by the
quiet public highway, which divides it into two great
squares. The eastern square is, for the most part, as
level as the carpet on my library floor, and its crops
make checkers like the figures on the ingrain. The
eastern half is toward the town ; and upon its edge,
by the highway, are the farm buildings I have
grouped around the stone cottage. The western
half is rolling ; and beyond the whitey-gray farm-
house, with which I entered upon my portraiture, it
heaves up into a great billow of hill, half banded
with woodland, and half green with pasture.

114 MY FARM.

This billow of hill, dipped down between my
home and the stone cottage, into a little valley,
which I have transmuted, as before described, into a
lawn of grass land, with its clumps of native trees
and flowering shrubs, and its little pool, under the
willows, that receives the drainage. Elsewhere,
beyond, and higher, its surface was scarred with
stones of all shapes and sizes ; orderly geology
would have been at fault amid its debris ; — there were
boulders of trap, with clean sharp fissures breaking
through them ; — there were great flat fragments of
gneiss covered with gray lichens ; — there were pure
granitic rocks worn round, — perhaps by the play of
some waves that have been hushed these thousand
years ; and there were exceptional fragments of
coarse red sandstone, frittered half away by centu-
ries of rain, and leaving protruding pimples of harder
pebbles. In short, Professor Johnston, who advised
(in Scotland) the determination of a farm purchase
by the character of the subjacent and adjoining
rocks, would have been at fault upon my hillside. A
short way back, amid the woods, he would have
found a huge ridge of intractable serpentine ; the
boulders he would have discovered to be of most
various quality; and if he had dipped his spade,
aided by a pick, he would have found a yellow, fer-
ruginous conglomerate, which the rains convert into

CROPS AND PROFITS. 115

a mud that is all aflow, and which the suns bake into
a surface, that with the sharpest of mattocks would
start a flood of perspiration, before he had combed a
square yard of it into a state of garden pulverization.

Lying above this, however, was a vegetable
mould, with a shiny silicious intermixture (what pre-
cise people would call a sandy loam), well knitted
together by a compact mass of the roots of myrtles,
of huckleberry bushes, and of ferns. Geologically,
the hill was a ' drift ; ' agriculturally, considering the
steep slopes and the matted roots, it was uninviting ;
pictorially, it was rounded into the most graceful of
cumulated swells, and all glowing with its wild ver-
dure ; practically, it was a coarse bit of neglected
cow-pasture, with the fences down, and the bushes
rampant.

What could be done with this ? It is a query
that a great many landholders throughout New Eng-
land will have occasion some day to submit to them-
selves, if they have not done so already. Overfeed-
ing with starveling cows, and a lazy dash at the brush
in the idle days of August, will not transform such
hills into fields of agricultural wealth. Under such
regimen they grow thinner and thinner. The annual
excoriation of the brush above ground, seems only to
provoke a finer and firmer distribution of the roots
below; and the depasturing by cows — particularly

116 MY FARM.

of milch animals, folded or stalled at night — will
gradually and surely diminish the fertilizing capi-
tal of such grazing land. It is specially noticeable
that the deterioration under these conditions, is
much more marked upon hill lands than upon level
meadows.*

In the back country, such old pastures with their
brush and scattered stones, will feed sheep profit-
ably, and will grow better under the cropping.
But in the immediate neighborhood of towns, where
every barkeeper has his half dozen dogs, and every
Irish family their cur, and every vagabond his canine
associate, sheep can only be kept at a serious risk of
immolation for the benefit of these worthies. Proper
legislation might interpose a bar, indeed, to such
sacrifice of agricultural interests, — if legislation were
not so largely in the hands of dog-fanciers.

The sheep are not the only sufferers.

Shall the hill be ploughed ? It is not an easy
task to lay a good furrow along a slope of forty-five
degrees, with its seams of old wintry torrents, its
occasional boulders, and its matted myrtle roots ;
and, if fairly accomplished, the winter's rains may
drive new seams from top to bottom, carrying the
light mould far down under walls, and into useless

* This is perhaps more apparent than real, from the fact that
upon level lands the droppings are more evenly distributed.

CROPS AND PROFITS. 117

places, — leaving harsh yellow scars, that will defy
the mellowest June sunshine.

A city friend, with city aptitude, suggests — ter-
races ; and instances the pretty ones overhung with
vines, which the traveller may see along the banks
of the Rhine.

I answer kindly ; and in the same vein — suggest
that such scattered rocks, as are not needed,
may be thrown into the shape of an old watch
tower — with Bishop Hatto's for a model — to mimic
the Rhine ruins.

" Charming ! and when the grapes are ripe,

drop me a line." And my city friend plucks a bit of
penny-royal, and nips it complacently.

Terracing might be done in a rude but substantial
way, at the cost of about fifteen hundred dollars the
acre. This might do at Johannisberg ; but hardly, in
a large way, in Connecticut. Crops must needs be
exceeding large upon such terraces, to compete suc-
cessfully with those of a thriving ' forehanded ' man,
who farms upon a land capital of less than a hundred
dollars to the acre.

I abandoned the design of terraces. And yet,
there are times when I regale myself for hours
together, with the pleasant fancy of my city friend.
His terraces should be well lichened over now ; and
I seem to see brimming on the successive shelves

118 MY FARM.

of the hill, great festoons cf vines, spotted with
purple clusters ; amidst the foliage, there gleams,
here and there, the broad hat of some vineyard
dresser (as in German pictures), and crimson kirtles
come and go, and songs flash into the summer still-
ness, and a soft purple haze wraps the scene, and
thickens in the hollows of the land, and swims
fathoms deep around the ruin

" Square, what d'ye ask apiece for them suck-
ers ? "

It is my neighbor, who has clambered up, holding
by the myrtle bushes, to buy a pig.

The vexed question of the proper dressing
and tillage of the hillside, is still in reserve. I
resolved it in this wise : — Of the rocks most con-
venient, and least available for fencing purposes,
I constructed an easy roadway, leading by grad-
ual inclination from top to bottom ; other stones
were laid up in a substantial wall, which sup-
plies the place of a staggering and weakly fence,
which every strong northwester prostrated ; still
others, of a size too small for any such purpose, were
buried in drains, which diverted the standing moist-
ure from one or two sedgy basins on the hill, and
discharged the flow upon the crown of a gravelly
slope. There, I have now the pleasure of seeing a
most luxuriant growth of white clover and red top.

CROPS AND PROFITS. 119

fertilized wholly by the flow of water which was only
harmful in its old locality. I next ordered, in the
leisurely time of later autumn, the grubbing up of
the patches of myrtles and briers, root and branch ;
these with the mossy turf that cumbered them, after
thorough drying, were set on fire, and burned slum-
berously, with a little careful watching and tending,
for weeks together. I was thus in possession of a
comparatively smooth surface, not so far disinte-
grated as to be subject to damaging washes of storm,
besides having a large stock of fertilizing material in
the shape of ashes.

In the following spring, these were carefully
spread; a generous supply of hay-seed sown, and still
further, an ample dressing of phosphatic guano. The
hillside was then thoroughly combed with a fine-
toothed Scotch harrow, and the result has been a
compact lively sod, and a richer bite for the cattle.

Again, upon one or two salient points of the hill,
where there were stubborn rocks which forbade
removal, I have set little coppices of native ever-
greens, which, without detracting in any appreciable
degree from the grazing surface, will, as they grow,
have charming effect, and offer such modicum of
shade as all exposed pasture lands need. One who
looked only to simple farm results, would certainly
never have planted the little coppices, or hedged

120 MY FARM

them, as I have done, against injury. But it appears
to me that judicious management of land in the
neighborhood of large towns, should not ignore
wholly, the conservation of those picturesque effects,
which at no very remote time, may come to have a
marketable value, greater even than the productive
capacity of the soil.

I have even had the hardihood to leave upon cer-
tain particularly intractable spots of the hill land,
groups of myrtles, briers, scrubby oaks, wild grapes,
and birches, to tangle themselves together as they
will, in a wanton savagery of growth. Such a
copse makes a round perch or two of wilderness
about the sprawling wreck of an old cellar and
chimney, which have traditional smack of former
Indian occupancy ; and the site gives color to
the tradition; — for you look from it southeasterly
over three square miles of wavy meadows, through
which a river gleams ; and over bays that make good
fishing ground, and over a ten-mile reach of shim-
mering sea. A little never-failing spring bubbles up
a few yards away ; and to the westward and north-
ward, the land piles in easy slope, making sunny shel-
ter, where, — first on all the hillside, — the snow van-
ishes in Spring. The Indian people had a quick eye
for such advantages of position.

In still further confirmation, I have turned up an

CROPS AND PROFITS. 121

arrow-head or two in the neighborhood, chipped
from white quartz, and as keen and sharp as on the
* day they were wrought.

I am aware that what are called ' tidy farmers '
would have brushed away these outlying copses, no
matter what roughnesses they concealed ; but I sus-
pect their rude autumn clippings with a bush-hook,
would only have provoked a spread of the rootlets ;
and if effectual, would have given them only a bit
of barrenness.

Up-country farmers are overtaken from time to
time, with what I may call a spasmodic tidiness,
which provokes a general onslaught with bill-hooks
and castaway scythes, upon hedge rows and wayside
bushes, and pasture thickets, — without considering
that these thickets may conceal idle stone heaps or
decrepid walls, which are as sightless as the extermi-
nated bush ; and their foray leaves a vigorous crop
of harsh stubs, which, with the next season, shoot up
with more luxuriance than ever, and leave no more
available land within the farmer's grasp than before.
Wherever it is profitable to remove such wild growth,
it is profitable to exterminate it root and branch.
Half doing the matter is of less worth than not doing
it at all. But it is well to consider before entering
upon such a campaign, if the end will justify the la-
bor ; and if the recovered strips of land will carry re-
6

122 MY FARM.

munerative crops. If otherwise, let the wild growth
enjoy its wantonness. It may come to be a little
scattered range of wood in time, and so have its
value ; it may offer shelter against the sweep of
winds ; it will give a nursing place for the birds, — and
the birds are the farmer's friends.

I am loth to believe that the natural graces of
woodland and shrubbery are incompatible with agri-
cultural interests ; and a true farm economy seems to
me better directed in making more thorough the
tillage of the open lands, than in making Quixotic
foray upon the bushy fastnesses of outlying pastures.

When a dense population shall have rendered ne-
cessary the employment of every foot of our area for
food-growing purposes, it may be incumbent on us to
cleave all the rocks, and to clear away all the copses :
but until then, I shall love to treat with a tender con-
sideration the green mantle — albeit of brambles and
wild vines — with which Nature covers her rough-
nesses ; and I seem to see in the streaming tendrils,
and in the nodding tassels of bloom which bind and
tuft these wild thickets of the hills, a sampler of
vegetable luxuriance, which every summer's day
provokes and defies all our rivalry of the fields.

What is called tidiness, is by no means always
taste ; and I am slow to believe that farm economy
must be at eternal war with grace. I know well that

CROPS Ab£ PROFITS. 123

no inveterate improver should ever tempt me tc
extirpate the dandelions from the green carpet ol
my lawn, or to cut away the wild Kalmia bush
which in yonder group among the rocks, is just now
reddening into its crown of blossoms.

The Farm Flat.

IT is a different matter with the eighty acres of
meadow which lie stretched out in view from
my door. There, at least, it seemed to me, must be
a clean, clear sweep for the furrows. Yet I remem-
ber there were long wavy lines of elder-bushes, and
wild-cherries, groping beside the disorderly divid-
ing fences. There were weakly old apple-trees, with
blackened, dead tops, and with trunks half concealed
by thickets of dwarfish shoots ; there were triplets
of lithe elms, and hickory trees, scattered here
and there; — in some fields, stunted, draggled cedar
bushes, and masses of yellow- weed ; — a little patch of
ploughed-land in the corner of one enclosure, and a
waving half acre of rye in the middle of the next.
The fences themselves were disjointed and twisted,
— the fields without uniformity in size, and with no
order in their arrangement.

" I think we must mend the look of these mead-
ows, Coombs ? "

124 MY FARM.

And the dapper Somersetshire man, with his hat
defiantly on one side — " Please God, and I think we
will, sir."

I must do him the justice to say that he was
as good as his word. In looking over the scene
now, I find no straggling cedars, no scattered shoots
of elms ; the wayward elders, and the wild-cherries
save one protecting and orderly hedgerow along the
northern border of the farm — are gone. The de-
crepid apple-trees are rooted up, or combed and
pruned into more promising shape. Ten-acre fields,
trim and true, are distributed over the meadow land,
and each, for the most part, has its single engrossing
crop.

As I look out from my library window to-day —
and the learned reader may guess the month from
my description — I see one field reddened with the
lusty bloom of clover, which stands trembling in
its ranks, and which I greatly fear will be doubled
on its knees with the first rain storm ; another shows
the yellowish waving green of full-grown rye, sway-
ing and dimpling, and drifting as the idle winds
will ; another is half in barley and half in oats — a
bristling green beard upon the first, the oats just
flinging out their fleecy, feathery tufts of blossom ;
upon another field, are deep dark lines beneath
which, in September, there are fair hopes of harvest-

CROPS AND PROFITS. 125

ing a thousand bushels of potatoes ; yet another,
shows fine lines of growing corn, and a brown area,
where a closer look would reveal the delicate growth
of fresh-starting carrots and mangel. All the rest
in waving grass ; not so clean as could be wished,
for I see tawny stains of blossoming sorrel, and fields
whitened like a sheet, with daisies.

If there be any cure for daisies, short of a clean
fallow every second yeai", I do not know it ; at least,
not in a region where your good neighbors allow
them to mature seed every year, and stock your fields
with every strong wind, afresh.

Heavy topdressing is recommended for their
eradication, but it is not effective ; so far as I can
see, the interlopers, if once established, enjoy heavy
feeding. A rye crop is by many counted an exter-
minator of this pest ; but it will find firm footing
after rye. Thorough and clean tillage, with a sys-
tem of rotation, afford the only security.

It is not Burns' " wee-tipped " daisy that is to be
dealt with ; it is a sturdier plant — our ox-eye daisy
of the fields ; there is no modesty in its flaunting air,
and the bold uplift of its white and yellow face.

I never thought there was a beauty in it, until, on
a day — years ago — after a twelvemonth's wandering
over the fields of the Continent, I came upon a little
pot of it, under the wing of the Madeleine, on the

126 MY FARM.

streets of Paris. It was a dwarfish specimen, arid
the nodding blossoms (only a pair of them) gave a
modest dip over the edge of the red crock, as if they
felt themselves in a country of strangers. But it
was the true daisy for all this, and I greeted it with
a welcoming franc of purchase money, and carried it
to my rooms, and established it upon my balcony,
where, while the flower lasted, I made a new Pic-
ciola of it. And as I watered it, and watched its
green buttons of buds unfolding the white leaflets,
wide visions of rough New England grasslands
came pouring with the sunshine into the Paris win-
dow, and with them, — the drowsy song of locusts, —
the gushing melody of Bob-o'-Lincolns, — until the
drum-beat at the opposite Caserne drowned it, and
broke the dream.

These living and growing souvenirs of far-away
places, carry a wealth of interest and of suggestion
about them, which no merely inanimate object can
do. I have flowers fairly pressed, not having wholly
lost their color, which I plucked from the walls of
Rome, and others from a house-court of the buried
Pompeii ; but they are as dead as the guide books
that describe the places.

It is different wholly with a little potted Ivy
which a friend has sent from the walls of Kenil-
worth. It clambers over a rustic frame within the

CROPS AND PROFITS. 127

window — a tiny, but a real offshoot of that great
mass of vegetable life which is flaunting over the
British ruin ; a little live bubble as it were, from tuat
stock of vitality which is searching all the crannies of
the masonry that belongs to the days of Elizabeth.

I never look at it in times of idle musing, but its
shiny leaflets seem to carry me to th*e gray wreck of
castle : and the tramp through the meadows from
Leamington comes back — the wet grass, the gray
walls, the broad-hatted English girls, hovering with
gleeful laughter about the ruin, and the flitch of
bacon hanging in the gatekeeper's house. Other-
times, the dainty tendrils of the vine lead me still
farther back ; and Leicester, Amy Robsart, Essex,
and Queen Bess with her followers, and all her
court, — come trooping to my eye in the trail of this
poor little exiled creeper from Kenil worth.

But this is not farming.

" Coombs," said I, " what shall we plant upon
the flat ? " — not that I had no opinion on the subject,
but because in farming, there is a value in the sug-
gestions of every practical worker.

The Somersetshire man leans his head a little, as
if considering : — " We must have some artificial, sir,
— for the cows— Mangel or pale Belgians, — both
good, sir ; some oats for the 'osses, sir ; potatoes, sir.
is a tidy crop — "

128 MY FARM.

I observe that Englishmen and Scotchmen are
disposed to slight our standard crop of maize. They
do not understand it. They fail of making a cred-
itable show in comparison with the old-school native
farmers, who, by dint of long experience, have
acquired the habit (rather habit than capacity) of
making a moderate crop of corn with the least pos-
sible amount of tillage and of skill. To turn over a
firm grass sward, and plant directly upon the in-
verted turf, without harrowing, or ridging, or drill-
ing, is contrary to all the old-country traditions.

And yet the fact is notorious, that some of the
best corn crops (I do not speak now of exceptional
and premium crops), are grown in precisely this
primitive way ; given a good sod, and a good top-
dressing turned under — with, perhaps, a little dash of
superphosphate upon the hills to quicken germina-
tion, and give vigorous start, — and the New England
farmer, if he give clean and thorough culture —
which, under such circumstances, involves little labor
— can count upon his forty or fifty bushels of sound
corn to the acre. And the Scotchman or Englishman
may tear the sod, or ridge the field, or drill it, or
torment it as he will, before planting, and the
chances are, he will reap, with the same amoiint of
fertilizers, a smaller harvest. And it is precisely this

CROPS AND PROFITS. 129

undervaluation of his traditional mode of labor, that
makes him show a distaste for the crop.

Corn is a rank grower, and, very largely, a sur-
face feeder; for these reasons, it accommodates
itself better than most farm crops, to an awkward
and careless husbandry — provided only, abundance
of gross fertilizers are present, and comparative
cleanliness secured. It is not a crop which I should
count a valuable assistant in bringing the sandy loam
of a neglected farm into a condition of prime fer-
tility. It has so rank an appetite for the inorganic
riches of a soil, as to forbid any accumulation of that
valuable capital. Nor do I clearly perceive how, in
the neighborhood of large towns, and upon light soils,
it can be made a profitable crop at the East. It has
a traditional sanctity, to be sure ; and a great many
pleasant old gentlemen of New England, who count
themselves shrewd farmers, would as soon think of
abandoning their heavy ox-carts, or of adopting a
long-handled shovel, as of abandoning their yearly
growth of corn.

I think I have given the matter a fair test, not-
withstanding the objections of my Somersetshire
friend, and have added to my own experience, very
much observation of my neighbors' practice. And I
am very confident that if only a fair valuation be
placed upon the labor and manures required, that any
6*

130 MY FARM.

average corn crop grown upon light soils at the East,
will cost the producer four years out of five, ten per
cent, more than the market price of the Western
grain. In this estimate, I make due allowance for
the value of the stalks and blades for forage.

I shall enter into no array of figures for the sake
of proving this point ; figures can be made to prove,
or seem to prove so many things. And however
clearly the fact might be demonstrated, there are
two classes at least, upon whom the demonstration
would have no effect; the first being those over-
shrewd old men, who keep unflinchingly to their
accustomed ways, counting their own labor for little
or nothing (in which they are not far wrong) ; and
the other class consisting of those retired gentlemen
who bring so keen a relish for farming to their work,
that they rather enjoy producing a crop at a cost of
twice its market value. I heartily wish I were able
to participate in such pleasant triumphs.

But if the economy of maize growing for the
grain product be questionable, there can be no ques-
tion whatever of cultivating the crop as a forage
plant, for green cutting, and for soiling purposes.
In no way can a full supply of succulent food be fur-
nished more cheaply for a hei'd of cows, during the
heats of August and September. For this object, I
have found the best results in drilling eighteen

CROPS AND PROFITS. 131

inches apart, upon inverted sod, thoroughly manured ;
to insure successive supplies, the sowing should be
repeated at intervals of a month, from the twentieth
of April to the twentieth of July. A later sow-
ing than this last, will expose the blades to early
frosts.

The amount of green food which can be cut from
an acre of well-grown corn is immense ; but let no
one hope for successful results, without a most
ample supply of manure, and clean land. The prac-
tice has fallen into disfavor with many, from the
fact that they have given all their best fertilizers to
other crops, and then made the experiment of grow-
ing corn-fodder with a flimsy dressing, and no care.
They deserved to fail. It is to be observed more-
over, that as the crop matures no seed, it makes
little drain upon the mineral wealth of the land, and
can be followed by any of the cereals. This suggests
a simple and short rotation: First, corn — grown for its
blades and stalks only (the first cuttings being suc-
ceeded by turnips) : Second, carrots, Mangel, or pota-
toes : Third, oats or other cereal : and Fourth, clover
with grass seeds, to be mown so long as the interests
of the dairy or the land may demand.

A professed grain-grower, or an English farmer,
would smile at such an unstudied rotation ; but I
name it in all confidence, as one adapted to dairy

132 MY FARM,

purposes, upon lands which need recuperation. It is,
in fact, a succession of two fallow crops, and with
proper culture and dressings, will insure accumulat-
ing fertility.

Such a simple course of green cropping is, more-
over, admirably adapted to the system of soiling,
which, upon all light and smooth lands, adapted to
dairy purposes, in the neighborhood of towns, must
sooner or later become the prevailing method ; and this,
— because it is economic, — because it is sure, and be-
cause it supplies fourfold more of enriching material
than belongs to any other system. I am not writing
a didactic book, or offering any challenge to the
agricultural critics (who, I am afraid, are as full of
their little jealousies as the literary critics), — else I
would devote a full chapter to this theory of soiling,
and press strongly what I believe to be its advan-
tages.

The reader is spared this ; but he must pardon
me a little fanciful illustration of the subject, in
which I have sometimes indulged, and which may,
possibly, at a future day, become real.

An Illustration of Soiling.

FROM the eighty-acre flat below — so like a car-
pet, with its checkered growth — I order every
line of division fence to be removed ; the best of the

CROPS AND PROFITS 133

material being kept in reserve for making good the
border fences, and the remainder cut, split, and piled
for the fire. The neighbors, who cling to the old
system of two-acre lots, and pinched door-yards,
open their eyes and mouths very widely at this.
The novelty, like all novelties in a quiet country
region, is at once astounding and oppressive. As if
the parish parson were suddenly to come out in the
red stockings of a cardinal, or a sober-sided select-
man to appear on the highway without some import-
ant article of his dress.

I fancy two or three astute old gentlemen lean-
ing over the border fence, as the work of demolition
goes on.

" The Squire ' s makin' this ere farm irfer a pa-
rade-ground, a'n't he ? " says one ; and there is a
little, withering, sarcastic laugh of approval.

Presently, another is charged with a reflection
which he submits in this shape : " Ef a crittur breaks
loose in sich a rannge as that, I raether guess he'll
have a time on't." And there is another chirrupy
laugh, and significant noddings are passed back and
forth between the astute old gentlemen — as if they
were mandarin images, and nodded by reason of the
gravity of some concealed dead weight — (as indeed
they do).

A third suggests that " there woant be no great

134 MY FARM.

expense for diggin' o' post holes," which remark in
so obviously sound, that it is passed by in silence.

The clearance, however, goes forward swim-
mingly. The new breadth which seems given to the
land as the dwarfish fields disappear one after
another, develops a beauty of its own. The Yellow-
weeds, and withered wild-grasses, which had clung
under the shelter of the fences, even with the best
care, are all shorn away. The tortuous and irregu-
lar lines which the frosts had given to the reeling
platoons of rails, perplex the eye no more.

Near to the centre of these opened fields is a
great feeding-shed, one hundred feet by forty, its
ridge high, and the roof sloping away in swift pitch
on either side to lines of posts, rising eight feet only
from the ground. The gables are covered in with
rough material, in such shape as to leave three sim-
ple open arches at either end ; the middle opening, —
high and broad, so that loaded teams may pass
beneath ; the two flanking arches, — lower, and open-
ing upon two ranges of stalls which sweep down on
either side the building. These stalls are so dis-
posed that the cattle are fed directly from cartb
passing around the exterior. Behind either range of
cattle is a walk five feet broad ; and between these
walks, — an open space sixteen feet wide, traversing
the whole length of the building, and serving at once

fiROPS AND PROFITS. 135

as manure pit, and gangway for the teams which
deposit from time to time their contributions of
muck and turf. Midway of this central area is a
covered cistern, from which, as occasion demands,
the drainage of the stalls may be pumped up to
drench the accumulating stock of fertilizing material.

This simple building, which serves as the summer
quarters of the dairy, is picturesque in its outline ;
for I know no reason why economy should abjure
grace, or why farm construction should be uncouth
or tawdry.

A small pasture-close, with strong fencing —
with gates that will not swag, and with abundance
of running water, supplied from the hills, serves as
an exercising ground for the cows for two hours
each day. Othertimes, throughout the growing sea-
son, they belong in the open and airy stalls. The
crops which are to feed them, are pushing luxuri-
antly within a stone's throw of their quarters. An
active man with a sharp scythe, a light horse-cart
and Canadian pony, will look after the feeding of a
herd of fifty, with time to spare for milking and stall
cleaning.

From the tenth of May to the first of June, per-
haps nothing will contribute so much to a full flow
of milk, as the fresh-springing grass upon some out-
lying pasture on the hills. After this, the cows may

136 MY FARM.

take up their regular summer quarters in the build
ing I have roughly indicated. From the first to the
tenth of June, there may be heavy cuttings of winter
rye ; from the tenth of June to the twentieth, the
lucerne (than which no better soiling crop can be
found) is in full season ; after the twentieth, clover
and orchard grass are in their best condition, and
retain their succulence up to the first week in July,
when, in ordinary seasons, the main reliance — maize
which was sown in mid- April, is fit for the scythe.
Succeeding crops of this, keep the mangers of the
cows full, up to an early week in October. After-
ward may come cuttings of late-sown barley, or the
leaves of the Mangel, or carrot-tops, with which, as
a bonne bouche, tfie cattle are withdrawn to their
winter quarters, for their dietary of cut-feed, oil-cake,
occasional bran and roots.

They leave behind them in their summer banquet-
ing house, a little Rhigi of fertilizing material — not
exposed to storms, neither too dry nor too moist, and
of an unctuous fatness, which will make sundry sur-
rounding fields, in the next season, carry a heavier
burden than ever of purple Mangel, or of shining
maize-leaves.

I perceive, too, very clearly, in furtherance of the
illustration, that one acre will produce as much nu-
tritive food, under this system, as four acres under

CROPS AND PROFITS. 137

tbe old plan of waste — by poaching — and by expos<
ure of all manurial material to the fierce beat of the
sun, and to the washings of rain storms. I perceive
that the land, as well as cattle, are all fairly in hand,
and better under control. If at any time the season,
or the market, should indicate a demand for some
special crop, I am not disturbed by any apprehension
that this or that enclosure may be needed for graz-
ing, and so, bar the use. I perceive that a well-regu-
lated system must govern all the farm labor, and
that there will be no place for that looseness of
method, and carelessness about times and details,
which is invited by the old way of turning cattle
abroad to shirk for themselves.

N"o timid team will be thrashed, in order to wipe
the fence posts with the clattering whiffletree, at the
last bout around the headlands. There will be no
worrying of the Buckeye in old and weedy corners ;
not a reed or a Golden-rod can wave anywhere in
triumph. The eye sweeps over one stretch of luxu-
riant field, where no foot of soil is wasted. The
crops, in long even lines, are marked only by the
successive stages of their growth, and by their color-
ing. There are no crooked rows, no gores, no gath-
erings.

If the reader has ever chanced to sail upon a
Bummer's day up the river Seine, he will surely re-

138 MY FARM.

member the beautiful checker-work of crops, wliich
shine, in lustrous green, on either bank beyond the
old Norman city of Rouen. Before yet the quaint
and gorgeous towers of the town have gone down in
the distance, these newer beauties of the cleanly cul-
tivated shore-land challenge his wonder and admira-
tion. I name the scene now, because it shows a cul-
tivation without enclosures ; nothing but a traditional
line — which some aged poplar, or scar on the chalk
cliff marks, — between adjoining proprietors ; a belt
of wheat is fringed with long-bearded barley ; and
next, the plume-like tufts of the French trefoil,
make a glowing band of crimson. A sturdy peas-
ant woman, in wooden sabots, is gathering up a
bundle of the trefoil to carry to her pet cow, under
the lee of the stone cottage that nestles by the river's
bank.

And I indulge my fancy with the idea of some
weazen-faced New England farmer looking down
upon all this from some shattered loop-hole of the
wrecked chateau Gaillard, and saying — " Gosh, ef a
crittur were to break loose, I guess they'd have a
time on't."

There are some things we New England farmers
have not learned yet.

CROPS AND PROFITS. 139

An Old Orchard.

A CERTAIN" proportion of mossy, ragged orch-
JIjL. arding belongs to almost every New Eng-
land farm. My own, in this respect, was no exception ;
if exceptional at all, the exception lay in the fact
that its orcharding was less ragged and mossy than
most ; the trees were also, many of them, grafted
with sorts approved twenty years ago. Eight acres
of a somewhat gravelly declivity, were devoted to
this growth, of which four were in apple trees, two
in cherries, and two in pears. Intervals of two acres
each, on either side the cherries, of unoccupied land,
were in the old time planted respectively with plums
and peaches. Of these, only a few ragged stumps,
or fitful and black-knotted shoots, remained. Their
life as well as their fruitfulness had gone by ; and I
only knew of them through the plaintive laments of
many an old-time visitor, who tantalized me with his
tales of the rare abundance of luscious stone-fruits,
which once swept down the hillside.

The whole enclosure of twelve acres had relapsed
into a wild condition. The turf was promiscuously
an array of tussocks of wild-grass, dwarfed daisies,
struggling sorrel, with here and there a mullein
lifting its yellow head, and domineering over the
lesser wild growth. Occasional clumps of hickory.

f ^

140 MY FARM.

or of wild-cherry, had shot up, and exhibited a
succulence and vigor which did not belong to the
cultivated trees.

And now I am going to describe fully — keeping
nothing back — the manner in which I dealt with this
wilderness of orchard. It was not in many respects
the best way ; but the record of errors in so experi-
mental a matter, often carries as good a lesson as the
record of successes. This is as true in state-craft as
with old orcharding.

First, I extirpated every tree which was not a
fruit tree — with the exception of one lordly sugar
maple at the foot of the declivity, and standing
within one of the unoccupied belts. Its stately,
compact head, shading a full half acre of ground,
still crowns the view. I am aware that it is an agri-
cultural enormity. The mowers complain that the
broken limbs, torn down by ice storms, are a pest ;
the tenant complains of its deep shade ; one or two
neighboring sawyers have made enticing proposi-
tions for its stalwart bole, yet I cannot forego my
respect for its united age and grace.

"With this exception, I made full clearance, and
turned under, by careful ploughing, all the wild sod.
I dressed the whole field heavily with such fertilizers
as could be brought together, from home resources
and from town stables, with certain addenda of lime

CROPS AND PROFITS. 141

and phosphates. I removed all trees in a dying con-
dition, of which there were at least twenty per cent,
of the gross number ; I pruned away all dead limbs,
all interlacing boughs, and swamps of shoots from
the roots. The mosses, cocoons, and scales of old
bark were carefully scraped from the trunks and
larger limbs, which were then washed thoroughly
with a strong solution of potash. Even at this stage
of the proceedings, I felt almost repaid by the air of
neatness and cleanliness which the old orchard Avore ;
and I am sorry to say that in regard to very many
of the trees, it was all the repayment I have ever
received.

Among the apple trees was a large number of
that old favorite, the Newtown pippin ; and these,
I am sorry to say, were the most mossy and dilapi-
dated of all ; nor did they improve. No scrapings
or prunings tempted them to any luxuriance of
growth. One by one they have been cut away, until
now only two remain. The nurserymen tell us that
the tree is not adapted to the soil and climate of
New England. I can confirm their testimony with
unction.

There was, also, a stalwart company of trees
bearing that delightful little dessert fruit — the Lady
apple. And I think my pains added somewhat to
their thrift ; they are sturdy, and full of leaves every

142 MY FARM.

summer ; and every May, in its latter days, sees
them a great pyramid of blooming and blushing
white. But after the bloom, the beauty is never
fully restored. There is fruit indeed, but small,
pinched, pierced with curculio stings, bored through
and through with the worm of the apple-moth ; and
over and above all, every apple is patched with a
mouldy blight which forbids full growth, and gives
it, with its brilliant red cheek, a falsified promise of
excellence. I have found in the books no illustration
of this peculiar distemper which attacks the Lady
apple ; but in my orchard, in the month of Novem-
ber, the illustrations abound.

The Esopus Spitzenberg, that red, spicy bit of
apple-flesh, had its representatives among the old
trees which came under my care ; I may give it the
credit of showing grateful cognizance of the labor
bestowed. The trees thrived ; they are thrifty now ;
the bloom is like that of a gigantic, out-spread
Weigelia. The fruit too (such as the curculio
spares), is full and round ; but there is not a speci-
men of it which is not bored through by the inevit-
able grub of the apple-moth.

Besides the varieties I have particularized, there
were the Tallman and Pound Sweetings sparsely
represented ; and the Rhode Island Greening, which,
I will fairly admit, has made a better struggle

CROPS AND PROFITS. 143

against adverse influences, than any winter fruit I
have named. So fair a struggle, indeed, that if I
could only forego the visitations of the curculio and
of the moth, I might hope for an old-time fulness of
crop. The Strawberry apple, by reason, I think, of
its early maturity (and the same is true of the Red
Astrachan), has shown a more kindly recognition of
care than the later fruits. The moth, if it attacks,
does not destroy it. I count upon its brilliant color'
ing, and its piquant acidity in the first days of
August, as surely as I count upon the rains which
follow the in-gathering of the hay. There remained
a few trees of various old-fashioned sorts, such as the
Fall-Pippin, the Pearmain, the Cheseborough Rus-
set, and the black Gilliflower, which have shown
little thrift, and borne no fruit of which a modest
man would be inclined to boast.

In short, there appeared so little promise of
eminent results, that after two or three years I gave
over all special culture of the majority of the trees,
and devoting the land to grass, left them to struggle
against the new sod as they best could. Fruit
growers and nursery men will object that the trial
was not complete ; and they will, with good reason,
aver that no fruit trees can make successful struggle
against firmly rooted grass. From all tilled crops,
within whose lines there are spaces of the brown

144 MY FARM.

soil subject to the dews and atmospheric influences,
trees will steal the nourishment ; but grass, with its
serried spear-blades covering the ground, steals from
the tree. An open fallow with crops in the inter-
vals, would certainly, if sustained for a period of
years, have contributed far greater thrift than the
trees now possess. But an open fallow is no protec-
tion against the curculio and the apple moth. If
there be a protection so simple, and of such propor-
tions as to admit of its application to a marketable
crop, I am not yet informed of it. A few worthy
old gentlemen of my acquaintance, catch a few mil-
lers in a deep-necked bottle, baited with molasses,
which is hung from the limbs of some favorite tree
overshadowing their pig-pen ; and they point with
pride to the results. I certainly admire their suc-
cesses, but have not been tempted to emulate them,
on the extended scale which the mossy orchard
would have afforded.

Some persistent amateurs and pains-taking gentle-
men do, I know, succeed in making the young fruit
of a few favorite plum trees distasteful to the cur-
culio, by repeated ejections of a foul mixture of
tobacco and whale-oil soap, — by which the tree has
a weekly bath, and an odor of uncleanness. But in
view of a large orchard, where apples make a leafy
pyramid measured by cubic yards, and cherries carry

CROPS AND PROFIT. 145

their fine fruit sixty feet in the air, there would be
needed a projectile of dirty water that would rival
Alderman Mechi's, of Tip-tree Hall.

It is far easier to accomplish successful results
with an old orchard of native, wild growth, than
with one of grafted fruit ; — even as the Doctors find
that a reprobate who has fallen away from grace and
early good conduct, is a worse subject for reforma-
tion, than an unkempt savage. •

The grafted tree wants an abounding luxuriance
of material, from which to elaborate its exceeding
size and flavor ; and if by neglect, this material be
wanting, the organs of its wonderful living labora-
tory shrink — from inaction, and part with a share of
their vitality. The native tree, on the other hand,
having no special call upon it for the elaboration of
daintier juices than go to supply a cider vat, has
steady normal development under all its mosses, and
retains a stock of reserved vitality, which, if you
humor with good tillage and dressings, and point
with good grafts, will carry a good tale to the apple
bin.

On the very orchard I have named, were some
two or three uncouth, lumbering, unpromising trees,
yet sound as a nut to their outermost twigs, which
the simple dressings, tillage, and washings that were
bestowed somewhat vainly upon the others, quick-
7

140 MY FARM.

ened into a marvellous luxuriance ; and the few
shoots I set upon them are now supplying the best
fruit of the orchard. Even these, however, are not
free from the pestilent stings which the swarms of
winged visitors inflict upon every crop.

It is very questionable if ploughing is, upon the
whole, the best way of reinstating a neglected and
barren orchard. It is a harsh method ; trees strug-
gling to keep up a good appearance under adverse
circumstances — like men — use every imaginable shift ;
their little spongiole feeders go off on wide search ;
they are multiplied by the diversity of labor ; and
the plough cuts into them cruelly, making crude
butcher work where the nicest surgery is demanded.
I am inclined to believe that a deep trench, sunk
around each tree, at the distance of from eight to ten
feet from the trunk, and filled with good lime com-
post, is the surest way of redeeming a neglected
orchard. Even then, however, the turf should be
carefully removed within the enclosed circle, that the

»

air and its influences may have penetrative power
upon the soil. The method is Baconian (fodiendo et
aperiendo terram circa radices ipsarwri) ; it is
thorough, but it is expensive ; and a farmer must
consider well — if his trees, soil, market, and the
populousness of the insect world will warrant it.
For my own part, so far as regards a market crop

CROPS AND PROFITS. 147

of winter fruit, I have decided very thoroughly in
the negative. Not that it cannot be grown with
sufficient care ; but that it can be grown far more
cheaply, and of a better quality, in other regions.
Summer fruit is not so long exposed to the depreda-
tions of insects, nor will it bear distant transporta-
tion. Its freshness too, gives it a virtue, and a
relishy smack, which warrant special pains-taking.

I find in an old book of Gervase Markham's,
" The Countrie Farme " (based upon Liebault), that
the apple tree " loveth to have the inward part of his
wood moist and sweatie, so you must give him his
lodging in a fat, black, and moist ground ; and if it
be planted in a gravelly and sandie ground, it must
be helped with watering, and batling with dung and
Bmal moulde in the time of Autumne. It liveth and
continueth in all desirable good estate in the hills
and mountains where it may have fresh moisture,
being the thing that it searcheth after, but even
there it must stand in the open face of the South."

The ruling is good now, with the exception per-
haps of exposure to the South, in regions liable to
late spring frosts. And whatever may be the advan-
tages of soil and of position, let no man hope for
large commercial results in apple-growing at the
East, without reckoning upon as thorough and as-
siduous culture as he would give to his corn crop ; —

148 MY FARM.

as weU as a constant battle with the borers and bark
lice, — intermittent campaigns against the caterpillar
and canker worm, and a great June raid upon the
whole guerilla band of curculios.

The cherries, a venerable company of trees, have
borne the scrapings and dressings with great equa-
nimity,— being too old to be pushed into any wanton
luxuriance, and too sedate to show any great exhil-
aration from the ammoniacal salts. Pruning is not
much recommended in the books ; yet I have suc-
ceeded in restoring a good rounded head of fruit-
bearing wood by severe amputation of begummed
and black-stained limbs ; this is specially true of the
Black-hearts and Tartarians, — of many of which I
have made mere pollards.

It is a delicate fruit to be counted among farm
crops, and hands used to the plough are apt to
grapple it too harshly. Pliny says it should be eaten
fresh from the tree ; and it is as true of our best
varieties, as it was of the Julian cherry in the first
century. It will not tolerate long jogging in a coun-
try wagon ; it will not " keep over " for a market;
and between these drawbacks, and the birds — who
troop in flocks to the June feast, — and the boy
pickers — who take toll as they climb, — and the out-
standing twigs, which shake defiance to all ladders
and climbers — I think he is a fortunate man who

CROPS AND PROFITS. 149

can market from forty-year-old trees, one bushel in
three.

Of the positron for a cherry orchard, and of its
likings in the way of soil and climate, nothing better
can be said, than PaUadius wrote fourteen centuries
ago : " Cerasus amat cccli statum frigidum, solum
vero positionis humectce. In tepidis regionibus parva
vrovenit. Calidum non potest sustinere. Montana,
vel in colUbus constituta regione Icetatur" * — which
means that — cherries want a cool air and moist land.
Heat hurts them, and makes them small, and they
delight in a hilly country.

The Pears.

r|^H.K condition of the pears was far Averse than
_1_ that of either cherries or apples. Had they
been seedlings of the .native fruit, they would have
shown more stalwart size, and better promise from
good treatment. There was, I remember, a long
weakly row of the Madeleine, shrouded in lichens,
and with their lank, frail limbs all tipped with dead
wood. It is an enticing fruit, by reason of its early
ripening, and its pleasant sprightly flavor ; but its
persistent inclination to rot at the core, in most soils,
makes it a very unprofitable one. I forthwith cuj

* Lib. xi.. Tit. 12.

150 MY FARM.

away their dying, straggling tops, and by repeated
diggings about the roots, stimulated a growth of
new wood, upon which luxuriant grafts are now (six
years after commencement of operations) bearing
full crops of more approved varieties. The Jargo-
nelles were almost past cure. Long struggle with
neglect had nearly paralyzed their vegetative power ;
but by setting a few scions of such rank growers as
the Buffum upon the most promising of the purple
shoots, I have met with fair success. The Jargo-
nelle itself, I may remark in passing, seems to me
not fitly appreciated in the race after new French
varieties. It has a juiciness, a crispness, and a vinous
flavor, which, however scorned by the later pomolo-
gists, are exceedingly grateful on a hot August
day.

"There was a great rank of Virgouleuse (white
Doyenne) — pinched in their foliage, with bark
knotted like that of forest trees, and bearing only
cracked, meagre, woody fruit. For N"ew England it
is a lost variety. Happily, however, its boughs take
grafts with great kindliness ; and I have now the
pleasure of seeing fair full heads upon every one of
these out-lived stocks, of the Bartlett, Flemish
Beauty, Bonne de Jersey, and Lawrence. •

There were not a few Buffum trees in the ranks,
which were in a state of most extraordinary dilapi-

CROPS AND PROFITS. . 151

dation ; their trunks white with moss, their upright
shoots completely covered with a succession of
crooked, gnarled, mossy fruit spurs, that crinkled
under the scraper like dried "brambles ; the extremity
of eveiy upright bough was reduced to a shrivelled
point of blackened and sun-dried wood, and the fruit
so dwarfed as to puzzle the most astute of the po-
mologists.

I made a clean sweep of the old fruit spurs,
— docked the limbs, — scraped the bark to the quick,
— washed with an unctuous soapy mixture, — dug
about and enriched the roots, and in three years'
time, there were new leading shoots, all garnished
with fresh fruit spurs — which, in September fairly
broke away with the weight of the glowing pears.

The Seckels, of which there were several trees,
have not come so promptly ' to time.' The fer-
tilizers and the cleaning process, which have given
rampant vigor to the Buffums, have scarce lent to the
dwindled Seckels any appreciable increase of size or
of succulence. The same is true, in a less degree, of
certain old stocks, grafted some fifteen years ago
with Bonne de Jersey, and since left to struggle
with choking mosses, and wild sod.

It .is unnecessary to enumerate all the varieties
which I found stifling in my orchard, — from the
bright little Harvest pear to the crimson-cheeked

152 , MY FARM.

Bon-Chretien. Here and there I have religiously
guarded some old variety of Sugar-pear, or of Berga-
mot, — by reason of the pleasant associations of their
names, and by reason of an old fashioned regard
which I still entertain for their homeliness of flavor.
I sometimes have a visit from a pear-fancier, who
boasts of his fifty or hundred varieties, — who con-
founds me with his talk of a Beurre St. Nicholas, or
a Beurre of Waterloo, and a Doyenne Goubault, or a
Doyenne Robin ; I try to listen, as if I appreciated
his learning ; but I do not. My tastes are simple
in this direction; and I feel a blush of conscious
humility when he comes upon one of my old-time
trees, staggering under a load of fruit — which are
not in the books. It is very much as if a gentleman
of the Universities, full of his book lore, were to
stroll into my library, — talking of his Dibdins, and
Elzevirs, and Brunets ; — with what a blush I should
see his eye fall upon certain thumb-worn copies of
Tom Jones, or the Vicar of Wakefield, or Defoe !

Yet these gentlemen of the special knowledges
have their uses — the pear-mongers with the rest.
Not a season passes, but they discover and label for
us a host of worthless varieties. I only object to the
Bcornful way in which they ignore a great many
established favorites, which people will persist in
buying and eating. I remember that I once had the

CR3PS AND PROFITS. 153

hardihood, in a little group of pomological gentle-
men, to express a modest opinion in praise of the
flavor of the Bartlett pear.

The gentlemen did not deign a reply ; but I waa
looked upon very much as a greenhorn might be,
who at a political caucus should venture a word or
two, in favor of — honesty.

Quince stocks for pear trees have their advocates ;
and there has been a very pretty war between the
battlers for the standards, and the ^battlers for the
dwarfs. Having made trial of both, and considering
that most human opinions are fallible, I plant myself
upon neutral ground, and venture to affirm that each
mode of culture has its advantages. There are, for
instance, varieties of the pear, which, in certain
localities, will not thrive, or produce fair specimens,
without incorporation upon the quince stock. Such,
in my experience, are the Duchess d'Angouleme, and
the Vicar of Winkfield. The finest fruit of the Belle
Lucrative, and the Bonne de Jersey, I also invariably
take from dwarf growth.

The dwarf trees, however, demand very special,
and thorough culture ; if the season is dry, they
must be watered ; if the ground is baked, it must be
stirred. I look upon them as garden pets, which
must be fondled and humored ; and like other pets,
they are sure to be attacked by noxious diseases.
7*

154 MY FARM.

They take • the leaf-blight as easily as a child takes
the mumps ; they are capricious and uncertain- —
sometimes repaying you for your care well ; and
other times, dropping all their fruit in a green state,
iu the most petulant way imaginable. And worst of
all, after two or three years of devoted nursing,
without special cause, and with all their leaves
laughing on them, some group of two or three
together — suddenly die.

Early bearing, and brilliant specimens favor the
quince ; but hardiness, long life, and full crops favor
the pear upon its own roots. If a man plant the
latter, he must needs wait for the fruit. Mceris puts
it very prettily in the Eclogue : —

" Insere, Daphni, pyros : carpent tua poma nepotes."

But if a man with only a few perches of garden,
and with an aptitude for nursing, desires fruit the sec-
ond or third year after planting, let him by all means
— plant the dwarfs. Yet even then his success is un-
certain,— particularly if he indulges in the "latest
varieties." I am compelled to say that I have known
several cautious old gentlemen, who — with a garden
full of dwarf trees, — have been seen in the month of
September, to slip into a fruit shop at the edge of
evening, with suspicious-looking, limp panniers on
their arms. Nay, — I have myself met them returning

CROPS AND PROFITS. 155

from such furtive errand, with a basket laden from
the fruiterer's stock, carefully hidden under their
skirts ; and I have gone my way — (pretending not to
see it all), humming to myself,

car-pent tua poma nepotes !

Want of success in orcharding is more often
attributable to want of care, than to any other want
whatever. There are, indeed, particular belts of
land which seem to favor the apple, — where, with
only moderate cultivation, they are free from leaf
blight, — comparatively free from insect depredators,
and fruit with certainty. There are other regions,
— and these, so far as I have observed, warm soils
inclining to a sandy or gravelly loam, in which the
apple does not show vigor, except under extraor-
dinary attention, and in which the whole insect tribe
seems doubly pestiferous.

The pear is by no means so capricious ; it will
thrive in a heavy loam ; it will thrive in light sand ;
the borer does not attack its root ; the caterpillar
moth does not fasten its eggs (or very rarely) upon its
twigs ; the apple-moth spares a large proportion of
its fruit. But even the pear, without care and culti-
vation, will disappoint ; and the farmer who neglects
any crop, will find, sooner or later, that whatever is
worth planting, is worth planting well ; whatever is

Io6 MY FARM.

worth cultivating, is worth cultivating well ; and
that nothing is worth harvesting, that is not worth
harvesting with care.

My Garden.

I ENTER upon my garden by a little, crazy,
rustic wicket, over which a Virginia creeper has
tossed itself into* a careless tangle of festoons. The
entrance is overshadowed by a cherry-tree, which
must be nearly half a century old, and which, as it
filches easily very much of the fertilizing material
that is bestowed upon the garden, makes a weightier
'show of fruit than can be boasted by any of the
orchard company.

A broad walk leads down the middle of the gar
den, — bordered on either side by a range of stout
box, and interrupted midway of its length by a box-
edged circle, that is filled and crowned with one cone-
shaped N"or way-Spruce. These lines, and this circlet
of idle green, are its only ornamentation. Easterly
of the walk is a sudden terrace slope, stocked with
currants, raspberries, and all the lesser fruits, in a
maze of lines and curves. Westward is a level
open space, devoted to long parallel lines of garden
vegetables. The slope, by reason of its surface
and its crops, is subject only to fork-culture ; the

CROPS AND PROFITS. 157

western half, on the other hand, has the economy of
deep and thorough trench-ploughing, every autumn
and spring.

Nor is this an economy to be overlooked by a
farmer. Very many, without pretensions to that
nicety of culture which is supposed to belong to spade
husbandry alone, so overstock their gardens with
confused and intercepting lines of fruit shrubbery,
and perennial herbs, as to forbid any thorough action
of the plough. By the simple device, however, of
giving to the garden the shape of a long parallelo-
gram, and arranging its trees, shrubbery, and walks,
in lines parallel with its length, and by estab-
lishing easy modes of ingress and egress at either
end, the plough will prove a great economizer ; and
under careful handling, will leave as even a surface,
and as fine a tilth as follows the spade. I make this
suggestion in the interest of those farmers who are
compelled to measure narrowly tho cost of tillage,
and who cannot indulge in the amateur weakness of
wasted labor.

I have provided also a leafy protection for this
garden against the sweep of winds from the north-
west : northward, this protection consists of a wild
belt of tangled growth — sumacs, hickories, cedars,
wild-cherries, oaks — separated from the northern
walk of the garden, by a trim hedge-row of hemlock-

158 MY FARM.

spruce. This tangled belt is of a spontaneous
growth, and has shot up upon a strip of the neg-
lected pasture-land, from which, seven years since, I
trenched the area of the garden. Thus it is not only
a protection, but offers a pleasant contrast of what
the whole field might have been, with what the gar-
den now is. I must confess that I love these savage
waymarks of progressive tillage — as I love to meet
here and there, some stolid old-time thinker, whom
the rush of modern ideas has left in picturesque
isolation.

Time and again some enterprising gardener has
begged the privilege of uprooting this strip of wild-
ness, and trenching to the skirt of the wall beyond
it ; but I have guarded the waste as if it were a
crop ; the cheewits and thrushes make their nests
undisturbed there. The long, firm gravel-alley which
traverses the garden from north to south, traverses
also this bit of savage shrubbery, and by a latticed
gate, opens upon smooth grass-lands beyond, which
are skirted with forest.

Within this tangle-wood, I have set a few graft-
Ungs upon a wild-crab, and planted a peach or two —
only to watch the struggle which these artificial
people will make with their wild neighbors. And
so various is the growth within this limited belt, that
my children pick there, in their seasons, — luscious

CROPS AND PROFITS. 159

dew-berries, huckleberries, wild raspberries, bill-
berries, and choke-cherries ; and in autumn, gather
bouquets of Golden-rod and Asters, set off with crim-
son tufts of Sumac, and the scarlet of maple boughs.
And when I see the brilliancy of these, and smack
the delicate flavor of the wild-fruit, it makes me
doubt if our progress is, after all, as grand as it
should be, or as we vainly believe it to be ; and (to
renew my parallel) — it seems to me that the old-time
and gone-by thinkers may possibly have given us as
piquant, and marrowy suggestions upon whatever
subject of human knowledge they touched, as the
hot-house philosophers of to-day. I never open, of a
Sunday afternoon, upon the yellowed pages of
Jeremy Taylor, but his flavor and affluence, and
homely wealth of allusions, suggest the tangled wild
of the garden — with its starry flowers, its piquant
berries, its scorn of human rulings, its unkempt vig-
or, its boughs and tendrils stretching heaven- ward ;
and I never water a reluctant hill of yellowed
cucumbers, and coax it with all manner of concen-
trated fertilizers into bearing, — but I think of the

elegant education of the dapper Dr. , and of

the sappy, and flavorless results.

To the westward of the garden, and concealing a
decrepit mossy wall, that is covered with blackberry
vines and creepers, is the flanking shelter of another

160 MY FARM.

hemlock hedge of wanton luxuriance. A city gar-
den could never yield the breadth it demands ; but
upon the farm, the complete and graceful protection
it gives, is well purchased, at the cost of a few feet
of land. !N~or is much time required for its growth ;
five years since, and this hedge of four feet in
height, by two hundred yards in length, was all
brought away from the wood in a couple of market
baskets.

The importance of garden shelter is by no means
enough considered. I do not indeed name my own
method as the best to be pursued ; flanking buildings
or high enclosures may give it more conveniently
in many situations ; a steep, sudden hillside may give
it best of all ; but it should never be forgotten that
while we humor the garden soil with what the plants
and trees best love, we should also give their foli-
age the protection against storms which they covet ;
and which, in an almost equal degree, contributes to
their luxuriance.

To the dwarf fruit, as well as to the grape, this
shelter is absolutely essential ; if they are compelled
to fortify against aggressive blasts, — they may do it
indeed ; but they will, in this way, dissipate a large
share of the vitality which would else go to the fruit.
Young cattle may bear the exposure of winter, but
they will be pinched under it, and take on a weazen

CROPS AND PROFITS. 161

look of age, and expend a great stock of vital energy
in the contest.

Fine Tilth makes Fine Crops.

WITH a good situation, the secret of success
with garden crops, lies in the richness of
the soil, and in its deep and fine tilth ; the last being
far oftener wanting than the former. A farm ,crop
of potatoes or even of corn, will make a brave
struggle amid coarse nuggets of earth, if only fertil-
izers are present ; but such fine feeders as belong to
the garden can lay no hold upon them ; they want
delicate diet. Farmers are often amazed by the
extraordinary vegetable results upon the sandy soil
of a city dooryard, which they would count com-
paratively worthless ; not considering, that — aside
from the shelter of brick walls, which make the sun
do double duty — the productive capacity of such city
gardens, lies very much in the extreme and almost-
perfect comminution of the soil.

What is true of garden earth, is true also of its
fertilizers ; they must be triturated, fine, easily digest-
ible. Masses of unbroken farm-yard material are
no more suited to the delicate organization of gar-
den-plants, than a roasted side of bacon is suited to
a child's diet. They may struggle with it indeed.

162 MY FARM.

Possibly they may reduce it to subjection ; but their
growth will be rank and flavorless, whatever size
they may gain.

It is a common mistake to suppose that garden
products are good in proportion to their size. The
horticultural societies have done great harm in bol-
stering the admiration for mere grossness. Smooth-
ness, roundness, perfect development of all the parts,

»

and delicacy of flavor, are the true tests. I remem-
ber once offering for exhibition a little tray of gar-
den products, in which every fruit and vegetable —
though by no means all they should have been — was
perfect in outline, well developed, free from 'every
Bting of insect or excrescence, and of that delicate
and tender fibre which belongs only to swift and
unchecked growth ; yet my poor tray was over-
slaughed entirely, by an adjoining show of monster
vegetables, with warty excrescences, and of rank
and wholly abnormal development. The committee
would have been properly punished if they had been
compelled to eat them.

In the same way, and with equal fatuity, the
societies for agricultural encouragement persist in
giving premiums to — so called — fat cattle ; mere mon-
sters— not of good, wholesome, muscular fibre, well-
mottled — but mountains of adipose substance, which
no Christian can eat, and which are only disposed of

CROPS AND PROFITS. 163

profitably, by serving as an advertisement to some
venturesome landlord, from whose table the reeking
fat goes to the soap-pot.

Grossness does not absorb excellence, or even
imply it — either in the animal or vegetable world. I
have never yet chanced to taste the monstrosities
which the generous Californians sometimes send us
in the shape of pears ; but without knowing, I would
venture the wager of a bushel of Bartletts, that one
of our own, little, jolly, red-cheeked Seckels would
outmatch them thoroughly — in flavor, in piquancy,
and in vinous richness.

Shall the flaunting Dahlia match us a Rose ? Yet
the dahlia has its place too ; it gives scenic effect ;
its tall stiffness tells in the distance ; but we have a
thousand roses at every hand.

I sometimes fear that this disposition to set the
mere grossness of a thing above its finer qualities, is
an American weakness. We do not forget, so often
as we might to advantage — that we are a great
people. That eagle which our Fourth of July
orators paint for our delighted optics, dipping his
wings in both oceans, is the merest buzzard of a
bird, except he have more virtue in him than mere
size.

164 MY FARM.

Seeding and Trenching.

IF there is one fault above another in all the gar-
dening books, it is the lack of those simplest of
directions and suggestions, without which the novice
is utterly at fault. Thus, we are told in what month
to sow a particular seed — that it must have a loamy
soil ; and are favored with some special learning in
regard to its varieties, and its Liunaean classification.

" Pat," we say, " this seed must be planted in a
loamy soil."

Pat, (scratching his head reflectively) : " And
shure, isn't it in the garden thin, ye'd be afther
planting the seed ? "

Pat's observation is a just one ; of course we buy
our seed to plant in the garden, no matter what soil
it may love. The more important information in
regard to the depth of sowing it, the mode of apply-
ing 'any needed dressing, the requisite thinning,
the insect depredators, and the mode of defeat-
ing them — is, for the most part, withheld. That the
matter is not without importance, one will under-
stand who finds, year after year, his more delicate
seeds failing, and the wild and attentive Irishman
declaring, —

" And, begorra thin, it's the ould seed."

" But did you sow it properly, Patrick ? "

CROPS AND PROFITS. 165

" Didn't I, faith ? I byried 'em an inch if I
byried 'em at all."

An inch of earth will do for some seeds, but for
others, it is an Irish burial — without the wake.

The conditions of germination are heat, air, and
moisture. Covering should not be so shallow as to
forego the last, nor so deep as to sacrifice the other
essential influences. Heat alone will not do ; air and
moisture alone will not do. A careful gardener will
be guided by the condition of his soil, and the char-
acter of his seed. If this have hard woody covering
like the beet, he will understand that it demands
considerable depth, to secure the moisture requisite
to swell the kernel ; or that it should be aided by a
steep, before sowing. If, on the other hand, it be a
light fleecy seed, like the parsnip, he will perceive
the necessity of bringing the earth firmly in contact
with it.

As a general rule, the depth of covering should
not exceed two or three times the shortest diameter
of the seed ; this plainly involves so light a covering
for the lettuces, parsley, and celery, that a judicious
gardener will cover by simply sifting over them a
sprinkling of fine loam, which he will presently wet
down thoroughly (unless the sun is at high noon),
with his water-pot — medicined with a slight pinch of

10.

16G MY FARM.

For a good garden, as I have said, a deep rich
soil is essential ; and to this end trenching is desir-
able; but trenching will not always secure it, for
the palpable reason that subsoil is not soil. I have
met with certain, awkward confirmatory experiences,
— where a delicate garden mould of some ten inches
in depth, which would have made fair show of the
lesser vegetables, has been, by the frenzy of trench-
ing, buried under fourteen inches of villainous
gravelly hard-pan, brought up from below, in which
all seeds sickened, and all plants turned pale. What-
ever be the depth of tillage, it is essential that the
surface show a fine tilth of friable, light, unctuous
mould ; the young plants need it to gain strength for
a foray below. And yet I have seen inordinate sums

4

expended, for the sake of burying a few inches of
such choice moulds, under a foot-thick coverlid of
the dreariest and rawest yellow gravel that ever
held its cheerless face to the sun.

The amateur farmer, however, is not staggered by
any such difficulties ; indeed, he courts them, and de-
lights in making conquest. They make good seed-bed
for his theories — far better than for his carrots. Let
me do no discredit, however, to ' trenching,' which
in the right place, and rightly performed, by thor-
ough admixture, is most effective and judicious ; nor
should any thoroughly good garden be established

CROPS AND PROFITS. 167

upon soil which will not admit of- it, and justify it.
If otherwise, my advice is, not to trench, but — sell to
an amateur.

How a Garden should Look.

THE aesthetic element does not abound in the
minds of country farmers ; and there is not
one in a thousand who has any conception of a gar-
den, save as a patch (always weedy) where the good-
wife can pluck a few condiments for dinner. If you
visit one, he may possibly take you to see a ' likely
yearling,' or a corn crop, but rarely to his garden.
Yet there is no economic reason why a farmer's
garden should not make as good and as orderly a
show, as his field crops.

A straight line is not greatly more difficult to
make than a crooked one. The absurd borders, in-
deed, where dirt is thrown into line, and beaten with
a spade, is a mere caprice, which there is no need
to imitate ; but the neatness which belongs to true
lines of plants, regular intervals between crops, per-
fect cleanliness, is another matter ; and is so feasible
and so telling in effect, that no farmer has good ex-
cuse for neglecting it. Effective groupings, again, of
dwarf trees and fruit shrubbery, whether in rows,
curves, or by gradations of size, give points of inter-
est, and contribute to the attractions of a garden.

168 MY FARM.

It is not a little odd that the back-country gentle-
man, who replies to all such suggestions, that he
cares nothing for appearances — shall yet never ven-
ture to a militia muster, or a town meeting, without
slipping into the ' press ' for the old black-coat, and
the black beaver (giving it a coquettish wipe with
his elbow) — to say nothing of the startling shirt-col-
lars, whose poise he studies before the keeping-room
mirror.

He contracts too for a staring white coat of paint
upon his house and palings, and a mahogany-colored
door, out of the same irresistible regard to " what
people will say." But in all this, he does not do one
half so much for the education of his children into a
perception of order and elegance, as if he bestowed
the same care upon the neatness of his yard and gar-
den, where their little feet wander every day.

It would be hard to estimate the educating effect
of the gardens of the Tuileries and Luxembourg upon
the minds of those artisans of Paris, who, living in
garrets, and too poor for anything more than a little
rustic tray of flowers upon their window ledge, are
yet possessed of a perception of grace, which shines
in all their handiwork. And if you transport them
to the country — their own Auvergne or Normandy —
they cannot, if they would, make slatternly gardens :
they will not indeed repeat the brilliant tints of Paris

CROPS AND PROFITS. 169

flowers ; they cannot rival the variety ; but they can
stamp lines of grace, and harmony of arrangement
upon the merest door-yard of vegetables and pot-
herbs.

Here let me outline, in brief, what a farmer's
garden may be made, without other than home-labor.
A broad walk shall run down the middle of either a
square enclosure, or long parallelogram. A box
edging upon either side is of little cost, and contrib-
utes eminently to neatness ; it will hold good for
eight years, without too great encroachment, and at
that time, will sell to the nurserymen for more than
enough to pay the cost of resetting. On either side
of this walk, in a border of six feet wide, the farmer
may plant his dwarf-fruit, with grapes at intervals
to climb upon a home-made cedar trellis, that shall
overarch and embower the walk. If he love an
evening pipe in his garden, he may plant some simple
seat under one or more of these leafy arbors.

At least one half the garden, as I before sug-
gested, he may easily arrange, to till, — spring and
autumn, — with the plough ; and whatever he places
there in the way of tree and shrub, must be in lines
parallel with the walk. On the other half, he will be
subjected to no such limitations ; there, he will
establish his perennials — his asparagus, his thyme,
his sage, and parsley ; his rhubarb, his gooseberries,
8

170 MY FARM.

strawberries, and raspberries ; and in an angle — hidden
if he choose by a belt of shrubbery — he may have
his hotbed and compost heap. Fork-culture, which
all these crops demand, will admit of any arrange-
ment he may prefer, and he may enliven the group-
ings, and win the goodwife's favor, by here and
there a little circlet of such old-fashioned flowers as
tulips — yellow lilies and white, with roses of all shades.

Upon the other half he may make distribution of
parts, by banding the various crops with border lines
of China or Refugee beans ; and he may split the
whole crosswise, by a walk overarched with climb-
ing Limas, or the London Horticultural — setting off
the two ends with an abutment of Scarlet-runners,
and a surbase of fiery Nasturtium.

There are also available and pretty devices for
making the land do double duty. The border lines
of China-beans, which will be ripened in early
August, may have Swedes sown in their shadow in
the first days of July, so that when the Chinas have
fulfilled their mission, there shall be a new line of
purple green in their place. The early radishes and
salads may have their little circlets of cucumber pits,
no way interfering with the first, and covering the
ground when the first are done. The early Bassano
beets will come away in time to leave space for tho
full flow of the melons that have been planted at

CROPS AND PROFITS. 171

intervals among them. The cauliflower will find
grateful shade under the lines of sweet corn, and the
newly-set whiter cabbages, a temporary refuge from
the sun, under shelter of the ripened peas. I do not
make these suggestions at random, but as the results
of actual and successful experience.

With such simple and orderly arrangement, in-
volving no excessive labor, I think every farmer and
country-liver may take pleasure in his garden as an
object of beauty ; — making of it a little farm in
miniature, with its coppices of dwarf-trees, its hedge-
rows of currants and gooseberries, and its meadows
of strawberries and thyme. From the very day on
which, in spring, he sees the first, faint, upheaving,
tufted lines of green from his Dan-O'Rourkes, to
the day when the dangling Limas, and sprawling,
bloody tomatoes are smitten by the frost, it offers a
field of constant progress, and of successive tri-
umphs. Line by line, and company by company, the
army of green things take position ; the little flowery
banners are flung to the wind ; and lo ! presently
every soldier of them all — plundering only the earth
and the sunshine — is loaded with booty.

The Lesser Fruits.

FROM the time when I read of Mistress Doctoi
Primrose's gooseberry wine, which the Doctoi
celebrates in his charming autobiography, I havo

172 MY FARM.

entertained a kindly regard for that fruit. But my
efforts to grow it successfully have been sadly
baffled. The English climate alone, I think, will
bring it to perfection. I know not how many ven-
tures I have made with ' Roaring-Lion,' ' Brown
Bob,' ' Conquerors,' and other stupendous varie-
ties ; but without infinite care, after the first crop —
the mildew will catch and taint them. Our native
varieties, — such, for instance, as the Houghton-seed-
ling, make a better show, and with ordinary care, can
be fruited well for a succession of seasons. But it is
not, after all, the stanch old English berry, which
pants for the fat English gardens, for the scent of
hawthorn, and for the lowering fog-banks of Lan-
cashire.

Garden associations (with those who entertain
them) inevitably have English coloring. Is it
strange — when so many old gardens are blooming
through so many old books we know ?

No fruit is so thoroughly English in its associa-
tions ; and I never see a plump Roaring-Lion, but
I think of a burly John Bull, with waistcoat strained
over him like the bursting skin of his gooseberry,
and muttering defiance to all the world. There is,
too, another point of resemblance ; the fruit is liable
to take the mildew when removed from British soil,
just as John gets the blues, and wraps himself in a

CROPS AND PROFITS. 173

veil of his own foggy humors, whenever he goes
abroad. My experience suggests that this capri-
cious fruit be planted under the shadow of a north
wall, in soil compact and deep ; it should be
thoroughly enriched, pruned severely, watered abund-
antly, and mulched (if possible) with kelp, fresh
from the sea shore. These conditions and appli-
ances may give a clean cheek, even to the Conquer-
ing-Hero.

But it is not so much for any piqiiancy of flavor
that I prize the fruit, as because its English bloat is
pleasantly suggestive of little tartlets (smothered in
clotted cream) eaten long ago under the lee of Dart-
moor hills — of Lancashire gardens, where prize
berries reposed on little scaffoldings, or swam in
porcelain saucers — and of bristling thickets in Cow-
per's ' Wilderness' by Olney.

Is it lonely in my garden of a summer's evening ?
Have the little pattering feet gone their ways — to
bed ? Then I people the gooseberry alley with old
Doctor Primrose, and his daughters Sophia and
Olivia ; Squire Burchell comes, and sits upon the
bench with me under the arbor, as I smoke my
pipe. How shall we measure our indebtedness to
such pleasant books, that people our solitude so
many years after they are written ! Oliver Gold-
smith, I thank you ! Crown-Bob, I thank you.

] 74 MY FARM.

Gooseberries, like the English, are rather indi-
gestible.

Of strawberries, I shall not speak as a committee-
man, but as a simple lover of a luscious dish. I am
not learned in kinds ; and have even had the niaiserie
in the presence of cultivators, to confound Crimson
Cone with Boston-Pine ; and have blushed to my
eyelids, when called upon to name the British-Queen
in a little collection of only four mammoth varieties.
With strawberries, as with people, I believe in old
friends. The early Scarlet, if a little piquant, is
good for the first pickings ; and the Hovey, with a
neighbor bed of Pines, or McAvoy, and Black
Prince, if you please, give good flavor, and a well-
rounded dish. The spicy Alpines should bring up
the rear ; and as they send out but few runners, are
admirably adapted for borders. The Wilson is a
great bearer, and a fine berry ; but with the tweak
of its acidity in my month, I can give its flavor no
commendation. Supposing the land to be in good
vegetable-bearing condition, and deeply dug, I know
no dressing which will so delight the strawberry, as
a heavy coat of dark forest-mould. They are the
children of the wilderness, force them as we will ;
and their little fibrous rootlets never forget their
longing for the dark, unctuous odor of mouldering
forest leaves.

CROPS AND PROFITS. 175

Three great traveller's dishes of strawberries are
in my mind.

The first was at an inn in the quaint Dutch town
of Broek : I can see now the heaped dish of mam-
moth crimson berries, — the mug of luscious cream
standing sentry, — the round red cheese upon its plat-
ter,— the tidy hostess, with arms akimbo, looking
proudly on it all : the leaves flutter idly at the lat-
ticed window, through which I see wide stretches
of level meadow, — broad-armed windmills flapping
their sails leisurely, — cattle lying in lazy groups
under the shade -of scattered trees ; and there is no
sound to break the June stillness, except the buzzing
of the bees that are feeding upon the blossoms of the
linden which overhangs the inn.

I thought I had never eaten finer berries than the
Dutch berries.

The second dish was at the Douglas-Hotel in the
city of Edinboro' ; a most respectable British tavern,
with a heavy solid sideboard in its parlor ; heavy
solid silver upon its table ; heavy and solid chairs
with cushions of shining mohair ; a heavy and solid
figure of a landlord ; and heavy and solid figures in
the reckoning.

The berries were magnificent ; served upon
quaint old India-china, with stems upon them, and to
be eaten as one might eat a fig, with successive bites,

176 MY FARM.

and successive dips in the sugar. The Scotch fruit
was acid, I must admit, but the size was monument-
al. I wonder if the stout landlord is living yet, and
if the little pony that whisked me away to Salisbury
crag, is still nibbling his vetches in the meadow by
Holyrood ?

The third dish was in Switzerland, in the month
of October. I had crossed that day the Scheideck
from Meyringen, had threaded the valley of Grindel-
wald, and had just accomplished the first lift of the
Wengern Alp — tired and thirsty — when a little peas-
ant girl appeared with a tray of blue saucers, brim-
ming with Alpine berries — so sweet, so musky, so
remembered, that I never eat one now but the great
valley of Grindelwald, with its sapphire show of
glaciers, its guardian peaks, and its low meadows
flashing green, is rolled out before me like a map.

In those old days when we school-boys were
admitted to the garden of the head-master twice in
a season — only twice — to eat our fill of currants (his
maid having gathered a stock for jellies two days
before), I thought it ' most-a-splendid ' fruit; but I
think far less of it now. My bushes are burdened
with both white and red clusters, but the spurs are
somewhat mossy, and the boughs have a straggling,
dejected air. With a little care, severe pruning,
due enrichment, and a proper regard to varieties

CROPS AND PROFITS. 177

(Cherry and White-Grape being the best), it may be
brought to make a very pretty show as a dessert
fruit. But as I never knew it to be eaten very
freely at dessert, however finely it might look, I
have not thought it worth while to push its propor-
tions for a mere show upon the exhibition tables.
The amateurs would smile at those I have ; but 1
console myself with reflecting that they smile at a
great deal of goodness which is not their own.
They are full of conceit — I say it charitably. I like
to upset their proprieties.

There was one of them, an excellent fellow (if he
had not been pomologically starched and jaundiced),
who paid me a visit in my garden not long ago,
bringing his little son, who had been educated
strictly in the belief that all fine fruit was made — not
to be enjoyed, but for pomological consideration.
The dilettante papa was tip-toeing along with a look
of serene and well-bred contempt for my mildewed
gooseberries and scrawny currants, when I broke
off a brave bough loaded with Tartarian cherries,
and handed it to the lad, with — " Here, Harry, my
boy, — we farmers grow these things to eat ! "

What a grateful look of wonderment in his clear
gray eyes !

The broken limb, the heresy of the action, the
suddenness of it all, were too much for my fine friend.
8*

178 MY FARM.

I do not think that for an hour he recovered from
the shock to his sensibilities.

Of raspberries, commend me to the Red-Ant-
werp, and the Brinckle's Orange ; but to insure good
fruitage, they should be protected from high winds,
and should be lightly buried, or thoroughly ' strawed
over' in winter. The Perpetual, I have found a
perpetual nuisance.

The New-Rochelle or Lawton blackberry has
been despitefully spoken of by many ; first, because
the market-fruit is generally bad, being plucked
before it is fully ripened ; and next, because in rich
clayey grounds, the briers, unless severely cut back,
and again back, grow into a tangled, unapproachable
forest, with all the juices exhausted in wood. But
upon a soil moderately rich, a little gravelly and
warm, protected from wind, served with occasional
top-dressings and good hoeings, the Lawton brier
bears magnificent burdens.

Even then, if you would enjoy the richness of the
fruit, you must not be hasty to pluck it. When the
children say with a shout, — " The blackberries are
ripe ! " I know they are black only, and I can wait.

When the children report — " The birds are eating
the berries," I know I can still wait. But when they
say — " The bees are on the berries," I know they are
at full ripeness.

CROPS AND PROFITS. 179

Then, with baskets we sally out ; I taking the
middle rank, and the children the outer spray of
boughs. Even now we gather those only which
drop at the touch ; these, in a brimming saucer, with
golden Alderney cream, and a soupgon of powdered
sugar, are Olympian nectar ; they melt before the
tongue can measure their full roundness, and seem to
be mere bloated bubbles of forest honey.

There is a scratch here and there, which calls
from the children a half-scream ; but a big berry on
the lip cures the smart ; and for myself, if the thorns
draggle me, I rather fancy the rough caresses, and re-
peat with the garden poet (humming it half aloud) :

Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ;
Curl me about, ye gadding vines ;
And oh ! so close your circles lace,
That I may never leave this place ;
But, lest your fetters prove too weak,
Ere I your silken bondage break,
Do you, 0 brambles, chain me too,
And, courteous briers, nail me through.

Grapes.

IF the associations of the gooseberry are British,
those of the vine are thoroughly Juda3an.
There is not a fruit that we grow, which has so ven-
erable and so stately a history. Who does not
remember the old Biblical picture in all the primers,

I

180 MY FARM.

of the stupendous cluster which the spies brought
away from the brook Eshcol ? And I am afraid that
many a youngster, comparing it with the milder
growth which capped his dessert, has viewed it with
a little of the Bishop-Colenso scepticism.

Upon a certain day I give to my boy, — who has
worked some mischief, — the smallest bunch of the
dish. He poises it in his hand awhile, looking
askance — doubtful if he will fling it down in a pet, or
enjoy even so little. The latter feeling wins upon
him, but is spiced with a bit of satire, that relieves
itself in this way :

" I think, papa (he is fresh from " Line upon
Line "), that the spies wouldn't put a staff on their
shoulders to carry such a bunch as that ! "

By this admeasurement, indeed, no portion of New
England can be counted equal to the land of Canaan.
There are grapes, however, which yield gracefully to
the requisitions of the climate, and furnish abundant
clusters, if not large ones. As yet, for out-of-door
culture — such as every farmer may plant with faith,
and without trembling for the early frosts — the two
most desirable are the Concord and Diana. The
first the more hardy and sure ; the latter the more
delicate and luscious. Indeed, few dessert fruits can
outmatch a well-ripened, sun-freckled, fully developed
and closely compacted bunch of the Diana grape.

CROPS AND PROFITS. 181

The Catawba has its advocates, and it is really a
dainty fruit if it have good range of sun, and is not
hurried in its ripening ; but in delicacy of flavor it
must yield to the Diana. The Catawba crop is also
exceedingly uncertain in this latitude, by reason of
the shortness of the season. A gaunt old vine of
this variety, which stands behind the farmhouse, has
given me only two crops in the six years past ; the
frosts have garnered the promise of the others. I
have now, however, contrived to conduct its trailing
mantle upon a rude trellis, so as to completely
embower the roof of the little outlying kitchen ; and
the fumes and warmth of this latter, from its open
skylights, have given to the old vine such a wonder-
ful vigor and precocity, that I have promise of a full
burden of well-ripened fruit in advance even of the
Isabella. Can the reek of a kitchen be put to better
service ?

The Isabella escapes ordinary frosts, and is a pro-
digious bearer ; but it has no rare piquancy of flavor;
and the same is to be said of its earlier congener, the
Hartford-Prolific.

Of all fruits, the grape is the one which, to insure
perfection, will least tolerate neglect. I do not speak
of those half-wild and flavorless crops, which hang
their clusters up and down old elms, in neglected
farm-yards, — but of that compact, close array of

182 MY FARM.

sunny bunches, where every berry is fully rounded,
and every cluster symmetrical. It must have care in
the planting, that its fibrous roots may take hold
readily upon their new quarters ; care in position,
which must, — first of all, be sheltered — next, have
ample moisture — next, be utterly free from stagnant
water, whether above ground or below — and finally,
have fair and open exposure to the sun. It must
have care in the training, that every spur and cluster
may have its share of air and sunshine ; care in the
winter pruning, to cut away all needless wood ; care
in the summer pruning, to pinch down its afiluence — •
to drive the juices into the fruit, and to restrain the
vital forces from wasting themselves in a riotous life
of leaves and tendrils.

But the care required is not engrossing or fatigu-
ing. Any country-liver may bestow it upon the
score of vines which, will abundantly supply his
wants, without feeling the task. Nay, more ; this
coy guidance of the luxuriant tendrils, — this delicate
fettering of its abounding green life, — this opening
of the clusters to the gladness of the sunshine, will
make a man feel tenderly to the vine, and breed a
fellowship that shall make all his restraints, and the
plucking away of the waste shoots, 'seem to be mere
offices of friendship.

There is not, anywhere, a country house about

CROPS AND PROFITS. 183

which positions do not abound, where a vine may
clamber, and feed upon resources that are worse
than lost. The southern or eastern front of an old
out-building ; a staring, naked wall (on which grapes
ripen admirably) ; a great unseemly boulder, from
under which the rootlets will pluck out the elements
of the fairest fruit ; a back-court, where washings
of sinks are wasting ; the palings of a poultry-yard—
all these are positions, where, with small temptation,
the mantling-vine will " creep luxuriant."

I have not alluded to the Delaware, because, thus
far, my plants have been poor ones, and my experi-
ence unsuccessful. At best, however, the vine is of a
more delicate temper than those named, and requires
larger care and richer dressing. Under these con-
ditions, I believe the grape to be all, which its friends
claim — of a delicate and highly aromatic flavor, — so
early as to be secure against frosts, and giving a /set-
ter promise than any other, of a really good domes-
tic wine.

I am surprised to find in the course of my drives
back in the country, how many of our old-time far-
mers are applying themselves, in a modest and some-
what furtive way, to wine-making. It is true that
they bring under contribution a great many foxy
swamp varieties, and are not over-careful in regard
to ^ripeness ; but faults of acidity they correct by a

184 MY FARM.

heavy sugaring, which gives an innocent and boun-
cing percentage of alcohol.

The practice is not, I fear, entered upon with a
purely horticultural love, and I suspect they bring a
more lively stomachic fondness to it, than do the
pomologists to their science of fruiting. I think the
development of this home manufacture has been
quickened by Maine-laws, heavy import duties, and
by a growing reluctance on the part of the heads of
families — to carry a demijohn in the wagon. I also
hear the home product commended by the old gen-
tlemen manufacturers, as " warming to the in'ards ; "
and in large doses, I should think it might be. Their
town customers for this beverage are mostly exceed-
ingly serious and sedate people, who have a comical
way of calling homemade wines — " pure juice."

And pray, why should not sedate people enjoy the
good things of life, — call them by what names they
will ? I know an exceedingly worthy man who never
buys his cider except of a deacon ; and then only by
the cask ; and he buys it very often.

Plums, Apricots, and Peaches.

I AM sorry to give so poor an account, as I needs
must, of these stone-fruits. As respects the
plum, there is, indeed, an incompatibility of soil upon
my farm, to be contended against ; but this difficulty

CROPS AND PROFITS. 185

is trifling, in comparison with the mischiefs of the
arch-enemy, the curculio. The few trees which I
found suffering under black-knot in its most aggra-
vated form, I am sorry to say, died under surgical
treatment. Others have been planted to supply their
places ; — planted in the poultry yard — planted in
positions where the earth would be hard trampled, —
planted in shelter and out of shelter ; but although
showing fair vigor, and a pretty array of blossoms,
no device thus far adopted has succeeded in arresting
the spoliations of the curculio. Paving the ground is
vain ; the forage of poultry is vain ; underlying
water is vain ; and there remain only three re-
sources— to jar off the vermin, gather them and kill
them ; or second, to deluge the young frait with a
wash that shall nauseate the enemy; or third, to
shield the trees or fruit with a gauze covering, that
shall forbid attack. They are good devices against
any enemy ; but extermination is a slow process ; if
you nauseate the enemy, you are nauseated in turn ;
and the gauze protection involves a greater sacrifice
than the sacrifice of the fruit.

These reasons, though counting against the plum
as a market product, do not, of course, forbid its
growth as a luxury, — which, like many other luxuries,
must be paid for in fourfold its value.

I would by no means undervalue the plum ; least

186 J£7 FARM.

of all, that prince or princess of plums, Heine- Claude
(Green-Gage), of which, in the sunny towns along
the Loire, I have purchased a golden surfeit for a
few sous : when I remember those, and their luscious
and cheap perfection, crowning the peasants' gardens,
I am a little disheartened at thought of the tobacco
washes, and whale-oil soap and syringes, with which
we must enter into combat with the curculio, for
only a most flimsy supply.

The nectarine is subject to the same blight ; and
the apricot furnishes only a very dismal residuum of
a crop. As an espalier, it is not, I think, so subject
to the ravages of the curculio as in its unfettered
condition ; but upon the wall (particularly if one of
southern exposure), it is exceedingly liable to injury
from the late frosts of Spring. I succeed in saving
a few from all enemies every year ; but they are so
wan — so pinched, as hardly to serve for souvenir of
the golden Moor-parks which crown an August din-
ner at Ve fours or the Trois-Freres. It is an old fruit ;
the Persians had it ; the Egyptians have gloried in
it these centuries past ; Columella names it in his gar-
den poem ; and Palladius advises that it be grafted
upon the almond : * will the nurserymen make trial ?

* It occurs in Tit. vii., Novem., where he discourses of tho
peach. " Inseritur in se, in amygdala, in pntno : sed ARMENIA, vcl
PILECOQUA prunis, duracina amygdalis melius adhcerescunt," etc.

CROPS AND PROFITS. 187

It will be remembered that in an early chapter I
made mention of certain dilapidated peach trees upon
the premises, which were even then showing unfailing-
signs of the ' yellows.' This vegetable dyspepsia has
long since carried them off. Indeed, there are but
few belts of land throughout New England where a
man may hope successful culture of this fruit. The
borer is an ugly enemy to begin with ; but with close
watchfulness, the attacks of this insect may be pre-
vented. His cousin, the curculio, does not greatly
affect the downy cheek of a young peach. Yet still,
in the absence of more tempting surfaces, he will
leave upon it his Turkish signet. Next, comes a
curious, foul twisting of the leaves, due — may be — to
some minute family of aphides ; but this can be miti-
gated by judicious pruning ; after these escapes, and
when your mouth is watering in view of a luscious
harvest, there appear symptoms of a new disease ;
the leaves cease to expand ; the fruit takes on a pre-
mature bloom, and a multitude of little shoots start
here and there from the bark, being weakly attempts
to struggle against the consuming ' yellows.' A.nd
if all these difficulties be fairly escaped or overcome,
there remains the damaging fact, that in three win-
ters out of five, in most New England exposures, the
extreme cold will utterly destroy the germ of the
fruit buds.

188 MY FARM.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, however, I
continue to put out from year to year, a few young
trees; not making regular plantations, but dotting
them about, in shrubberies, arid in unoccupied gar-
den comers, grouping them in the lee of old walls
— in the poultry yard, — upon the north side of
buildings, — in every variety of position and of soil.
In this way I contrive — except the January tempera-
ture shows ten below zero — to secure a fair table
supply. Even amid the shrubbery of the lawn, where
I counted their bloom and foliage a sufficient return,
there have been gathered scores of delicious peaches.

I know that it is disorderly, and shocking to all
the prejudices of the learned, to plant fruit trees in
this hap-hazard way. But I love these offences
against system (particularly when system is barren
of triumphs). I love to test Nature's own ruling,
and give her margin for wide demonstration.

The Poultry.

I KNOW not whether to begin my discourse of
poultry with a terrific onslaught upon all feath-
ered creation, or to speak the praises of the matronly
fowls, which supply delicate spring chickens to the
table, and profusion of eggs. When, on some ill-
fated day, a pestilent, pains-taking hen, with her

CROPS AND PROFITS. 189

brood of eager chicklings, has found her way into
my hot-bed, and has utterly despoiled the most
cherished plants ; or a marauding drove of young
turkeys has cropped all the late cauliflowers, I am
madly bent upon extermination of the whole tribe.

But reflection comes — with a nice fresh egg to my
breakfast, or a delicate grilled fowl to my dinner — and
the feathered people take a new lease of life. They
give a sociable, habitable air, moreover, to a country
dwelling. The contented, good-humored cluck of the
hens, breeds contentment in the on-looker. They are
rare philosophers, taking the world as they find it ; —
now a blade of grass, now a lurking worm ; here a
stray kernel of grain, and there some tid-bit of a
butter-fly ; taking their siesta with a whig and a leg
stretched out in the sun, and like the rest of us,
warning away from their own feeding ground, birds
less strong than themselves, with an authoritative dab
of their bills. Although amenable to laws of habit,
— traversing regular beats for their supply of wild
food, and collecting at regular hours for such as the
mistress may have to bestow, they are yet rebellious
against undue or extraordinary show of authority.
It is quite impossible to exercise any safe control
over the locality where the hens choose to execute
their maternal duties. They insist upon freedom of
the will in the matter, as obstreperously, and, I dare

190 MT FARM.

say, as logically, as ever any old-school dialectician
ill his metaphysical homilies.

Nothing could be more charming than the ar-
rangement, matured with the co-operation of an
ingenious country carpenter, by which my fowls
were to lay in one set of boxes, carefully darkened,
and to carry on their incubation in another set of
boxes, made cheery (against the long confinement),
with sky-light ; there were admirable little architec-
tural galleries through which they were to prome-
nade in the intervals of these maternal duties — adroit
disposition of courts, and feeding troughs, so that
there should be no ill-advised collision, — but it was
all in vain. Hens persisted in laying where they
should not lay, and in setting, with badly-directed
instinct, upon the dreariest of porcelain eggs. The
fowls of my Somersetshire neighbor, meantime, at
the stone cottage, with nothing more orderly in the
way of nests, than a stray lodgment in the haymow,
or a castaway basket looped under the rafters of a
shed, brought out brood after brood, so full, and
fresh, and lusty, as to put my architectural devices to
shame.

At certain times, when the condition of the gul-
den or crops allow it, I permit my fowls free forage ;
and as they stroll off over the lawn and among the
shrubberies, it sometimes happens that they come in

CROPS AND PROFITS. 191

contact with the more vagabond birds of the larger
farm family. The hens take the meeting philosophi-
cally, with a well-bred lack of surprise, and are not
deterred for a moment from their forage employ ;
perhaps, (if with a brood) giving an admonitory
cluck to their chicks, to keep near them, — even as old
ladies with daughters, in a strange place, advise
caution, without enjoining positive non-intercourse.

The ducks, on the contrary, in a very low-bred
manner, give way to a world of surprises, and gad
about each other, dipping their heads, and quacking,
and bickering, like old gossips long time apart, who
pour interminable scandal in each other's ears. The
cocks make an honest, fair fight of it, and one goes
home draggled, confining himself thereafter to his
own quarters.

The Turkeys meet as fine ladies do, tip-toeing
round and round, and eyeing each other with earnest
scrutiny, and abundant curvetings of the neck — very
stately, dignified, and impudent — stooping to browse
perhaps (ladies sniff thus at vinaigrettes), as if no
strange fowl were near, — which is merest affectation.
They summon their little families into close order,
as if fearing contagion, and eyeing each other,
wander apart, without a sign of companionship, or
a gobble of leave-taking.

I must not forget the groups of Guinea-fowl, who

192 MY FARM.

fraternize charmingly, and threaten to become one
family. These birds, unlike all other feathered
animals, show no marked difference of appearance
between the sexes ; so slight is this indeed, that
even the naturalists have blundered into errors, and
left us in the dark.* Even a fighting propensity
does not distinguish the cock, I observe; for the
female bird is an arrant termagant, and has under-
taken, in my own flock, a fierce battle with a torn-
turkey, in which, though worsted, and eventually
killed, she showed a fine chivalrous pluck. They
are not, however, quarrelsome among themselves ;
although flocking together in communities, the male
birds are strictly faithful to their mates, and mani-
fest none of the sultanic propensities which so de-
plorably mislead the other domestic fowls.

Notwithstanding their harsh cry, to which the
Greeks gave a special descriptive name, f I like the
Guinea-fowl ; they are excellent layers, enormous
devourers of insects — a little over-fond, it is true,
of young cauliflowers, and grapes, — yet a stanch,
lively, self-possessed bird ; and notwithstanding the
sneers of Varro,| whose taste must have been poor
in the matter of poultry, — excellent eating.

* Buffon ; De la Pintard. f Kc^-afc".

\ Lib. III., De Re Rust. Use novissimse in triclinium gauearium
introierunt e culiiia propter fastidium hominum. Veueunt propter
penuriam magno.

CROPS AND PROFITS. 193

»

The young Guineas, like the young turkeys, are

delicate however, and suffer from sudden changes of
temperature. Give them what care you will, and all
the dietetic luxuries of the books, and on some fine
morning, you shall find the half of a brood moping
and staggering, and drooping out of life. The
young turkeys are even more subject to infantile
ailments, and their invalid caprices outmatch all the
nostrums of the doctors. Yet some old spectacled
lady in the back country, with nothing better than a
turned-up barrel in the way of shelter, will by an
easy and indescribable ' knack ' of treatment, rear
such broods as cannot be rivalled by any literal
execution of the rules of Boswell and Doyle.

Beyond the age of six weeks, however, danger
mostly ceases, and the poults have a good chance —
barring the foxes — of coming to the honors of de-
capitation ; and I know few prettier farm^ sights,
than a squadron of pure white turkeys, marching
over new mown grass-land, with their skirmishers
deployed on either flank, and rioting among the
grasshoppers. It is essential that both Guinea-fowl
and Turkeys have free and wide range ; they are
natural wanderers ; my hens submit to a curtailment
of their liberties with more cheerfulness ; but there
is after all, no biped of which I have knowledge,
that does not glory in freedom. The Black Spanish

194 M7 FARM.

»
fowls, Dorkings, and Polish top-knots, (for these

make up my variety, and are, I believe, the best),
form no exception ; and if confinement is necessary,
the enclosing palings should be of generous width.
A safe rule is — to make the enclosure so large
(whatever the number of the flock), that the fowls
will not wholly subdue the grass, or forbid its health-
ful vegetation. If too small for this, it is impera-
tively necessary for thrift, that they have a run of
an hour each day before sunset.

The oldest English writer upon the subject of
poultry was a certain Leonard Mascall, who wrote
about the year 1581 — when Queen Mary was fretting
in her long confinement, and Sir Francis Drake was
voyaging around the world. He had been farmer to
King James, and calls his little black-letter book,
"The husbandrye, cvdring, and governmente of
poultrie." Among his headings are " How to keepe
egges long." — " How to have egges all winter," —
" Of hennes that hatches abroad, as in bushes," —
" Of turquie hennes, profite and also disprofite."

For winter eggs, he advises " to take the croppes
of nettles when ready to seed, dry them, and mix
them with bran and hemp-seed, and give it to the
hens in the morning, and also to give them the
seedes of cow-make," (whatever that may be.) I
have never ventured trial of his advices ; but find

CROPS AND PROFITS. 195

full supply in giving hens warm quarters — a closed
house, with double walls, and its front entirely of
glass ; here, with water constantly running, an
ample ash box and gravel bed, full feeding, — not
forgetting scraps of meat, and occasional vegetable
diet — the hens make a summer of the winter, and
reward all care. If the weather be very warm, they
are allowed a little run in the adjoining barn-yard
(their winter home being, in fact, a rustic transmuta
tion of an ancient cow-shed). Any considerable
chilliness of the atmosphere, however, — if they are
long exposed to it,— checks their laying propensities,
and two or three days of housing are needed to
restore the due equilibrium.

The Roman writers give us cruel hints in regard
to the fattening of fowls, which I have never had the
heart to try. They go beyond the rules of the
Strasburg poulterers in harshness ; and that elegant
heathen Columella, has the effrontery to advise that
the legs of young doves be broken, in order to cram
them the more quickly. Such suggestions belonged,
of right, to a period when Roman ladies — Sabina,
and Delia, and Octavia — looked down coolly on
gladiators, gashing their lives out with bare sabres,
and then lolled home in chariots, to dine on thrushes,
fatted in the dark. We, — good Christians that we
are, — shudder at thought of such barbarism ; we pit

196 MY FARM.

no bare-backed gladiators against each other, with
drawn swords, in our very presence ; but we send
armies out, of a hundred thousand in blue and gray,
and look at their butchery of each other, very coolly.
— through the newspapers, — and dine on pate de fois
gras. Of course we have improved somewhat in all
these ages, since Columella broke pigeons' legs ; of
course we are civilized ; but the Devil is very strong
in us still.

Is it Profitable f

WHEN" I have shown some curious city visitor
all these belongings of the farm — have
enlisted his admiration for my crested, golden, Polish
fowls, — for my garden, for the fruits ; — for the wide
stretch of fields, and the herd of cows loitering under
the shadow of the scattered apple trees, he turns
upon me, in his city way, with the abrupt question-
ing, " Isn't it confoundedly expensive, though, get-
ting land smoothed out in this style — what with your
manures, and levelling, and planting trees ? "

And I answer — " N" — n — no ; no ; (somewhat
bolder.) There's a certain amount of labor involved,
to be sure, and labor has to be paid for, you know.
But there are the vegetables, the chickens, the eggs,
the milk, and the fruit, which must come out of the
shops, unless a man have a home supply."

CROPS AND PROFITS. 197

<: To be sure, you're quite right ; " and I think he
admitted the observation, as many city people incline
to, as a new idea. " But," he added, with an awkward
inquisitiveness, " Do you ever get any money back ? "
My friend was not a reader of the Agricultural
Journals, or he could not have failed to notice the
pertinacity with which the profitableness of farming
is urged and re-urged. Indeed, with all considera-
tion for the calling, I think it is somewhat too per-
sistently pressed. It suggests — rather too strongly
the urgence of the recruiting sergeant, in setting
forth the profitableness of soldiering. I do not
observe that army contractors magnify the gains of
their craft very noisily. The hens that lay golden
eggs never cackle ; at least, I never heard them.

The question of my friend remains however,

" Do you ever get any money back, — eh ? "
What an odious particularity many of these city
people have ! What a crucial test they bring to the
delightful suroundings of a country home ! Have
they no admiration for such stretch of fields, such
herds, and the shrubberies, on whose skirts the flowers
are gleaming? Somebody has suggested that the
forbidden fruit with which the Devil tempted Eve,
and which Eve plucked to the sorrow of her race,
was — money. A tree whose fruit carries knowledge
of good and evil, is surely not an inapt figure of

198 MY FARM.

the capabilities of money — by which all men and
women stand tempted to-day. The Paradise tree is
not popularly supposed to grow largely on the farms
of amateurs.

s But the question returns — "Do you get any
money back ? "

I think it must be fairly admitted that with most
amateur farmers, the business (if we reckon it
business) is only an elegant luxury ; absorbing in a
quite illimitable manner, all loose funds at the dis-
posal of the adventurer, and returning — smooth fields,
sleek cattle, delicious fruits, and possibly, a few
annual premiums. We never get at their ' memo-
randa.' Mr. Mechi, indeed, of the Tip-tree Hall,
gave us an exhibit of his expenses and his sales ;
but he found it necessary to support the statement
with sundry affidavits ; people showed wanton dis-
trust ; and I think there is an earnest belief among
shrewd observers, that the razor straps, soaps, and
dressing-cases of Leaden-Hall street (where his
original business lies), are, in a large degree, credi-
tors of the Tip-tree Hall farming.

But Mr. Mechi is something more than an ama-
teur ; he is an innovator ; and has sustained his in-
novations with a rare business capacity, and that
inexorable system, which can make even weak ideas
exhibit a compacted strength. Amateurs then, can-

CHOPS AND PROFITS. 199

not take shelter under cover of Mr. Meclii's figures.
Farming remains an elegant amusement only, for
those who can afford to buy all that they need, and
to sell nothing that they raise ; and a profitable
employment, only (in the majority of instances), for
those who can afford to sell all that they raise, and
buy nothing that they need.

" Does any money come back, eh ? "

The question of my persistent friend must be
met. And I do not know how it can be more fairly
met, than by giving an abstract of accounts for the
first year, third year, and fifth year of occupancy.

Debit and Credit.

LET us count first all extraordinary repairs and
necessary implements on taking possession, as
part of the farm investment ; next, let us set off the
interest upon investment, against house rent, and all
home consumption. Thus, — if a farm cost $12,000,
(and I use illustrative figures only), and if the needed
repairs and implements at the start involve an outlay
of $3,000 more — we have a total of $15,000, upon
which the interest ($900), may he fairly set off against
rent, and the poultry, dairy products, fuel, vegetables,
etc., consumed upon the place. A shrewd working
farmer would say that this implied altogether too

200

MY FARM.

large a home consumption, for reasonable profit ; but
to those who come from the city to the country,
with the determination to enjoy its bounties to the
full, it will appear very moderate. In any event, it
will simplify the comparison I wish to make between
the actual working expenses of a farm, and the
results of positive sales. But let us come to figures :

FIRST YEAR—EDGEWOOD FARM.

DR.

To Valuation of live stock,. .
" Interest on do.,
" Purchase of new stock,

" Labor,

" Hay and grain bought,

" Seeds, trees, etc., .

" Manures, .....

" Wear and tear of implements,

" Taxes, insurance, and incidentals,

OR.

By Valuation stock, close of yr., .
" Sales do., ....

" do. milk,

" do. butter, . . .
" do. vegetables,
" do. fruits, ....
" do. eggs and poultry, .
" do. sundries, .

. $1,200 00

7200

300 00

1,200 00

150 00

15000

250 00

10000

10000

" Balance (loss),

$3,522 00

$1,400 00

25000

60000

6000

6000

1000

25 00

7500

$2,470 00
1,052 00

$3,522 00

CROPS AND PROFITS. 201

First years of any adventure do not offer a very
appetizing show — least of all the adventure of restor-
ing a neglected farm.

If this record does not prove entertaining to the
reader, I can frankly say that he has my heartiest
sympathies. The great enormity lies in the labor
account — always the enormity in any reckoning of
American farming, as compared with British or Con-
tinental. It must be remembered, however, that a
large proportion of the sum named, went to the
execution of permanent improvements, and that two-
thirds of it would have been amply sufficient for the
exigencies of the farm- work proper

Let us slip on now to the

THIRD TEAR.

DE.

To Valuation of stock, .... $1,500 00

' Interest on do., .... 90 00

' Purchase of new stock . . . 200 00

' Labor bills, . . . . . 1,100 00

; Manures, 150 00

' Hay and grain bought, . , . 120 00

' Seeds, trees, etc., . . . . 50 00

" "Wear and tear of implements, . 100 00
" Taxes, insurance, and incidentals, . . 100 00

$3,410 00
" Balance (gain), .... 615 00

$4,025 00
9*

202 MY FARM.

OB.

By Valuation stock, close of yr., . . $1,600 00

" Sales do., 20000

" do. milk, . . . . . 1,650 00

" do. vegetables, . . . 250 00

" do. fruits, . 125 00

" do. poultry, .... 100 00

" do. sundries, 100 00

$4,025 00

This has a more cheerful look, but is not gor
geous ; yet the fields are wearing a trim look, and
there is a large percentage of increased productive
capacity, which if not put down in figures, has yet a
very seductive air for the eye of an imaginative pro-
prietor. Two years later the account stands thus : —

FIFTH TEAR.

DE.
To Valuation of stock, .... $1,700 00

" Interest on do., ... . 102 00

" Purchase of new stock, . . . 180 00

"Labor bills, . . . . . 1,00000

" Manures, . . .. . . . 100 00

" Grain purchased, . . . . 13000

u Seeds, trees, &c., . . . . 6000

" Wear and tear of implements, . 10000

'* Insurance, taxes, and incidentals, . 120 00

$3,492 00
" Balance (gain), . ... . . 988 00

$4,480 00

CROPS AND PROFITS. 203

OB.

By Valuation stock, close of jr., . . $1,700 00

" Sales do 230 00

" do. milk, 1,90000

" do. vegetables, .... 250 00

" do. fruit, . . . . '. 15000

" do. poultry, .... 130 00

" do. sundries*, .... 120 00

$4,480 00

These figures though written roundly, are (frac-
tions apart) essentially true ; I would match them for
honesty (though not for largeness), against any
official report I have latterly seen — not excepting the
" Quicksilver mining," or the Quartermaster General's.

If we analyze these accounts, we shall find the

Average interest upon investment, (say) $1,000 00
Average working expenses, . . 1,800 00

Total, $2,800 00

On the other side the

Average cash sales are, . . $2,600 00

House rent and home consumption, 900 00

Total, . . . . . $3,500 00

Leaving profit of 0700, which is equivalent to ten
per cent, upon the supposed capital;— all this, under
the cheerful hypothesis that personal supervision is a
mere amusement, and is not justly chargeable to the

204 MY FARM.

farm. If otherwise, and the overlook be rated as
Government or corporate officials rate such service,
the credit balance becomes ignominiously small.

It is to be considered, however, that the growing
productive capacity of the soil, under generous man-
agement, may be estimated at no small percentage ;
and the inevitable increase in value of all lands in
the close neighborhood of growing towns, may be
counted in the light of another percentage.

All this is not certainly very Ophir-like, nor yet
very dreary.

Again, it is to be remarked that the entries for
labor, and incidental expenses in the accounts given,
are for those expenses only, which contributed directly
either to the farm culture, or conditions of culture —
not all essential, perhaps, but all contributory. If,
however, the Bucolic citizen have a- taste to gratify —
in architectural dovecots, in hewn walls, in removal
of ledges, in graperies, in the planting of long
ranges of Osage-Orange (which the winter mice
consume), the poor little credit balance of the farm
account, is quite lost in the blaze of agricultural
splendor.

I do not at all deny the charm of such luxuries.
I only say — that they are luxuries ; and in the
present state of the butter and egg markets, must
be paid for as such. And the life that is lived amid

CROPS AND PROFITS. £05

such luxuries is not so much a farm life, as it is a life
— a long way from town.

Rus hoc vocari debet, an domus longe ?

It is the irony of Martial in the concluding line*
of his Faustine epigram ; and with it, I whip my
chapter of figures to a close.

Money-Making Farmers.

WHERE are the men then, who have grubbed
out of the reluctant eastern soil, their
stocking-legs of specie, and their funds at the bank ?
They are not wholly myths ; there are such. Find
me a man, who, by aptitude at bargaining (let us not
call it jockeyism), can reduce the labor estimates in
the foregoing accounts by a third ; and who, by a
kindred quality, can add to the amount of sales by a
third; who can, by dint of early rising and per-
petual presence, stretch the ten-hour system into
twelve or fourteen ; who, by a conquest of all finer
appetites, can reduce the home consumption to a
third of the figure named in my estimates, and you
have a type of one class. A union of tremendous
energy and shrewdness ; keenly alive to the phases
of the market ; an ally of all the hucksters ; sharp to
pounce upon some poor devil of an emigrant, before
he has learned the current rate of wages ; gifted with

206 MY FARM.

a quick scent for all offal, which may be had for the
cartage, and which goes to pig food, or the fermen-
tation of compost.

I think J have hinted at a character which those
will recognize, who know the neighborhood of large
New England towns : a prompt talker— not bashful,
— full of life — selectman, perhaps ; great in corner
groceries, ' forehanded,' indefatigable, trenchant,
with an eye always to windward.

If I were to sketch another type of a New Eng-
land farmer, who is, in a small way, successful, — it
would be a sharp-nosed man, thin, wiry, with a blue-
ness about the complexion, that has come from
unlimited buffetings of northwesters ; one who has
been ' moderator ' at town meetings, in his day, and
upon school committees over and over ; one who has
sharpened his tongue by occasional talk at ' society '
meeting — to say nothing of domestic practice.

I think of him as living in a two-story, white
house, with green blinds, (abutting closely upon the
road,) and whose front rooms he knows only by half-
yearly summations to a minister's tea-drinking, or
the severer ordeal of the sewing circle. His hands
are stiff and bony ; all the callosities of axe and
scythe and hoe, have blended into one horny texture,
the whole of the epidermis ; yet his eye has a keen
shrewd flash in it, from the depths of sixty years ;

CROPS AND PROFITS. 20*

and under the hair of his temple, you may see a
remaining bit of bleached skin, which shows that he
was — fifty odd years ago — a fair complexioned boy.

He has grown gray upon his straggling farm of
one or two hundred acres ; yet it is doubtful if the
farm will produce more now, than on the day he
entered into possession. Some walls have been
renewed, and the old ones are tottering. Broken
bar-ways have been replaced by new ones ; the wood
pile has its stock year after year ; and every tenth
year, when oil is down, the house has its coat of
paint — himself being mixer and painter — save under
the eaves, for which ladder work, he employs a
country journeyman, who takes half pay in pork or
grain. When ' help ' is low, he clears some out-
standing rye field, and commences a new bit of wall
— a disunited link, which possibly his heirs may
complete. Every year, six, -ten, or twelve hogs grow
into plethoric proportions ; every year they are
butchered, under a great excitement of hot water,
lard-tryings, unctuous fatty smells — sausage stuffing,
and sales to the ' packer ' of the town. Every year
he tells their weight to his neighbors, between ser-
vices, at meeting — with his thumb and forefinger in
the pocket of his black waistcoat, and the same sly
twinkle in his eye.

Every spring he has his ' veals ' — four, six, ten,

MY FARM.

— as the case may be ; and every spring he higgles
in much the same way with the town butcher, in
regard to age, to price, and to fatness. Every sum-
mer I see him in black hat and black dress coat, on
his wagon box, with butter firkins behind (the covers
closed on linen towels by the mistress at home),
driving to the market. And if I trot behind him on
his return, I see that his exchange has procured him
a two-gallon jug of molasses, a savory bundle of
dried codfish, a moisty paper parcel of brown sugar,
a tight little bag of timothy seed, and a new hoe, or
dung fork. But he never allows his spendings to
take up the gross sum of his receipts ; always there
goes home a modicum, which grows by slow and
gradual accretions into notes (secured by mortgage),
of some unthrifty neighbor, or an entry upon the
columns of his book at the Savings.

There is no amateur of them all, who receives as
much into a third, for what he may have to. sell ; nor
any one who spends as little, by two-thirds, for what
he may have to buy. It is incredible what such a
man will save in the way of barter ; and equally
incredible how rarely he finds occasion to pay out
money at all. Yet he is observant of proprieties ;
his pew-rent at the meeting house, and tax bills are
punctually honored. If I bargain with him, he loves
deliberation ; he has an opinion, but it only appears

CROPS AND PROFITS. 209

after long travail, and comparison of views — in the
course of which, he has whittled a stout billet of
wood to a very fine point. If I address him in the
field, he stops — leans on his hoe — and is willing to
lavish upon me the only valuable commodity for
which he makes no charge, to wit — his time.

Such a farmer repairs his barn promptly, when
the sills are giving way ; he does not hesitate at the
purchase of a ' likely pair of cattle ' at a bargain ;
he will buy occasional bags of guano, upon proof in
his turnip patch, or on his winter rye ; but if a sub-
soil plow is recommended, he gives a sly twinkle to
that gray eye of his, and a complimentary allusion to
the old ' Eagle No. 4,' which settles the business.

Such men are in their way — money-makers ; but
rather by dint of not spending, than by large profits.
These back-country gentlemen have their families —
educated (thanks to our school system) ; — boys, lank
at the- first, in short-armed coats, and with a pinch
of the vowel sounds in their speech ; but they do not
linger around such a homestead ; they come to the
keeping of hotels, or of woodyards on the Missis-
sippi ; many are written down in the dead-books of
the war.

Our mouey*saving farmer has his daughter too,
with her Chrysanthemums and striped-grass at the
door, and her pink monster of a Hydrangea. She has

210 MY FARM.

her Lady's book, and her Ledger, and on such liter-
ary food grows apace ; but such reading does not
instil a healthy admiration for the dairy or butter-
making ; rosy cheeks and incarmined arms do not
belong to the heroines of her dreams. I do not think
she ever heard of Kit Marlowe's song : —
" Come live with me, and be my love."

The faint echoes of the town in fashion plates and
sensation stories, make a weird, intoxicating music, in
listening to which, in weary bewilderment, she has
no ear for a brisk bird-song. No wild flowers from
the wood, are domesticated at her door. I catch no
sight of sun bonnets, or of garden trowels. Out of
door life is shunned ; and hence, come sallowness,
unhealthiness, narrowness — hot even the well-devel-
oped physique of the town girl, who has the pave-
ments for her marches and countermarches. I hear,
indeed, in summer weather, the tinkle of a piano ; but
it frights away the wrens ; and of the two, I must
say that I prefer the wrens.

All this unfits for thorough sympathy with the
eveiy day life of the father ; and when common
83"inpathies do not unite a family, its career breaks at
the death of the patron. If there be nothing in the
country life which can call out and sustain the pride
of all members of the country family, it can never
offer tempting career to the young.

CROPS AND PROFITS. 211

From these causes it is, that Dorothy will very
likely be a weazen-faced old maid, hopeful of any-
thing but the tender longing of Overbury's " Faire
Milke-Maide." Too instructed to admire the sharp
roughnesses of her wiry papa ; too liberalized, it
may be, by her reading, to bear mildly his peevish
closeness ; not kindling into a love of the beauties of
nature, because none will sympathize with that love
— dreaming over books that carry her to a land of
mirage, and make her still more unfit for the every
day duties of life ; — not recognizing the heroism of
successful struggle with mediocrity and homely du-
ties ; — yearning for what is not to be hers, she is
the ready victim of illnesses against which she has
neither the vigor nor the wish to struggle.

" So, Dorothy is gone ! Squire," says the country
parson ; " Let us pray to God for his blessing."

The darkened parlors are opened now ; the far-
mer's daughter is a bride, and death is the groom.

The gilt-backed books are dusted ; the cobwebs
swept away ; the black dress-suit rebrushed ; the
twinkle of the eye is temporarily banished; the
neighbors are gathered ; the wanting spoken ; tho
procession moves ; and the grave closes it all.

The Artemisias bloom on, and the purple tufts of
Hydrangea ; — poor Dorothy's flowers !

It is a little picture from the life of certain money-

212 MY FARM.

making fanners, who pinch — to save. There is a
jingling resonance of money at the end, but it is
not tempting ; it has come upon a barren life, with-
out glow or reach — a life whose parlors have been
always closed.

Does Farming Payf

AND now let us prdciser the whole matter, and
get rid, if we can, of that interminable ques-
tion— does Farming pay ?

Will shop-keeping pay ? Will tailoring or Doc-
toring pay ? Will life pay ? How do these ques-
tions sound ? And yet they are as reasonable as the
one we come to consider. Tell me of the capacity
of the Doctor — of the tailor ; tell me of his location,
and of his aptitude for the business, and I can
answer. Tell me of what material you propose to
make a farmer, tell me of his habits, and of the con-
dition of his soil and markets, and I can tell you if
he will find a profit or none ; and this, without re-
gard to Liebig, Short-horns, or the mineral theory.

Successful farming, it must be understood, is not
that which secures a large monied result this year,
and the next year, and the year after ; but it is that
which ensures to the land a constantly accumulating
fertility, in connection with remunerative results.
The theory of the agricultural doctors, that every

CROPS AND PROFITS. 213

year, as much of the nutritive elements of land should
be restored, as the annual cropping removes, may be
good ruling for virgin soil, or for the Lothians, or
Belgian gardens ; but for neglected or poor soil, a
larger restoration is needed ; — if not by manures, then
by tillage or drainage. Exact equipoise is difficult,
and implies no advance. It is neither easy nor
desirable to be forever balancing oneself upon a
tight rope. If progressive farming will not pay, it
is quite certain that no other farming will.

I know there are many quiet old gentlemen
among the hills, who have a sleepy way of putting
in their corn patch year after year, and a sleepy way
of clearing out their meagre pittance of drenched
manure, and a sleepy way of never spending, who
drop off some day, leaving money in their purse ; but
such success does not tempt the young ; it gives no
promise of a career. " Pork and cabbage for dinner,
and the land left lean," — might be written on their
gravestones.

The faculty of not-spending, is cultivated by
many farmers, a great deal more faithfully than
their lands ; but the faculty of right-spending (fac-
ultas impendendi) ,* is at the bottom of all signal

* The language of Columella, which is as keen and as much to
the point now as in the time of Tiberius: — " Qui studium agricola-
tioni dederit, sciat JICEC sibi advocanda : prudentiam rei, facultatem
impendendi, voluntatcm agendi."

214 MY FARM.

success in agriculture, as in other business pursuits.
This kind of enterprise is what farmers specially
lack ; and the lack is due to the secure tenure by
which they hold their property. The shopkeeper
who turns his capital three or four times in a year,
and who knows that -an old stock of goods will
involve heavy losses, is stimulated to constant
activity and watchfulness. The farmer, on the other
hand, inheriting his little patch of land, and feeling
reasonably sure of his corn and bacon, and none of
that incentive which attends risk, yields himself to a
stolid indifference, that overlays all his faculties.
Yet some of the Agricultural papers tell us with
pride, that bankruptcies among farmers are rare.
Pray why should they not be rare ? The man who
never mounts a ladder, will most surely never have a
fall from one. Dash, enterprise, spirit, wakefulness,
have their hazards, and always will ; but if a man
sleep, the worst that can befal him is only a bad
dream. This lethargy on the part of so many who
are content with their pork dinners and small spend,
ings, is very harmful to the Agricultural interests of
the country. Young America abhors sleepiness, and
does not gravitate, of choice, toward a pursuit which
seems to encourage it. The conclusion and the con-
viction have been, with earnest young men, that a
profession which did not stimulate to greater activity

CROPS AND PROFITS. 215

and larger triumphs, and a more Christian amplitude
of life, could not be worth the following. Nothing
about it or in it seemed to have affinity with the
great springs of human progress otherwheres ; a
lumpish, serf life, it seemed — bound to the glebe,
and cropping its nourishment thence, like kine.

Again, the extravagance of those who have
undertaken farming as a mere amusement, has
greatly damaged its character as a pursuit worthy
the enlistment of earnest workers. Our friend, Mr.
Tallweed, who, with his Wall-street honors fresh
upon him, comes to the country to grow tomatoes at
a cost of five dollars the dozen, and who puts a sack
of superphosphate to a garden row of sweet corn,
may make monstrosities for the exhibition tables, but
he is not inviting emulation ; he is simply commit-
ting an Agricultural debauch. And an Agricultural
debauch pays no better than any other.

But between these extremes, there is room for a
sober business faculty, and for an array of good
sense. With these two united, success may be
counted on ; not brilliant perhaps, for in farming
there are no opportunities for sudden or explosive
success. The farmer digs into no gold lead. He
springs no trap, like the lawyer or tradesmen. His
successes, when most decided, are orderly, normal,
and cumulative. He must needs bring a cool tern-

216 MY FARM.

per, and the capacity — to wait. If he plant a thous-
and guineas — however judiciously, — they will not
sprout to-morrow. There have been, I know, Multi-
caulis fevers, and Peabody seedlings ; but these are
exceptional ; and the prizes which come through
subornation of the Patent Office, are rare, and dearly
paid for.

Again, it must be remembered, that all success
depends more on the style of the man, than on the
style of his business. For one who is thoroughly in
earnest, farming offers a fair field for effort. But
the man who is only half in earnest, who thinks that
costly barns, and imported stock, and jaunty fencing,
and a nicely-rolled lawn are the great objects of
attainment, may accomplish pretty results ; but they
will be small ones.

So the dilettante farmer, who has a smattering
of science, whose head is filled with nostrums, who
thinks his salts will do it all ; who doses a crop — now
to feebleness, and now to an unnatural exuberance ;
who dawdles over his fermentations, while the neigh-
bor's oxen are breaking into his rye field ; who has
no managing capacity — no breadth of vision, — who
sends two men to accomplish the work of one — let
such give up all hope of making farming a lucra-
tive pursuit. If, however, a man be thoroughly in
earnest, if he have the sagacity to see all over his

CROPS AND PROFITS. 217

farm — to systematize his labor, to carry out his plans
punctually and thoroughly ; if he is not above
economies, nor heedless of the teachings of science,
nor unobservant of progress otherwheres — let him
work, — for he will have his reward.

But even such an one may, very likely, never
come to his " four in hand," except they be colts of
his own raising ; or to private concerts in his grounds
—except what the birds make.

10

HINDRANCES AND HELPS.

IV.

HINDRANCES AND HELPS.

The Argument.

IT will be perceived by the reader who has been
kind enough to follow me thus far, that this
book neither professes to be wholly practical, nor
yet wholly fanciful. It is — if I may use a profes-
sional expression — the fruit from a graft of the fan-
ciful, set upon the practical ; and this is a style of
grafting which is of more general adoption in the
world than we are apt to imagine. Commercial life
is not wholly free from this easy union, — nor yet the
clerical. All speculative forays, whether in the
southern seas or on the sea of metaphysics, are to be
credited to the graft Fancy ; and all routine, whether
of ledger or of liturgy, go to the stock-account of the
Practical. Nor is the last necessarily always profit,
and the other always loss. There are, I am sure, a

222 MY FARM.

great many Practical failures in the world, and the
number of Fanciful successes is unbounded.

I have endeavored more especially to meet and to
guide, so far as I may, the mental drift of those who
think of rural life, either present or prospective, —
not as a mere money-making career (like a dip into
mining) — nor yet as the idle gratification of a caprice.
No sensible man who establishes himself in a country
home, desires that the acres about him should prove
wholly unremunerative, and simple conduits of his
money ; nor yet does he wish to drive such a sharp
bargain with his land as will cause his home to be
shorn of all the luxuries, and the legitimate charms
of a country life. It is needless to say that I hope
for sensible readers, and direct my observations ac-
cordingly. With this intent I propose, in this last
division of my book, to review all the helps and hin-
drances to the success and the rational enjoyment of
a farm-life. I shall not reason the matter so closely
as I might do, if I were addressing the attendants
upon a County-Fair, but shall scatter my hints and
experiences through a somewhat ample margin of
illustrative text, from which the practical man may
excerpt his little nuggets of information or sugges-
tion,— as the case may be ; and the reader who is pas-
torally inclined, may find frequent dashes of country
perfume, that shall deftly cover the ammoniacal scents.

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 223

Agricultural Chemistry.

WHEN" a man buys clean copies of Liebig and
of Boussingault, and walks into possession
of his land with the books under his arm, and an
assured conviction that with their aid, he is about to
supplant altogether the old practice, and commit
havoc with old theories, and raise stupendous crops,
and drive all his old-fashioned neighbors to the wall, —
he is laboring under a mistake. His calves will very
likely take the ' scours ; ' the cut-worms will slice off
his phosphated corn ; the Irish maid will pound his
cream into a frothy chowder ; — in which events he
will probably lose his temper ; or, if a cool man, will
retire under a tree, and read a fresh chapter out of
Liebig.

There are a great many contingencies about
farming, which chemistry does not cover, and proba-
bly never will. People talk of agricultural chemistry
as if it were a special chemistry for the farmer's
advantage. The truth is (and it was well set forth, I
remember, in a lecture of Professor Johnson's), there
is no such thing as agricultural chemistry; and the
term is not only a misnomer, but misleads egregious-
ly. There is no more a chemistry of agriculture than
there is a chemistry of horse-flesh, or a conchology
of egg-shells. Chemistry concerns all organic and

224 MY FARM.

inorganic matters ; and, if you have any of these
about your barn-yards, it concerns them ; it tells you
— if your observation and experience can't determine
— what they are. Of course it may be an aid to
agriculture ; and so are wet-weather, and a good hoe,
and grub, and common-sense, and industiy. It may
explain things you would not otherwise understand ;
it may correct errors of treatment ; it may protect
you from harpies who vend patented manures — not
because it is agricultural chemistry ; but, I should say
rather, looking to a good deal of farm practice — be-
cause it is not agricultural, and because it deals in cer-
tainties, and not plausibilities. There is such a thing
as religion, and it helps, sometimes, to purify Demo-
crats and sometimes Republicans ; but who thinks of
talking — unless his head is turned — about democratic
religion, or republican Christianity ?

The error of the thing works ill, as all errors do
in the end. It indoctrinates weak cultivators with
the belief that the truths they find set down in
agricultural chemistries, are agricultural truths, as
well as chemical truths ; and thereupon, they mount
a promising one as a hobby, and go riding to the
wall. Chemistry is an exact science, and Agriculture
is an experimental art, and always will be, until rains
stop, and bread grows full-baked. A chemical truth
is a truth for all the world and the ages to come ;

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 225

and if you can use it in the making of shoe-blacking,
or to dye your whiskers, — do so ; but don't for that
reason call it Whisker-chemistry.

It is a chemical truth that an alkali will neutralize
an acid if you fumish enough of it ; and if, with that
truth festering in your brain, you can contrive to
neutralize your entire fund of oxalic-acid, so that no
sorrel shall thenceforth grow, — pray do so. But I do
not think you can ; and first, because the soil — to
which quarter you would very naturally direct your
alkaline attack — may be utterly free of any oxalic
acid whatever ; its presence in the plant, is no
evidence of its presence in the soil. Pears have a
modicum of pectic acid at a certain stage of their
ripeness, but I suspect it would puzzle a sharp chem-
ist to detect any in the soil of a pear-orchard. And
even if the acid were a mineral acid, and were neutral-
ized— it must be remembered — that to neutralize, is
only to establish change of condition, and not to de-
stroy ; — how know you that the little fibrous rootlets
will not pi-esently be laying their fine mouths to the neu-
tral base, and by a subtle alchemy of their own, work
out such restoration as shall mock at your efforts — in
all their rampant green, and their red tassels of bloom ?

The presence of any particular substance in a
crop, does not ipso facto, warrant the application of
the same substance to the soil as the condition of in-
10*

226 -J/T FARM.

creased vigor. The man -who, — having retired to
the shade for a fresh chapter of Liebig, — finds that
cellulose enters largely into the structure of his
plants, and thereupon gives his crops a dressing of
clean, pine saw-dust, would very likely have his labor
for his pains. That wonderful vital laboratory of
the plant, has its own way of effecting combinations ;
and stealing, as it does, the elements of its needed
cellulose, in every laughing toss of its leaves — it
scorns your offering.

It is a chemical truth that the starch in potatoes
or wheat, is the same thing with the woody fibre of
a tree ; but it is not an agricultural fact — differs as
widely from it in short, as a stiffened shirt-collar
from the mam-mast of a three-decker ship. A far-
mer comes to the chemist with some dust or bolus
from a far-away place, and asks what is in it ; he can
tell upon examination, and if, after such examination
he finds it to possess a large percentage of soluble
phosphoric acid, he will advise its use as a manure,
and can promise that it will contribute largely to the
vigor of a wheat crop ; all this — not simply because
phosphoric-acid is a constituent part of the grain, but
because he knows that other dressings containing a
like element, have invariably so contributed ; the
fact being established by repeated farm-trials. But
it is not a result determinable, so far as a field-crop

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 227

is concerned, by simple chemical investigation ; nor
could it be so determinable, unless you could estab-
lish the crop and feed it, under those conditions of
alienation from all other influences, by which or
under which alone, the chemist is enabled to estab-
lish the severity of his conclusions.

The power of the chemist to decompose, to un-
ravel, to tear in pieces, and to name and classify every
separate part, is something wonderful ; but his power
to combine is less miraculous. Give him all the car-
bonic-acid in the world and he cannot make us a
diamond, or a lump of charcoal. And when, with the
natural combination is associated a vital principle,
(as in plants), controlling, amplifying, decomposing
at its will, his power shrinks into still smaller dimen-
sions. Faithful and long-continued observation of
the mysterious processes of nature, will alone justify
a theory of plant-nutrition. A large part of this ob-
servation is supplied by the history of farm-ex-
periences, and another part is supplied by the earnest
investigations of special scientific inquirers. Where
the two tally and sustain each other, — one may be
sure of standing upon safe ground. But where they
are antagonistic, one has need to weigh conflicting evi-
dence well, not presuming hastily that either practical
experience, or a special science has, as yet, a mo-
nopoly of all the truths which lie at the base of the

228 MY FARM.

" mystery of husbandly." For these reasons it is,
that I say, — let no man rashly hope to revolutionize
farming, upon the strength of clean copies of Liebig
and Boussingault.

A Gypseous Illustration.

r I ^HJK farming community has a great respect for
JL men of science ; it never thinks of distrusting
any of their dicta, so long as they are conveyed in
scientific and only half-intelligible language. The
working-farmer is altogether too busy and shrewd
a man to controvert a statement of which he has
only vague and muddy comprehension. His dignity
is saved, by bowing acquiescence, and passing it un-
challenged. Thus, — if the Professor, talking in the
interests of agriculture, says : " Gypsum is very ser-
viceable in fixing the ammonia which is brought
down from the atmosphere by showers," the com-
mon-sense farm-listener is disposed to admit so airy
a truth. But if the Professor, meeting him over the
fence, says : " Plaster is an excellent manure," the
common-sense man retorts :

" Waal — d'n'know ; depends a leetle upon the
sile, in my opinion."

But as the scientific man confines himself mostly
to the language of the desk, and meets with an ad-
miring assent; he is apt, I think, to generalize some-

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 229

what too loosely and rashly in his theories of applied
science. Naturally enough, confident in the results
of his own investigation, he entertains a certain con-
tempt for a merely empirical art , he undervalues the
experience and practices of its patrons, and proposes
to lay down a law for them, which, having scientific
truth for its basis, may work unvarying results. I
do not know how I can better illustrate this, than by
noticing some of the various theories which have
obtained, in respect to the fertilizing action of
gypsum.

A fanner, for instance, finds himself within easy
reach of a large supply of this salt, and being chemi-
cally inclined, he sets himself to the task of reading
what has been written on the subject, — in the hope,
possibly, of astounding the neighbors, and glutting
the corn market.

At the outset I may remark, that farm-experience
has as yet found no law by which to govern the
application of gypsum ; on one field it succeeds ; in
another, to all appearance precisely the same, it fails ;
at one time it would seem as if its efficacy depended
on showers following closely upon its application ;
in other seasons, showers lose their effect. In one
locality, a few bushels to the acre work strange
improvement, and in another, fifty bushels work no
change whatever. Now — it is a hill pasture that de-

230 MY FARM.

lights in it, and again — it is an alluvial meadow.
Hence it offers peculiarly one of those cases, where
an observant and earnest farmer would be desirous
of calling in the aid of scientific opinion.

And what will he find ?

Sir Humphry Davy, that devout old gentleman,
who was as good an angler as he was chemist, ex-
ploded the idea prevalent in his day — that gypsum
was beneficial by promoting putrefaction of manurial
substances — and expressed the opinion that it was
absorbed by the plants bodily; at least by those
plants whose ash showed large percentage of sul-
phate of lime. Sir Humphry was honest ; the
theory was not too absurd ; the farmers were doubt-
less glad to get a handle to their talk about plaster ;
and so for a dozen years or more, the lucerne and
clover went on absorbing the gypsum. At last
some inquisitive party ascertained, by careful experi-
ment, that a field of clover not treated with gypsum,
contained as large a percentage of sulphate of lime in
its ash, as another field which had been treated to
the salt. The inference was plain, that the superior
vigor of the last was not attributable to simple
absorption of the sulphate, and the theory of Davy
quietly lapsed.

Chaptal, the French chemist, speaks of gypsum in
a loose way as a stimulator ; but in what particular

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 231

direction its stimulating qualities are supposed to
work, he does not inform us.

About the year 1840, I think, Dr. Dana, of Low-
ell, published a bouncing little book called a Muck
Manual, in which he affirmed very stoutly that gyp-
sum was quietly decomposed by the roots of the
plants, when its sulphuric acid flew off at the silicates,
and worried them into soluble shape ; and its lime,
on the other side, flew off at the geine, pounding
that into a good relish ; in short, he made out so charm-
ing a little theory, — so vivacious in its action, — so
appetizing to turnips, and so authoritatively stated,
that we farmers must needs accept it at a glance, and
take off our hats, with—" That's it,"—" I thought so,"
— " The very thing."

But straight upon this, like a thunder-clap, conies
Liebig,* who declares, in his authoritative way, that
the value of gypsum " is due to its faculty of fixing
the small quantity of carbonate of ammonia, brought
down by the rain and the dew ; " at this, we farmers
put on our hats again, and waited for the rain.

Some two or three years after, M. Boussingault,
who had gone through the South-American wars
under Bolivar, and studied agriculture at Quito, as
well as on his own country-estate of Bechelbron,

* His first book appeared in America, if I am not mistaken,
iii 1841.

232 MY FARM

entertains us with the report, — in his mildlv authorita-
tive "way, and sustained by great weight of evidence,
• — that Dr. Liebig is utterly wrong in his theory,
and that the value of gypsum is due entirely to the
lime which it introduces into the soil ; — the sulphuric
acid, which played such a lively game under the pen
of Dr. Dana — counting for nothing.

By the time this stage of the inquiry is reached,
the investigating young farmer, with whom I entered
upon this illustration, might be safely supposed to
be slightly muddled ; and yet, with a comparatively
clear recollection of the last-presented theory in his
mind, he might farther be supposed to consider the
propriety of buying lime at eight cents a bushel,
rather than gypsum at sixty cents.

But he has hardly formed this decision, and seen
his lime dumped upon his clover-field, when he
receives a copy of Dr. Liebig's final work upon the
Natui-al Laws of Husbandry. Turning with nervous
haste to the Doctor's discussion of the sulphate of
lime, he finds these startling statements : " It may be
safely assumed that in cases where gypsum is found
to be favorable to the growth of clover, the cause
must not be sought for in the lime ; and since arable
soil has the property of absorbing ammonia from the
air and rain water, and fixing it in a higher degree
than salts of lime, there is only the sulphuric acid

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 233

left to look to for an explanation of the favorable ac-
tion of gypsum."

And in this muddle I leave our young farmer,
contemplating, in an abstracted manner, his lime
heap, and reflecting upon the wonders of nature.

Yet it is not altogether a muddle. Science has
failed in substantiating a theory of action — only where
all farm experience is equally at fault ; when the two
march together, they pluck up triumphs by the roots.
The particular action of gypsum, with a safe rule for
its application, remains one of the mysteries of the
craft ; and there are a great many others. Science is
not discredited, however, by the antagonism of such
men as Liebig and Boussingault. Stout men will
stagger, when they explore the way for us into the
dark. The dignity of science will suffer more from
the pestilent iteration of smatterers who presume to
solve all the riddles of nature in their own little
retorts. And the danger is all the greater from the
fact that uninstructed farmers render an instinctive
respect and confidence to a man who professes
familiarity with science. It is never imagined by
them, that one who would write C8H4O3-[-2HO
for malic acid, — would tell an untruth or take airs
upon himself. Yet I think it may be safely
conceded that a rash man, or a mischievous man
may cover falsehood under such formulae, as easily

234 MY FARM.

— as if he edited a morning paper. And I really
do not know how I could put the matter more
strongly.

With respect to gypsum, — and in close of this
special topic, — I may say that I have found it some-
times of service upon young clover, and sometimes
of no service at all. Upon old pasture land, it has,
with me, uniformly counted for nothing ; and again,
I have never failed to find an appreciable increase of
the crop of potatoes, where I have sown gypsum in
the trenches at planting. It is certain that we have
no right to condemn the salt, simply because we
cannot detect the precise mode of its operation. That
mode, I am inclined to believe very complex, and
that no uniform law will ever meet the requirements
of the case ; nor have I a doubt but that in process
of time, and under the tests of a future and finer
chemistry, and of a fuller experience, every one of
the dilute theories named, will throw down its little
flocculent precipitate of truth.

Science and Practice.

I REMEMBER once, in company with a crowd
of interested auditors, listening to a justly
distinguished pomologist, who, in the course of his
peroration in praise of scientific study, suggested the

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 235

great advantage of analyzing all the different pears,
and the different soils under culture, so that they
might be minutely adjusted each to each. Of course
the worthy old gentleman never did such a thing ;
and (being a shrewd man) never means t:>. Yet it
seemed not a very bad thing — to say. The lesser
pomologists all wagged their heads approvingly, but
without any serious thought of following the advice ;
the embryo chemists fairly gushed over in approval ;
and the only doubt expressed, was in the faces of cer-
tain earnest, honest, old farmers, — who had already
paid their twenty-five dollars for a soil analysis, to
the eminent Professor Mapes, — and of one or two
scientific adepts, who, I thought, gave a twirl to their
tongues in the left cheek, — rather evasively. In
general, I find that the most modest opinions in regard
to the agricultural aids of applied science, come from
the men of most distinguished scientific attainment ;
and the exaggerated promises and suggestions flow
from those who are slightly indoctrinated, and who
make up by uproar of words, and aggregation of pre-
tentious claims, for the quiet confidence and far-sight-
ed moderation of real science. Even so we find a
General in command — looking from end to end of the
field — modest in his promises, doubtful by reason of
his knowledge ; while some blatant Colonel, puffy
with regimental valor, aud knowing the positions only

236 MY FARM.

by the confused roar of artillery, will pompously
threaten to bag every man of the enemy !

But aside from the exaggeration alluded to, — and
of which I should reckon so minute a soil-analysis
as to determine whai; ground would most favor the
development ofpectcse in a baking pear, and of pectic
acid in a Bartlett, a fair sample, — there are other
hindrances to the effective and profitable co-labora-
tion of scientific men with the practical farmer. The
latter has a wall about him of self-confidence, igno-
rance of technicals, gveat common-sense, and awkward
prejudices, which the scientific man, with his preci-
sion, his fineness of observation, his remote analogies,
and his impatience of guess-work, is not accustomed
or fitted to undermine. He may breach indeed suc-
cessfully all the old methods, but if the old methodist
does not detect, or recognize the breach, what boots
it ? Science must stoop to the work, and show him
a corn crop that is larger and grown more cheaply
than his own ; this is sending a shot home.

Let me illustrate, by a little talk, which I think
will have the twang of realism about it.

A shrewd chemist, devoting himself to the mis-
sionary work of building up farming by the aid of
his science, pays a parochial visit to one of the back-
sliders whom he counts most needful of reformation.
The backslider, — I will call him .Nathan, — is breaking

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 237

up a field, and is applying the manure in an unfer-
mented and unctuous state ; — the very act of sinning,
according to the particular theory of our chemist,
perhaps, who urges that manures should be applied
only after thorough fermentation.

He approaches our ploughing farmer with a
" Good morning."

" Mornin'," returns Nathan (who never wastes
words in compliment).

" I see you use your manure unfermented."

" Waal, I d'n'know — guess it's about right ; smells
pooty good, doan't it ? "

" Yes, but don't you lose something in the smell?"

" Waal, d'n'know ; — kinder hard to bottle much
of a smell, ain't it ? "

"But why don't you compost it; pack up your
long manure with turf and muck, so that they will
absorb the ammonia ? "

" The what ?— (Gee, Bright ! )"

" Ammonia ; precisely what makes the guano act
so quickly."

" Arnmony, is it ? Waal, — guanner has a pooty
good smell tew ; my opinion is, that manure ought to
have a pooty strong smell, or 'taint good for nuthin'."

Scientific gentleman a little on the hip ; but re-
vives under the pungency of the manure.

" But if you were to incorporate your long manure

238 M7 FARM.

with turf and other material, you would make the
turf good manure, and put all in a better state for
plant food."

" Waal — (considering) — I've made compo's afore
now ; — dooz pooty well for garden sass and sich like,
but it seems to me kinder like puttin' water to half
a glass o' sperit ; it makes a drink a plaguey sight
stronger'n water, no doubt o' that ; but after all 's
said and dun, — 'taint so strong as the rum. (Haw,
Buck ; why don't ye haw ! )"

Scientific gentleman wipes his spectacles, but fol-
lows after the plough.

" Do you think, neighbor, you're ploughing this
sod as deeply as it should be ? "

"Waal— (Gee, Bright !)— it's as folks think; I
doan't like myself to turn up much o' the yaller ; it's
a kind o' cold sile."

" Yes, but if you exposed it to the air and light,
wouldn't it change character, and so add to the depth
of your land ? "

" Doant know but it might ; but I ha'n't much
opinion o' yaller dirt, nohow ; I kinder like to put
my corn and potatoes into a good black sile, if I can
get it."

" But color is a mere accidental circumstance, and
has no relation to the quality of the soil."

(" Gee, Bright ! gee ! ")

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 239

"There are a great many mineral elements of
food lying below, which plants seek after ; don't you
find your clover roots running down into the yellow
soil ? "

" Waal, clover's a kind of a tap-rooted thing, —
nateral for it to run down ; but if it runs down arter
the yaller, what's the use o' bringin' on it up ? "

The scientific gentleman sees his chance for a
dig.

" But if you can make the progress of the roots
easier by loosening the sub-soil, or incorporating a
portion of it with the upper soil, you increase the
facilities for growth, and enlarge your crops."

" Waal, that's kinder rash'nal ; and ef I could find
a man that would undertake to do a little of the
stirrin' of the yaller, without bringin' much on't up,
and bord himself, I'd furnish half the team and let
him go ahead."

" But wouldn't the increased product pay for all
the additional labor ? "

" Doant b'lieve it would, nohow, between you
and I. You see, you gentlemen with your pockets
full o' money (scientific gentleman coughs — slightly),
talk about diggin' here and diggin' there, and turnin'
up the yaller, and making compo's, but all that takes
a thundeiin' sight o' work. (Gee, Bright ! — g'lang,
Buck!)"

240 MY FARM.

The scientific gentleman wipes his spectacles, and
tries a new entering wedge.

" How do you feed your cattle, neighbor ? "

" Waal, good English hay ; now and then a bite
o' oats, 'cordin' as the work is."

" But do you make no beeves ? "

" Heh ? "

" Do you fatten no cattle ? "

" Yaas, long in the fall o' the year I put up four
or five head, about the time turnips are comin' in."

" And have you ever paid any attention to their
food with reference to its fat-producing qualities, or
its albuminoids ? "

" (Gee, Bright !)— bumy— what ? "

" Albuminoids — name given to flesh producers, in
distinction from oily food."

" Oh, — never used 'em. Much of a feed ? (G'lang,
Buck ! )"

" They are constituent parts of a good many
varieties of food ; but they go only to make muscle ;
it isn't desirable you know to lay on too much fatty
matter."

" Heh ?— keep oft7 the fat do they ? (Gee, Bright !)
Dum poor feed, then, in my opinion."

By this time the end of the furrow is reached,
and the scientific gentleman walks pensively toward
the fence, while Nathan's dog that has been sleeping

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 241

under a tree, vrakes up, and sniffs sharply at the
bottom of the stranger's pantaloons.

I have written thus much, in this vein, to show
the defensible position of many of the old stylo
farmers, crusted over with their prejudices — many of
them well based, it must be admitted — and armed
with an inextinguishable shrewdness. The only way
to prick through the rind is to show them a big crop
grown at small cost, and an orderly and profitable
method, gradually out-ranking their slatternly hus-
bandry. Is!" or can I omit to say in this connection,
that the free interchange of questions and answers,
and unstarched companionship, Avhich belonged to the
New Haven Agricultural Convention of 1860, are
among the best means of breaking down the walls
of demarcation, and establishing chemical affinities
between Science and Practice.

Lack of Precision.

T I ^HU; manufacturer, in ordinary times, can tell us
_1_ with a good deal of certainty how much work
he can turn out in any given month, and what his
profits will be. The farmer, whose crops are depend-
ent in a greater or less degree upon contingencies of
wet, or rain, or cold, over which he has no control, is
less positive ; and as a consequence, I think, he grows
11

242 MY FARM.

into an exceedingly loose habit of thought in all that
regards his affairs. Notwithstanding his punctilious-
ness in moneyed details, and his sharpness at a bar-
gain, he has a more vague idea of his real where-
abouts in the world of profit and loss, than any man
of equal capital that you can find. If he has a little
pile in stocking-legs or in Savings that grows, — it is
profit ; if he has a little debt at the grocer's or the
bank that groAvs, — it is loss.

There is not one in fifty who can tell with any-
thing approaching to accuracy, how much his grain
or roots cost him the bushel ; not one in fifty who
can show anything like a passable balance sheet of a
year's transactions. He may put down all the money
he receives in stumpy figures, and all the money he
pays out in other stumpy figures, and set his oldest
boy to the Christmas reckoning. But his rent, his
personal labor, the wear and tear, the waste, the con-
sumption, the unmarketed growth, assume only a
hazy indeterminate outline, within which the sum of
the stumpy figures is lost. Whether he is raising
corn at a price larger than the market one, or selling
potatoes for a third less than they cost him, is an
inquiry he never submits to the fatigue and precision
of accurate investigation. He thinks matters are
about so and so ; his oxen are worth about so much ;
his oats will turn about thirty bushels to the acre.

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 243

Nay, he carries this looseness of language into
matters of positive knowledge ; the straightest stick
of timber in the world is only about straight, and the
politicians are about as dishonest as they well can be.

Suppose we try him upon his corn crop ; we sub-
mit that it looks a little yellow.

" Waal — yes, kinder yeller ; t'ain't fairly caught
hold o' the dung yit " (pegging away with his hoe).

" Do you think there's any profit in growing corn,
hereabout ? "

" Waal — don't know as there is much ; kinder
like to make a little pork, and have a little about for
the hens."

" But why not buy your corn and raise something
else, provided you can buy it, as you often can, for
sixty or seventy cents the bushel."

" Waal — kinder like to have a little ' heater ' piece ;
the boys, you see, hoe it out in odd spells ; don't pay
out much for help."

" But the boys could earn their seventy-five cents
a day, couldn't they ? "

" Waal — suppose they might — about ; but kinder
like to have 'em about home."

" Have you ever tried carrots ? "

" Waal — no ; kinder back-achin* work to weed
can-its."

And not only does this apathetic indifference to

FARM.

the relative profits of different crops prevail, but there
is no proper business estimate of home labor.

We often see it affirmed, admiringly, that such
or such a man has built an enormous quantity of wall
— so many feet high and broad — or dug out so many
rocks, and mostly with his own hands, or in spare
time with his own ' help ' ; in short, it is intimated
that all is done at little expense. Now this is very
absurd; great work involves great labor ; and great
labor has its price. You may do it in the night, and
call it no labor ; you may do it yourself, and call it no
expense ; but there is, nevertheless, a great deal of
positive expenditure of both muscle and time which,
if not given to this work, might have been given to
another. It may count much for your industry, but
not one whit for your farming, until we learn if tho
labor has been judiciously expended — has paid, in
short. And to determine this, we must estimate the
labor at its market value — whether done in the night,
or on holidays.

If I see a house painted all over in diamonds of
every hue, and express distaste for the wanton waste
of labor, it is no answer to me to say — that the man
did it in odd hours. What will not pay for doing in
even hours, will never pay for doing in odd hours.
It is no excuse for waste of time and muscle, to waste
them in the dark. Every spade or hammer -stroke

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 245

upon the farm — no matter whether done by the
master or the master's son, or master's wife — no
matter whether done after hours or before hours —
must be estimated at the sum such labor would com-
mand in the market.

The fallacy is only another indication of that
woful lack of precision of which I have been speak-
ing, and which, I am sorry to say, infects more or less
the current Agricultural literature. A well-meaning
man gives some account of an experiment that he
has undertaken, and is so loose in statement of
details, so inexplicit, so neglectful to make known
previous conditions of soil, or conditions of cost, that
he might as well have burst a few soap-bubbles in
the face of the public.

Even in reports of State societies, the estimate of
labor and other expenses on premium-crops is so
various, so conflicting, often so patently and egre-
giously wrong, that it is quite impossible to arrive
even at a safe average. I find among these reports,
the calculation of some short-figured fanner, who has
competed for a premium upon his carrots, and who
has the effrontery to put down the cost of cultivating
and harvesting an acre — at twenty dollars ! Yet he
won his premium, and the estimate stands recorded.
The committee who audited and accepted such a
report — if donkeys were on exhibition — should have
been put round the track.

246 MY FARM.

Knowing too Much.

I SOMETIMES see in the papers, advertisements
of gardeners, who can be seen at Thorburn's,
in John street, on stated mornings, when they hold
their levee, who insist upon ' entire control.' A
modest man, going among them, and entreating the
services of one at forty dollars a month, and ' boord,'
feels very much as if he were hiring himself to him
in some subordinate capacity, — with the privilege of
occasionally sniffing the perfume through the open
doors of the green-house. There may be those
country-lovers who enjoy this state of dependence
upon the superior authority of a gardener ; but I do
not care to be counted among them. I have too large

an acquaintance among the sufferers. M , an

amiable gentleman, and a friend of mine, and an ex-
treme lover of flowers, dared no more to pick a rose
without permission of ' Wallace,' than he dares to
be caught reading an unpopular journal. ' Wallace '
is instructed ; but in the assertion of his authority,
— impudent. And when at last my friend summoned
resolution to dismiss him, there came a dray to the
back-entrance, which was presently loaded down
with the private cuttings and perquisites of the ac-
complished gardener.

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 247

When a gardener knows so much as to refuse any
suggestions, and to disallow any right on the part of
the proprietor to stamp his place with his own indi-
viduality of taste, — he knows altogether too much.
This is the Scotch phase of knowing too much ; but
there is an American one that is even worse, and
which puts a raw edge upon country socialities.

I find no man so disagreeable to meet with, as
one who knows everything. Of course we expect it
in newspaper editors, and allow for it. But, to meet
a man engaged in innocent occupations — over your
fence, who is armed cap-a-pie against all new ideas, —
who ' knew it afore,' or ' has heerd so,' or doubts
it, or replies to your most truthful sally ' t'ain't so,
nuther,' is aggravating in the extreme.

There is many a small farmer, scattered up and
down in New England, whose chief difficulty is —
that he knows too much. I do not think a single
charge against him could cover more ground, or
cover it better. It is hard to make intelligible to a
third party, his apparent inaccessibility to new ideas,
his satisfied quietude, his invincible inertium, his
stolid, and yet shrewd capacity to resist novelties,
his self-assurance, his scrutinizing contempt for out-
sidedness of whatever sort — his supreme and ineradi-
cable faith in his own peculiar doctrine, whether of
politics, religion, ethnology, ham-curing, manuring,
or farming generally.

248 M7 FARM.

It is not alone that men of this class cling by a
particular method of culture, because their neighbor-
hood has followed the same for years, and the results
are fair ; but it is their pure contempt for being
taught ; their undervaluation of what they do not
know, as not worth knowing ; their conviction that
their schooling, their faith, their principles, and their
understanding are among God's best works ; and
that other peoples' schooling, faith, principles, and
views of truth — whether human or Divine — are in-
ferior and unimportant.

Yet withal, there is a shrewdness about them
which forces upon you the conviction that they do
not so much dislike to be taught, as dislike to seem
to be taught. They like to impress you with the
notion that what you may tell them is only a new
statement of wrhat they know already. It is incon-
ceivable that anything really worth knowing has not
come within the range of their opportunities ; or if
not theirs, then of their accredited teachers, the town
school-master, the parson, the doctor, or the news-
paper. In short, all that they do not know which
may be worth knowing, is known in their town, and
they are in some sort partners to it.

Talk to a small farmer of this class about Mechi,
or Lawes, or the new theory of Liebig, and he gives
a complacent, inexorable grin — as much as to say —

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 249

" Can't come that stuff over me ; I'm too old a
bird."

So indeed he is ; and a tough bird at that. His
mind is a rare psychological study ; so balanced on
so fine a point, so immovable, — with such guys of pre-
judice staying him on every side, — so subtle and yet
so narrow, — so shrewd and yet so small, — so intelli-
gent and yet so short-sighted If such men could
bring themselves to think they knew less, I think
they would farm far better.

Opportunity for Culture.

THERE is a plentiful crop of orators for all the
agricultural fairs (most of them city lawyers,
not knowing a Devon from a Hereford), who delight
in expatiating upon the opportunities for culture
afforded by the quiet and serenity of a farm-life.
Now there is no life in the world, which, well hus-
banded, has not its opportunities for culture ; but to
say that the working-farmer's life is specially favored
in this respect, is the grossest kind of an untruth.

Long evenings, forsooth ! And the orator

who talks in this style is probably crawling out of his
bed at eight in the morning, while the farmer is
n-field since four. And are not these four hours to
be made good to him in sleep or rest ? The man
11*

250 MY FARM.

who rises at four, and works all day, as fanners
work, or who is even a-field all day, is sleepy at nine
P. M. It is not, perhaps, a graceful truth ; but it is
a physiological one. Nothing provokes appetite for
sleep so much, as out-of-door life. You may over-
strain the nervous system, and dodge the night ; but
a strain upon the muscular system must have its
balance of repose. There are> indeed, exceptional
cases, where a working man with an undue prepon-
derance of brain, will steal hours between his labor
for intellectual cultivation ; but he does it under
difficulties, which be is the first to recognize and de-
plore. Even the most skilled of working farmers
arrive at their conclusions by an intuitive sagacity,
which is wholly remote from the logical processes
of books ; and their straight- forward common-sense,
however correct in its judgments, grows into a dis-
taste for the subtle arts of rhetoric.

During the more leisure period of winter, the
practical mind of the farmer will gravitate more
easily toward mechanical employments, than toward
those which are intellectual. He will have his
Agricultural-journal and others, may be, to whoso
reading he will bring a ripe and hardy judgment.
But his thoughts will be more among his cattle and
his bins, than among books. " He cannot get wis«
dom that glorieth in the goad, and that driveth oxen."

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 251

There may be a spice of exaggeration in the dogma
of Ecclesiasticus ; but whoever undertakes the pro-
fession of working-farmer, must accept its fatigues
and engrossments, and honor them as he can. It
is a business that will not be halved. Vulcan can
make no Ganymede — strain as he will. The horny
hands, the tired body, the hay-dust and the scent of
the stables are inevitable. The fine young fellow,
flush with Johnston's Elements, and buoyant with
Thomson's Seasons, may rebel at this view of the
case ; but let him take three hours in a hay-field of
August — behind a revolver (rake), with the reins
over his neck, the land being lumpy, and the colt
dipping a foot over the traces at the end of every
bout, and I think he will have sweaty confirmation
of its general truth. Or let him try a day at the tail
of a Michigan-plough, in a wiry and dusty last-year's
stubble : — the horses are fresh and well trained, and
the plough enters bravely to its work — smoothly at
first, but presently an ugly stone flings it cleanly from
the furrow, and there is a backing, — a heavy tug, and
on he goes with his mind all centred in the plough-
beam, and nervously watching its little pitches and
yaws ; he lifts a hand cautiously to wipe the perspi-
ration from his forehead (a great imprudence), and the
plough sheers over gracefully, and is out once more.
There is a new backing and straining, and the plough

252 ' MY FARM

is again in place ; no more wiping of the forehead
until the headlands are reached. Watery blisters are
rising fast on his hands, and a pebble in his shoe is
pressing fearfully on a bunion ; but at the headland
he finds temporary relief, and a small can of weak
barley-water. Refreshed by this, but somewhat
shaky in the legs, he pushes on with zeal — possibly
thinking of Burns, and how he walked in glory and
in joy,

" Behind his plough,
Upon the mountain side,"

— and wondering if he re.ally did? There are no
' wee-tipped ' daisies to beguile him ; not a mouse is
stirring ; only a pestilent mosquito is twanging some-
where behind his left ear, and a fine aromatic powder
rises from the dusty stubble and tickles his nostrils.
So he comes to the headland once more and the can ;
if he had a copy of Burns in his pocket, it might be
pleasant for the fine young fellow to lie off under the
shade for a while, and ' improve his mind.' But he
has no Burns — in fact, no pocket in his overalls ; be-
sides which, the season is getting late ; he must finish
his acre of ploughing. Over and over he eyes the sun
— it is very slow of getting to its height, and when
noon comes it finds him in a very draggled and wilty
state ; but he mounts one of the horses, and the mate
clattering after, he leads off to the barn and the bait

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 253

ing. He has a sharp appetite for the beef and the
greens, but not much, at the nooning, for Burns or
Bishop Butler. The return to the field haunts him ;
but the work is only half done. Rubbing his puffy
hands with a raw onion (by the advice of Pat), he
enters bravely upon a new bout of the ploughing.
The sun is even more searching than in the morning ;
the mosquitoes have come in flocks ; the bunion, ag-
gravated by the morning's pebble, angers him sorely,
and destroys all his confidence in the commentators
upon Burns.

At night, more draggled and wilted than at
noon, he turns out his team, and if he means system-
atic farm-work, will give the horses a thorough rub-
bing-down ; afterward, if he cherish cleanly preju-
dices,— the fine young fellow will have need for a
rubbing-down of himself. This refreshes, and gives
courage for the milking — which, with those puffy-
fingers, is no way amusing. Again the appetite is good
— even for a cut of salt-beef, and dish of cold greens.
Thereupon Pat, the Irish lad, sits upon the doorstep
and ruminates, — with a short, black pipe in his mouth.
Our draggled young friend aims at something better ;
it is wearily done ; but at least the show shall be
made. The candle is lighted, and a book pulled down
— possibly Prof. Johnson on Peats ; the millers dart
into the flame : peats, and hydrates, and oxides, and

254 MY FARM.

peats again, mix strangely; a horned beetle dashes
at his forehead, and makes him wakeful for a mo-
ment ; there is a frog droning in the near pond very
drowsily — 'peats — peats — peats;' the drift of the
professor is lost ; Pat ruminates on the step ; a big
miller flaps out the flame of his candle ; — it is no mat-
ter— our fine young fellow is in a sound snooze.

So much for the working farmer ; and we cannot
have armies without privates ; and privates are many
of them ' fine young fellows.'

Isolation of Farmers.

I AM reminded that a farmer has no need to fag
himself with hard field work. To a certain
extent this is true ; but only " A master's eye fattens
the horse, and only a master's foot the ground."

If farming be undertaken as an amusement, ab-
sence is possible ; indeed, the longer the absence, the
greater the amusement — to the onlookers ; but if
farming be undertaken as a business, presence is im-
perative— presence, with its associations, and its com-
parative isolation.

Of the more familiar associations, a type may be
had in Pat, sitting on the doorstep at dusk, ruminat-
ing and smoking a black-stemmed pipe. The isola-
tion is less obvious, but more galling. Farms do not

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 255

lie extensively in cities ; and the least fear we live
under, — is one of mobs. In fact, there is not even a
habit of congregation in farmers. They meet behind
the church, between services, — in a starched way ;
they drive to town-meetings in their best toggery, and
discuss ballotings and the weather — possibly linger an
hour or two about the tavern or a pet grocer's ; but
they do not meet as townspeople meet — on the walk,
over counters, on the railway, in the omnibus, and in
each other's houses. I have already taken occasion to
dust out their darkened parlors ; but the dust will
gather again. They have no Market-Fairs* which will
bring them together with samples of their crops, to
compare notes, and prices, and methods of culture.

There is no coherence of the farmers as a body —
no trade-guild — no banding of endeavor to work a
common triumph, or to ferret out a common abuse.
For years, in many parts of New England, the shaep
culture has been entirely ruined by the ravages of
lawless town-dogs ; and the farmers groan over it,
and bury the dead sheep, and whisper valorously be-
tween church services about bludgeons and buck-

* A strong effort, I am glad to see, is making to establish them
in various parts of the country. In my own neighborhood the old
town of Cheshire has made a bold stride in this direction, and I
trust not in vain. They are worth more to the true interests of
farming than all the horse-trotting fairs which could be packed into

256 MY FARM.

shot, but never make a concerted urgent protest ; 01
if they rally so far as to send one of their own people
to the Legislature, — he, poor fellow, does not pass ten
days under the fingers of the lobbyists, but he sinks
into the veriest dribblet of a politician ; and gives
the last proof of it, by making a pompous speech
on ' Federal Relations,' — not worth the carcass of a
ewe lamb.

Under these conditions, any new and valuable
methods of farm-practice do not spread with any
rapidity ; they hobble lamely over innumerable flank-
ing walls. It is possible they may get an airing in
the Agricultural journals ; but good and serviceable
as these journals are, their statements do not influ-
ence, like personal communications. Reforms want
the ring of spoken words, and some electric social
chain traversing a whole district, and flashing with
neighborly talk.

The man of education, giving himself over to the
retirement of a farm-life, will find this isolation, soon-
er or later, grating sorely. Whatever love of the pur-
suit— its cares, indulgences, attractions, successes —
may engross him, a certain attrition with the world is
as necessary to his mental health, and briskness of
thought — as a rubbing-post for his pigs. He may let
himself off in newspapers, or he may thumb his library
and the journals, but these ofter but dead contact, and

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 257

possess none of that kindling magnetism which comes
from personal intercourse. Type grows wearisome
at last, however stocked with information and
gorgeous fancies ; and a man frets for the lively re-
bound of discussion.

Friends from the city may drop upon you from
time to time, exercising this compassion for your re-
tirement ; and they treat you compassionately. Of
course the novelty of the scene and the life has charms
for any metropolitan, whatever his tastes ; and he
bears himself very briskly at the first. The view is
charming ; the well-water is charming ; the big oaks
(they are all maples) are charming. And his eye
falls upon a riotous hedge of Osage-orange, " Dear
me, that's the hawthorn ; how beautiful it is ! "

Of course you do not correct him ; in fact, you
partake of his exhilaration, and seem to see things
with new eyes.

" And, bless me, here's your boy (its a girl) ; how
old is he ? " (patting her head).

What a fine flow of spirits he is in, to be sure !
You show him up and down your grounds (always
' your grounds,' he calls them, if it be only a potato
garden).

Presently his eye lights upon a blooming Weigelia.
" Ah, a dwarf apple ! and do you go largely into
fruit ? " upon which you offer him a Red-Astrachan,

258 MY FARM.

and remark that the Weigelia has not borne thus far ;
it is a Chinese shrub, and little understood as yet.

" Is it possible — Chinese ! so far ; — it seems to
thrive." And it does.

And you stroll with him upon the hill ; though
you cannot but see that his mind is warping back to
* laryngal affections,' or ' half-of-one-per-cent. off.'

A lucky interruption appears, in the shape of a
fine Devon cow. You venture to call his attention to
her, and ask if she is not a fine animal ?

" Admirable ! " and with a kind interest, he asks
— if she isn't a short-horn ?

" Not a Short-horn," you reply ; and in way of
apology for his error, remark that she has broken off
one of her horns in the fence.

At which he says, — " Ah, I see now ; — but re-
sembles the Short-horns, doesn't she ? "

" Yes — " you return, mildly — " a little ; her legs
are like ; and I think she carries her tail — a good deal
in the Short-horn way."

At which he is himself again, and is prepared for
a new farm venture. It comes presently, as a fine
brood of Bremen geese waddle into sight.

" Muscovies ? "

" No, not ducks — geese — Bremen geese, but re-
semble the Muscovies ; " (as unlike as they are to sea«
fowl ; bxit shall not a host keep his guest in good
humor ?)

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 259

" I shouldn't have known 'em from Muscovies,"
he says. And I really don't suppose that he would.

A good-natured city-guest, who comes to see you
in your retirement, is very apt to talk in this strain
upon farming matters. It is engaging, but not im-
proving.

You stroll, by and by, into the library ; and
leave him for a few moments lounging in the arm-
chair, while you slip out to give some orders to the
ditchers in the meadow.

Upon your return, entering somewhat brusquely
(expecting to find him deep in some book), you
waken him out of a sound sleep.

" Upon my word," he says, " this is a beautiful
air ; if I lived here I should sleep half my time."

The reflection is a somewhat dismal one, — though
well meant.

All this, however, illustrates what I want to say
— that the citizen engrossed in active professional or
business pursuits, when he visits a farm friend, goes
with the very sensible purpose and hope — of escaping
for a while the interminable mental strain of the city,
and of giving himself up to full relaxation. And this
fact makes the isolation of which I have spoken, more
apparent than ever.

And it is an isolation that cannot altogether be
left behind one. On your visits to the city, friends

200 MY FARM.

will remark your seediness, not unkindly, but with an
oblique eye-cast up and down your figure — as a jockey
measures a stiff-limbed horse — long out to pasture.
You may wear what toggery you will — keeping by
the old tailors, and showing yourself lien gante, and
carefully read up to the latest dates ; still you shall
betray yourself in some old dinner-joke — dead long
ago. And the friends will say kindly, after you are
gone, " How confoundedly seedy lius. has grown ! "

Were this all, it were little. But the clash and
alarum of cities have stirred things to their marrow,
which you know only outsidedly. The great nervous
sensorium of a continent, — with its wiry nerves raying
like a spider's web, in all directions, — is packed with
subtle and various meanings, which you, living on an
outer strand of the web, can neither understand nor
interpret. Mere accidental contact will not estab-
lish affinity. In a dozen quarters a boy puts you
right ; and some girl tells you newnesses you never
suspected. The rust is on your sword ; thwack as hard
as you may, you cannot flesh it, as when it had every
day scouring into brightness.

Dickering.

OMETIME or other, if a man enter upon farm
life — and it holds true in almost every kind of
life — there will come to him a necessity for bargain-

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 261

ing. It is a part of the curse, I think, entailed upon
mankind, at the expulsion from Eden, — that they
should sweat at a bargain. When a Frenchwoman
with her hand full of gloves, — behind her dainty coun-
ter,— asks the double of what her goods are worth,
you are noway surprised. You accept the enormity,
as a symptom of the depravity of her race, — which is
balanced by the suavity of her manner.

But when a hard-faced, upright, sabbath-keeping
New-England bank-officer or select-man, asks you
the double, or offers you the half, of what a thing is
really worth, there is a revulsion of feeling, which no
charm in his manner can drive away. Unlike the
case of the French shop-woman, I feel like passing
him — on the other side of the street.

And yet all this is to be met (and conquered, I
suppose) by whoever has butter, or eggs, or hay, or
fat-cattle to sell. I ventured once to express my
surprise to a shrewd foreman who had charge of this
business — for I manage it by proxy as much as I can
— that a staid gentleman with his ten thousand a
year of income, should have insisted upon a deduc-
tion of two cents a bushel in the price of his pota-
toes, in view of a quart of small ones, that had insin-
uated themselves in the interstices : I think I hear
his horse-laugh now, as he replied — " Why, sir, it's
the way he grew rich."

262 MY FARM.

The idea struck me as novel ; but upon reflection
I am inclined to think it was well based. As I said,
— often as possible, I accomplish this business by
proxy; and, in consequence, have made some bad
debts by proxy. But proxy is not always available.
There are customers who insist upon chaffering with
the ' boss.' Such an one has dropped in, on a morn-
ing in which you happen to be deeply engaged. He
wishes to ' take a look ' at a horse, which he has
seen advertised for sale. The stable is free to his
observation, and the attentive Pat is at hand ; but
the customer wants a talk with the ' Squire.'

It is a staunch Canadian horse, for which you
have no further use. You paid for him, six months
gone, a hundred and fifty dollars, and you now name
a hundred dollars as his price. I never yet met a
man who sold a horse for as much as he gave — unless
he were a jockey ; I never expect to.

" Mornin', Squire."

" Good morning."

" Bin a lookin' at y'er hoss."

" Ah ! "

" Middlin' lump of a hoss."

" Yes, a nice horse."

" D'n know as you know it, but sich bosses an't
BO salable as they was a spell back."

" Ah ! "

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 263

" They're gittin' a fancy for bigger bosses."

Silence.

" Put that pony to a heavy cart, and he wouldn't
do nothin'."

" You are mistaken ; he's a capital cart-horse."

" Well, I don't say but what he'd be handy with
a lightish load. Don't call him spavined, do ye ? "

" No, perfectly sound."

" That looks kinder like a spavin " — rubbing his
off hind leg.

" An't much of a hoss doctor, be ye ? "

" Not much."

" Don't kick, dooz he ? "

« No."

" Them little Kanucks is apt to kick."

Silence, and an impatient movement, which I
work off by pulling out my watch.

" What time o' day 's got to be ? "

" Eleven."

" Thunder ! I must be a goin' ; — should like to
trade, Squire, but I guess we can't agree. I s'pose
you'd be askin' as much as — sixty — or — seventy dol-
lars for that are hoss — wouldn't ye ? "

" A hundred dollars is the price, and I gave fifty
more."

" Don't say ! Gave a thundering sight too much.
Squire."

264 MY FARM.

" Pat, you may put up the horse ; I don't think
the gentleman wants him."

" Look o' here, Squire ; — ef you was to say —
something — like — seventy, or — seventy-live dollars,
now, — there might be some use in talkin'."

" Not one bit of use," (impatiently) — turning on
my heel.

" Say, Squire, — ever had him to a plough ? "

" Yes."

" Work well ? "

" Perfectly well."

" Fractious any ? Them Kanucks is contrary crit-
ters when they've a mind to be."

" He is quite gentle."

" That's a good p'int ; but them that's worked till
they git quiet, kinder gits the spirit lost out on 'em
— an't so brisk when you put 'em to a waggin.
Don't you find it so, Squire ? "

" Not at all."

" How old, Squire, did ye say he was ? " (looking
in his mouth again).
•"Seven."

" Well — I guess he is ; a good many figgers nigh-
er that, than he is to tew — any way."

" Patrick, you had better put this horse up."

" Hold on, Squire," and taking out his purse, he
counts out — " seventy — eighty, — and a five, — and two,

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 265

— and a fifty — there, Squire, 'tant worth talkin' about ;
I'll split the difference with ye, and take the hoss."

" Patrick, put him up."

At which the customer is puzzled, hesitates, and
the horse is entering the stable again, when he breaks
out explosively —

" Well, Squire, here's your money ; but

you're the most thunderin' oneasy man for a dicker
that I ever traded with — I'll say that for ye."

And the horse is transferred to his keeping.

" S'pose you throw in the halter and blanket,
Squire, don't ye ? "

" Give 'him the halter and blanket, Patrick."

" And, Patrick, you 'ant nary old curry-comb you
don't use, you could let me have ? "

" Give him a curry-comb, Pat."

" Squire, you're a clever man. Got most through
y'r hayin' ? "

" Nearly."

" Well, I'm gla'd on't. Had kinder ketchin'
weather up our way."

And with this return to general and polite con-
versation, the bargaining is over. It may be amus-
ing, but it is not inspiriting or elevating. Yet very
much of the country-trade is full of this miserable
chaffering. If I have a few acres of Avoodland to
sell, the purchaser spends an hour in impressing upon
12

260 MY FARM.

me Iris ' idee ' — that it is scattered and mangy, and
has been pirated upon, and that wood is ' dull,' with
no prospect of its rising ; if it is a cow that I venture
in the market, the proposed purchaser is equally volu-
ble in descriptive epithets, far from complimentary ;
she is ' pooty well on in years,' rather scrawny, ' not
much for a bag,' — and this, although she may be the
identical Devon of my Short-horn friend. If it is a
pig that I would convert into greenbacks — he is
* flabby,' ' scruffy,' — his ' pork will waste in bilinV
In short if I were to take the opinions of my excel-
lent friends the purchasers — for truth, I should be
painfully conscious of having possessed the most
mangy hogs, the most aged cows, the scrubbiest
veal, and the most diseased and stunted growth of
chestnuts and oaks, with which a country-liver was
ever afflicted.

For a time, in the early period of my novitiate, I
was not a little disturbed by these damaging state-
ments ; but have been relieved on learning, by farther
experience, that the urgence of such lively falsehoods
is only an ingenious mercenary device for the sharp-
ening of a bargain. But while this knowledge puts
me in good temper again with my own possessions, it
sadly weakens my respect for humanity.

Amateur farmers are fine subjects for these chaf
ferers ; they yield to them without serious struggle

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 267

The extent and the manner of their losses, under the
engineering abilities of those wiry old gentlemen who
drive sharp bargains, is something quite beyond their
comprehension. It would be well if harm stopped
here. But this huckstering spirit is very leprous to char-
acter. It bestializes ; — it breaks down the trader's
own respect for himself, as much as ours. The man
who will school himself into the adoption of all man-
ner of disguisements about the cow he has to sell,
will adopt the same artifices and quibbles about the
opinions he wishes to force upon your acceptance.
Let him mend by showing all the spavins in the next
horse he has for sale (there will be some, or he would
never sell) ; and his reformation is not altogether
hopeless.

The Bright Side.

rilHUS far I have been dealing with the shadows —
JL heavily laid on ; let me now, with a finer brush,
touch in the lights upon my picture. The chemical
puzzles, the disappointments, the isolation, the fa-
tigues, the chaffering bargainers do not fully describe
or give limit, to the good old profession of farming.
And even when these clouds — hindrances I call them
— most accumulate, the kindly sun flashes through,
warming all the fields below me into golden green,
and a kindly air stirs all the poplars into silver

268 MY FARM.

plumes, and I am beguiled into a new and a more
admiring estimate of the country life.

Arcadia with, its sylvan glories comes, drifting to
my vision, and the pleasant Elian fields sloping to tho
sea. A stately Greek gentleman — Xenophon — who
has won great renown by his conduct of an army
among the fastnesses of Armenia, and on the borders
of the Caspian, has retired to his estates on the Ionian
waters, and writes there a book of maxims for farm
management, which are not without their significance
and value to every farmer to-day. And hither ward,
across the blue wash of the Adriatic, in the midst of
the Sabine country, which is northward and eastward
of Rome, I know a Roman farmer — Cato — who has
been listened to with rapt attention in the Roman
Senate, and who — centuries before the time when
Horace was amateur agriculturist, and planted So-
racte and Lucretilis in his poems — wrote so mi-
nutely, and with such rare sagacity, upon all that
relates to country living, and to country thrift, that I
might to-morrow, in virtue of his instructions only,
plant my bed of asparagus, and so dress and treat it
(always in pursuance of his directions) as to insure
mo for the product a prize at the County-Fair ; — if,
indeed, the shoots did not rival those famous ones of
Ravenna — of which Pliny speaks — weighing three to
the pound.

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 269

I know a poet too, whose nrusic floating over
Italy, before yet the battle blasts of her direst civil
strife were done, weaned soldiers from their blood
scent to the tranquil offices of husbandry ; and that
melody of the Georgics is floating still under all the
ceilings of all the school-houses of New England.
The most pretentious and the most ambitious c f the
later emperors of the East — Porphyrogenitus — has
left no more enduring monument of his reign, than
the coinpend of agricultural instructions, compiled
under his order, and bearing title of " Geoponica
Geoponicorum."

I observe, too, in my card-basket, the address of
a certain Pietro di Crescenzi, who has come all the
way from the fourteenth-century-Bologna to pay
me a visit — in a tight little surtout of white vellum
that smacks of the loves of Bembo, or of the wicked-
ness of the Borgia ; and who has talked of horses and
cattle, and wheat-growing, and vegetable-raising, as
familiarly as if he were justice of the peace in our
town. Lord Bacon has contributed to our stock of
information about garden culture, and the elegant
pen of Lord Kames has illustrated the whole subject
of practical husbandry. But I do not cite these
names for the sake of making any idle boast of
the antiquity and dignity of the craft ; we have too
much of that, I think, in our agricultural addresses.

270 MY FARM.

We live in days when a calling — whatever it may be
— cannot find establishment of its value or worth, in
the echoes — however resonant and grateful — of what
has once belonged to it, or of the dead voices that
honored it. The charms of Virgil and the shrewd
observations of Cato will go but a little way to re-
commend a country life in our time, except that life
have charms in itself to pique a man's poetic sensibil-
ities— and lessons in every field and season, to tempt
and reward his closest observation.

Yet it is very remarkable how nearly these old
authorities have approached the best points of mod-
ern practice ; and again and again we are startled out
of our vanities by the soundness of their suggestions,
Rotation of crops, surface drainage, ridging of lands,
composting of manures, irrigation, and the paring
and burning of stubble-lands are all hinted, if not
absolutely advised, in treatises written ten centuries
ago. !N"or have I a doubt but that a shrewd man
acting upon the best advices which are to be found
in the various books of the Geoponica (the latest
not later than the sixth century), and with no other
instructions whatever — save what regards the dex-
terous use of implements — would manage a grain
field, a meadow, or an orchard, better than the half
of New England fanners.

At first blush, it seems very discouraging to think

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 271

that we have put no wider gap between ourselves
and those twilight times. The gap is, however, far
wider than it seems ; for while those old gentlemen
made good hits in their practice, they rarely an-
nounced a principle on which good cultivation de-
pended, but they were egregiously at fault. The
centuries, with their science and added experience,
have solved the reasons of things ; not all of them,
indeed — as Liebig in his last book needlessly tells us
— but enough of them to enlist a more intelligent
method of culture. The ancients recommended a
rule of practice, because it had succeeded in a score
or a hundred of trials ; but if some day it failed, they
must have groped considerably in the dark for a
cause. We lay down a rule of practice in obedience
to certain clearly determined natural laws ; and if
failure meets us, we know it is due — not to falsity of
the laws — but to some one of a rather wide circle
of contingencies, not foreseen or provided against.
And it is the due adjustment and measurement of
precisely this circle of contingencies — whether be-
longing to weeds, weather, or markets — which most
thoroughly tests the sagacity of the modern farmer.

This sagacity is of far larger service, than 1 think
scientific fanners are willing to admit. Over and over
it happens that some uncouth, raw, strapping, unread
man succeeds, year after year, in making crops which

272 MY FARM.

astonish the neighborhood. You know he has no sci-
ence,— nitrogen is Greek to him ; sulphuric acid, for
all lie can tell, might lie in the juice of an apple ; he
knows nothing of fermentations — nothing of physiol-
ogy, yet his crops are monstrous. His tools are some-
thing old, though firm and compact ; his team is al-
ways in good order, although his barns may be some-
what shaky.

He could not himself explain to you his success ;
you perceive that he manures well, that he ploughs
thoroughly, that he plants good seed, that he hoes in
season. This is all ; but all is so well tuned by a native
sagacity — by an instinctive sense (as would seem) of
the wants and habits of the crop, growing out of
close observation — that the success is splendid. A
man sets up beside him, and buys guano and fish, and
the best tools, and employs a chemist to analyze his
soil — but his crops do not compare with those of his
rude neighbor, who sneers at chemistry and fine
farming. Of course I do not mean to join him in his
sneers ; I only mean to illustrate how a large saga-
city, guided by its own instincts, has very much to
do with good farming ; and in a way not clearly ex-
plicable— certainly not explicable by its possessor.

Just so, you will sometimes find, far back in the
country, a shrewd old physician, utterly unread in the
new books, who laughs at the Gazette des Hopilaux

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 273

and the Chirurgical, and yet who has that rare insight
which enables him to detect and wrestle with disease
strangely well. His long observation, his comparison
of trifles, his estimate of the moral forces at work are
so just and discriminating, that he brings a tremen-
dous power of judgment to the case. Put him in a
room for consultation, and his gray eye tweaks, his
lips work nervously ; he cannot enter into the learned
discourse of the younger men of the profession ; he is
dazed by it all — wishing he were learned, if learn-
ing helps ; but when appeal is made to him, there is
such clear, sagacious, homely cut-down into the very
marrow of the difficulty, as absolutely confounds the
young doctors ; all this, not because he does not carry
learning, but because he carries brain — and uses it.

Any man with good brains may succeed in farm-
ing— if he uses them. By this, I mean that any man
with a clear head — though not specially crammed
with information — and who brings a cool, sagacious,
unblinking outlook to the offices of husbandry, will
succeed, without a knowledge of the principles cai
which its more important operations are based. And
the practice of such a man, if faithfully recorded in
all its details, would be of more service in the illus-
tration of scientific laws, than the halting experience
of a half dozen neophytes, who work by the vague out-
line of some pet theory. I had rather have such a man
IS*

274 MY FARM.

for tenant, than one fresh from the schools, bringing
an exaggerated notion of salts, and a large contempt
for sagacity. If on some day of latter summer the
milch cows rapidly fall away in their ' yield,' I should
expect the latter to puzzle himself about the sudden
exhaustion of some particular constituent of the milk
food, and to multiply experiments with bran or bone
meal for its supply ; but I should expect the sagacious
veteran, under the same circumstances, with a bold
philosophy, to attribute the shortcoming to the
scorching suns of August, that have drunk up all the
juices of the grass ; and I should expect him to meet
the want by a lush and succulent patch of pasturage,
which his foresight has kept in reserve.

Business Tact.

AKIN" to this sagacity is a certain business tact,
which is a large helper to whoever would suc-
cessfully engage in agricultural pursuits. It implies
and demands adaptation of crops to soils, exposure,
and the market wants. It is eminently opposed
to the drowsiness in which a good many honest
country-livers are apt to indulge. It reckons time at
its full value ; it does not lean long on a hoe-handle
for gossip.

The farmer who turns his capital very slowly, and
only once in the year, is not apt to be quickened into

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 275

business ways and methods. The retired trader, who
plants himself some day beside him, bringing his old
prompt habits of the counter, will very likely, if a
shrewd observer, outmatch him in a corn crop, — out-
match him in pork, — outmatch him in everything, ii
the year's balance were struck and shown. And all
this in spite of the trader's comparative inexperience,
and by reason only of his superior business tact.

The finest shows of fruits at the autumn fairs —
excepting always those of the professed nurserymen
— are made, in three cases out of five, by mechanics,
or by business men, who have brought to this little
episode in their life, the methodical habits, and the
observance of details, which govern their ordinary
business duties. Not being in the way of leaving
book accounts, or stock on hand, to take care of
themselves, they are no more inclined to leave an in-
vestment in trees or orcharding — to take care of itself.
They reckon upon care at the outset, and they bestow
it. The farmer, who has complacently smiled at
their inexperience in tillage, and is confounded by
the results, will loosely attribute them all to a lavish
and thriftless expenditure of money. But the conclu-
sion is neither logical, nor warranted, — in the majority
of instances, — by the facts. No superior fruit can be
grown without labor and extreme care, and if those
be controlled by a business system, they will be far

276 MY FARM.

more economically bestowed, than when subject to
no order in their application.

From time to time I observe that some venerable
old gentleman in my neighborhood is overtaken by
one of those sporadic fevers of improvement, which
will sometimes, and very strangely, attack the most
tranquil and self-satisfied of men. The attack is a
slight one, of the orchard type. He consults far and
near in regard to the best sorts of fruit. He devotes
to the experiment one of his best lots, reserving the
very best for his next year's patch of potatoes. The
land he reckons in ' good heart,' since he has just
taken off a heavy crop of corn. He digs his holes,
after an elaborate system of garden measurement and
stake-driving, which, to his poor, fagged brain, seems
the very climax of geometric endeavor. The young
trees are carefully staked, and for a year or two show
a thrifty look. But the spring temptation to put a
crop between the roots is irresistible ; the ploughing
oxen browse a few — knock over a few — break off a
few. This maddens our friend into a ' laying-down '
of the orchard to grass ; he half promises himself, in-
deed, that he will give hand-cultivation to the trees,—
but he does not ; his fever is abating, and so is his
orcharding. The mosses fasten on the young trees,
the borers play havoc, the caterpillars strip them, the
rank grass strangles them.

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 277

From beginning to end there has been no business
forecast of the requisite labor involved, no method in
its prosecution — no estimate of the scheme as a busi-
ness operation.

It is certain that by a special dispensation of
Providence in favor of those who make up the bulk
of the human family, a man may secure a simple live-
lihood in agricultural pursuits, with less of energy,
less of promptitude, less of calculation, and greater
unthrift generally, than would be compatible with
even this scanty aim, in any other calling of life.
With a respectable crop insured by only a moderate
amount of attention and activity, the temptation to a
lazy indifierence, and a sleepy passivity, is immense.
There are farmers who yield to the temptation grace-
fully and completely. The stir, the wakefulness, the
promptitude that seize upon new issues, develop new
enterprises, create new demands, are as foreign to the
majority of landholders, as a ringing discussion of
new topics, or a juicy haunch of Southdown, to their
tables.

But whatever may be the triumphs of business
tact — and of a just apportionment of capital, between
land and implements, or fertilizers, the real question
with a man of any considerable degree of cultivation
who meditates country life, — is not whether legitimate
attention will secure a tolerable balance sheet, and

278 MY FARM.

the fattening of fine beeves, but whether the life and
the rural occupations offer verge and scope for the
development of his culture — whether land and land-
scape will ripen under assiduous care into graces that
will keep his attachment strong, and enlist the activ-
ities of his thought ?
Let us inquire.

Place for Science.

BECAUSE a man cannot revolutionize farming
and its practice by clean copies of Boussin-
gault and Liebig under his arm, or upon his table, it
by no means follows that an intelligent person who is
concerned in rural occupations may not profitably
give days and nights to their study. Because we
cannot conquer all diseases, and clearly explain all
the issues of life and death by the best of medical
theories, it by no means follows that the best medical
practitioner should therefore abandon all the literature
of the subject. The scientific inquirers who direct
their view to agricultural interests, deal with prob-
lems which are within the farmer's domain ; and if
their solutions are not always final or directly avail-
able, the very intricacy of their nature must pique his
wonder, and enlist his earnest inquiry.

A magnificent mystery is lying under these green
coverlets of the fields, and within every unfolding

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 279

germ of the plants. The chemist is seeking to unrid-
dle it in his way ; while we farmers, — by grosser
methods, — are unriddling it, in ours. Checks and hin-
drances meet us both ; both need an intimate com-
parison of results for progress. If we sneer at the
chemist for his shifting theories in regard to the ni-
trogenized manures — no one of which is sufficiently
established for the direction of a fixed practice — the
chemist may return the sneer with interest, when he
sees us making such application of a valuable salt, as
shall lock up its solubility and utterly annul its effi-
cacy. It is a pretty little duel for our intelligent ob-
server to watch : the chemist fulminating his doc-
trines, based on formulas and an infinity of retorts ;
and we, replying only with the retort — courteous and
practical. But always the unfathomable mystery of
growth — vegetable and animal — remains ; the chem-
ist seeking to explain it, and we only to promote it.
If the chemist could explain by promoting it, he
would turn farmer ; and if farmers could promote it
by trying to explain it, they would all turn chemists.
Many good people, of a short range of inquiry,
and a shorter range of reflection, imagine that when
the agriculturist has, by the chemist's aid, deter-
mined the elements of his crops, and by the same aid,
determined the mei'its of different bags of phosphates
or guanos, that nothing remains but to match these

280 MY FARM.

chemical colors as he would match colts, — and the race
is won. They fancy that the new analyses and ex-
periments— so delicate and so elaborate — are by their
revelations reducing the art of farming to a simple
affair of the mechanical adjustment of regularly-bil-
leted chemical forces. There could not be a greater
mistake made ; so far from simplifying, the new in-
vestigations demand a larger practical skill, since the
conditions under which it works are amplified and
extended. The old bases of procedure, if faiilty,
were at least compact ; the experimental farmer dealt
with but few, and those clearly defined ; but scien-
tific investigation, by its refining processes, has split
the old bases of action into a hundred lesser truths,
each one of which must be taken into the account,
and modify our operations.

There was a time, for instance, when science, ob-
serving that a living plant built itself out of the
debris of dead plants, declared for the primal neces-
sity of a large supply of decayed vegetable material.
This at least was simple, and the farmer, if he had
only his stock of humus, left the further fulfilment
of the miracle of growth to wind and weather. In
process of time, however, science detected the rare
luxuriance which ammonia imparts to plant foliage,
and after refining upon the observation, declared for
nitrogen as the great needed element ; schedules were

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 281

prepared and widely published, in which the various
manures were graduated in value, in strict accordance
with their respective admixtures of nitrogenous ma-
terial. The quiet fanner accepts the theory, and con-
siders the wonderful effects that follow the applica-
tion of the droppings from his dovecot, a demonstra-
tion of its truth.

But he has hardly nestled himself wannly into
this belief, — modified to a degree by the Jmmiis doc-
trine, than a distinguished chemist comes down upon
us all with the representation — supported by a large
array of figures — that nitrogen is already present in
ample quantity in almost all soils, and that the vital
necessity in the way of fertilizers, is the mineral ele-
ment of the plant. This splinters once again the
compactness of our purpose, and puts us upon a keen
scent for the soluble phosphates ; though without
destroying our faith in good vegetable-mould and
strong-smelling manures.

And not only in this direction, but also in what
relates to the feeding of animals, the germination of
seeds, the comminution of soils, the chemical effects
of air, and light, and warmth — we have a hundred
minute truths by which to adjust our practical man-
agement, where we had formerly less than a score of
gross ones. And in this adjustment — modified still
further by a great many physiological and meteorolo*

282 MY FARM.

gical considerations — I think a man of tolerable parts
might find enough to lay his mind to very closely,
and to encourage some activity of thought.

There will be disappointments — as in every sphere
of life. I have felt them keenly and often. The
humus has baffled my expectations, and my potatoes ;
the nitrogenous riches have shot up into thickets of
rank and watery luxuriance ; the phosphoric acid has
oozed into some unthrifty combination, or has re-
mained locked up in an unyielding nugget of Som-
brero. But little disappointments count for nothing,
when (as now) we are reckoning the pabulum which
agricultural employments furnish for intellectual ac-
tivity. The rural adventurer may not only regale
himself with a considerable series of nice chemical
puzzles at every cropping-time, but he may give his
thoughts to original investigation of the habits of the
plants themselves ; the career of a Decandolle could
have had no finer start-point than a country farm
with its living herbaria, and its opportunities for ob-
servation ; we want a good monograph of our great
national crop of maize — so soon as the man shall ap-
pear to make it. We want, too, some Buffon (with-
out his foppery) to unearth our field mice, and to put
a great tribe of insect depredators to flight.

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 283

^Esthetics of the Business.

WHAT is needed, perhaps more than all else, in
our agricultural regions, is — such intelligible,
hnitable, and economic demonstrations of the laws
of good taste, as shall provoke emulation, and redeem
the small farmer — unwittingly, it may be — from his
slovenly barbarities and his grossness of life. Here
is verge, surely, for a man's cultivation, for his apti-
tude, and for those graces which shall fix his attach-
ment while they plead their lessons of appeal.

It seems hardly necessary to urge a necessity for
this direction of effort. There is certainly no race
of country-livers in the world, who, with equal, or
even a kindred intelligence, are so destitute of all
sense of the graces of life and home, as the small
New England farmers.

A certain stark neatness, confined mostly to kitch-
ens, pantries, and such portions of the door-yard as
are under the eye of the goodwife, mostly limits their
efforts in this direction. It may be that a staring
coat of white paint upon the house completes the iiv-
vestiture of charms ; while, at every hand, heaps of
rubbish — cumbering the public road — and piles of
straggling wood, dissipate any illusion which a well-
scrubbed interior, or the fresh paint, may have
created.

284 MY FARM.

Here and there we come upon a certain neatness
and order in enclosures, buildings, and fields ; but ten
to one the keeping of the picture is absolutely ruined
by the slatternly condition of the highway, to which, —
though it pass within ten feet of his door, — the farmer,
by a strange inconsequence, pays no manner of heed.
He makes it the receptacle of all waste material, and
foists upon the public the ofial, which he will not
tolerate within the limits of his enclosure. And the
highway purveyors are mostly as brutally unobserv-
ant of neatness as the farmer himself ; nay, they seem
to put an officious pride into the unseemliness and
rawness of their work ; and it is only by most per-
sistent watchfulness that I have been able to prevent
some bullet-headed road-mender from digging into
the turf-slopes at my very door.

Here and there I see, up and down the country,
frequent attempts at what is counted ornamentation
— fantastic trellises cut out of whitened planks, cum-
brous balustrades, with a multitude of shapeless
finials, or whimsical pagodas — imitations of what
cannot be imitated, even if worthy ; — but of the hun-
dred nameless graces, wrought of home material,
delighting you by their unexpectedness, piquing you
by their simplicity, and winning upon every passer-
by, by their thorough agreement with landscape, and
surroundings, and the offices of the farmer, I see far

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 285

less. The only idea of elegance and beauty which
finds footing:, is of something extraneous — outside hia

O ' O

life — not mating with his opportunities or purposes — •
and only to be compassed, as a special extravagance,
upon which some town joiner must lavish his ' ogees,'
and which shall serve as a blatant type of the farm-
er's ' forehandedness.' This is all very pitiful ; it
gives no charm ; it educates to no sense of the tender
graces of those simple, honest adornments which
ought to refine the country-liver, and to refine the
tastes of his children. I am not writing in any spirit
of sentimental romanticism. If Arcadia and its pas-
torals have gone by (and I think they have), God,
and nature, and sunshine, have not gone by. Nor
yet the trees, and the flowers, or green turf, or a
thousand kindred channs, which the humblest farmer
has in his keeping, and may spend around his door
and homestead, with such simple grace, such afflu-
ence, such economy of labor, such unity of design, as
shall enchain regard, ripen the instincts of his chil-
dren to a finer sense of the bounties they enjoy, and
kindle the admiration of every intelligent observer.

A neglect of these attractions, which are so con-
spicuous along all the by-ways of England, and in
many portions of the continent, is attributable per-
haps in some degree to the unrest of much of our
rural population. The man who pitches his white

286 MY FARM.

tent beside the road, for what forage he may
easily gather up, and is ready always for a sale, will
care little for any of the more delicate graces of
home. And with those who have some permanent
establishment, I think the root of the difficulty may
lie very much in that proud and sensitive individual-
ity which is the growth of our democratic institu-
tions. There is an absolute and charming fittingness
about most of these humble rural adornments, of
which I speak, which our progressive friend does not
like to adopt, by reason of their fittingness, and be-
cause they give quasi indication of limited means and
humble estate. When, therefore, such an one makes
blundering effort to accomplish something in the way
of decorative display, it is very apt to take a grand-
iose type, showing vulgar strain toward those adorn-
ments of the town which are wholly unsuited to his
habits and surroundings. Thus a thriving ruralist
with a family of two, will build a house as large as a
church, and perch a cupola upon it, from which he
may review the flat country for miles, while he con-
tents himself with occupancy of the back-kitchen.
If contented with small space, why not, in the name
of honesty, declare it boldly, instead of covering the
truth, under such lumbering falsehood ? What for-
bids giving to the country home a simple propriety
of its own, with its own wealth of rural decoration —

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 287

its shrubbery, its vines, its arbors, instead of chal-
lenging unfavorable comparison with an entirely dif-
ferent class of homes ? If a man is disposed to ad-
vertise by flaming architecture and appointments —
* I am only farmer by accident, and competent (as
you see) to live in a grand way,' there is little hope
that he will ever do anything to the credit of farm-
ing interests, or contribute very largely to the best
charms of our rural landscape. The attempt to bet-
ter one's condition is always praiseworthy ; but it is
only base and ignoble to attempt to cover one's con-
dition with an idle smack of something larger.

There will always be in every moderately free
country a great class of small landholders, in whose
hands will lie for the most part, the control of our
rural landscape, and the fashioning of our wayside
homes, and when they shall take pride, as a body, in
giving grace to these homes, the country will have
taken a long step forward in the refinements of civil-
ization. If I have no coaches and horses, I can at least
hang a tracery of vine leaves along my porch, so
exquisitely delicate that no sculpture can match it ;
if I have no conservatories with their wonders, yet
the sun and I together can build up a little tangled
coppice of blooming things in my door-yard, of
which every tiny floral leaflet shall be a miracle.
Nay, I may make my home, however small it be, so

288 MY FARM.

complete in its simplicity, so fitted to its offices, so
governed by neatness, so embowered by wealth of
leaf and flower, that no riches in the world could add
to it, without damaging its rural grace ; and my
gardeners — Sunshine, Frost, and Showers are their
names — shall work for me with no crusty reluctance,
but with an abandon and a zeal that ask only grati-
tude for pay.

But let us come to details.

Walks.

A WALK is, first of all, a convenience ; whether
leading from door to highway, or to the stable
court, or through gardens, or to the wood, it is essen-
tially, and most of all — a convenience ; and to despoil
it of this quality, by interposing circles or curves,
which have no meaning or sufficient cause, is mere
affectation. Not to say, however, that all paths
should be straight ; the farmer, whose home is at a
considerable remove from the highway, and who
drives his team thither, avoiding rock, and tree, and
hillock, will give to his line of approach a grace that
it would be hard to excel by counterfeit. Pat, stag-
gering from the orchard, under a bushel of Bartlett
pears, and seizing upon every accidental aid in the
B irface of the declivity to relieve the fatigue of his
walk — zigzagging, as it were in easy curves, is uncon-

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 289

sciously laying down — though not a graceful man — a
very graceful line of inarch. And it is the delicate
interpretation of these every-day deflexities, and this
instinctive tortuousness (if I may so say), which sup-
plies, or should supply, the landscape gardeners with
their best formulae.

There is no liver in the country so practical, or of
so humble estate, but he will have his half dozen paths
divergent from his door ; and these he may keep dry,
and in always serviceable condition, by simply remov-
ing the soil from them to the depth of eighteen or
twenty inches, and burying in them the scattered
stones and debris, which are feeding weed-crops in
idle corners ; he will thus relieve himself of the use-
less material that might cumber the highway, besides
possessing himself of the greater part of the top soil
removed, for admixture with his composts. And
this substitution may progress, season by season ; as
the garden rakings or refuse material accumulate, he
has only to remove a few cubic yards of earth from
his paths, bury the waste, and reserve the more avail-
able portions of the mould.

The same rules of construction are good for all
road-ways, more especially for the farmer who wants
unyielding metal beneath his heavy cartage of spring.
The perfection of roads of course supposes perfect
drainage, and a deep bed of stone material ; but I
13

290 MY FARM.

am only suggesting methods which are in keeping
with ordinary farm economies.

There must needs be directness in all paths com-
municating with out-buildings, and the exigencies of
economic and effective culture demand the straight
lines in the kitchen garden ; but when I take a friend
to some' pretty point of view, or a little parterre of
flowers dropped in the turf, — we are not hurried ; the
dainty curves make a pleasant cheatery of the ap-
proach. Thus there is charming accord between the
best rules for landscape outlay, and the wants of the
country-liver ; where economy of tillage or of labor
demands directness, the paths should be direct ; and
where economy of pleasure suggests loitering, the
paths may loiter. And so, they loiter away through
pleasant wooded coppices — doubting upon themselves
on some rocky pitch of hill — short reaches, concealed
each one from the other — blinded by thick under-
wood— wantoning in curves, until presently from
under a low-branching beech tree, there bursts on
the eye a great view of farm, and forest, and city,
and sea ; always a charming view indeed, though we
toiled straight toward it, in broad sunshine ; but the
winding through the coppice, unsuspecting, — busied
with ferns and lichens, and shut in by dark over-
growth against any glimpse of sky, — makes it ten-
fold ravishing.

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 291

"What if such walks be not nicely gravelled — what
if you come upon no grubbing gardeners ? If only
they be easy and serviceable, I love their rain stains,
und their fine mosses creeping into green mats ; I
love their irregular borders, with a fern or a gentian
nodding over the bounds — a pretty sylvan welcome
to your tread. There are little foot-paths I know, —
only beaten by the patter of young feet — winding
away through lawn or orchard to some favorite apple
tree, — frequented most, after some brisk wind-storm
has passed over, — that I think I admire more than any
gravelled walks in the world.

And there are other simple foot-paths, which I re-
member loitering through day after day, in the rural
districts of England, with a sense of enjoyment, that
never belonged to saunterings in the alleys of Ver-
sailles.

A man does not know England, or English land-
scape, or English country feeling, until he has broken
away from railways, from cities, from towns, and
clambered over stiles, and lost himself in the fields.

Talk of Chatsworth, and Blenheim, and

Eaton Hall ! Does a man know the pleasure of
healthy digestion by eating whip-syllabub ? Did
Turner go to Belvoir Castle park for the landscapes
which link us to God's earth?

What a joy and a delight in those field foot-paths

292 MY FARM.

of England ! Not the paths of owners only ; not
cautiously gravelled walks ; but all men's paths,
where any wayfarer may go ; worn smooth by poor
feet and rich feet, idle feet and working feet ; open
across the fields from time immemorial ; God's paths
for his people, which no man may shut ; — winding —
coiling over stiles — leaping on stepping-stones through
brooks — with curves more graceful than Hogarth's —
hieroglyphics of the Great Master written on the land,
which, being interpreted, say — Love one another.

We call ours a country of privilege, yet what
rich man gives right of way over his grounds ?
What foot-path or stile to cheat the laborer of his
fatigue ?

Shrubbery.

DOES the reader remember that upon the June
day on which I first visited My Farm, I de-
scribed the air as all aflow with the perfume of pur-
ple lilacs ; and does he think that I would ungrate-
fully forget it, or forget the lilacs ? The Lilac is one
of those old shrubs which I cling to with an admira-
tion that is almost reverence. The Syringo (Phila-
delphus) is another; and the Guelder-rose (Viburnum)
is another. They are all infamously common; but so
is sunshine.

The Mezereum, the Forsythia, and the Weigelia

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 293

have their attractions ; — the Mezereum, because it is
first coiner in the spring, and shows its modest crim-
son tufts of blossoms, while the March snows are lin-
gering ; the Forsythia follows hard upon it, with its
graceful yellow bells ; and the Weigelia, though far
later, is gorgeous in its pink and white — but neither
of them is to be matched against the old favorites I
have named.

Yet it is after all more in the disposition of the
shrubbery, than in the varieties, that a rational pleas-
ure will be found. It is not a great burden of bloom
from any particular shrub that I aim at. I do not
want to prove what it may do at its best, and singly ;
that is the office of the nurseryman, who has his ales
to make. But I want to marry together great ranks
of individual beauties, so that May flowers shall
hardly be upon the wane, when the blossoms of June
shall flame over their heads ; and June in its turn
have hardly lost its miracles of color, when July
shall commence its intermittent fires, and light up its
trail of splendor around all the skirts of the shrub-
bery. I want to see the delicate white of the Clematis
(Virginica) hanging its graceful festoons of August,
here and there in the thickets that have lost their
summer flowers ; and after this I welcome the black
berries of the Privet, or the brazen ones of the twin-
ing Bitter-sweet.

294 MY FARM.

Or, it is some larger group with which we deal —
half up the hill-side, screening some ragged nursery
of rocks — and a tall Lombardy-poplar lifts from its
centre, while shining, yellowish Beeches group around
it — crowding it, forcing all its leafy vigor (just where
we wish it) into the topmost shoots ; and amid the
Beeches are dark spots of young Hemlocks — as if the
shadow of a cloud lay just there, and the sun shone
on all the rest ; and among the Hemlocks, and reach-
ing in jagged bays above and below them are Sumacs
(so beautiful, and yet so scorned) lifting out from all
the tossing sea of leaves, their solid flame-jets of fiery
crimson berries. Skirting these, and shining under
the dip of a Willow, are the glossy Kalmias which, at
midsummer, were a sheet of blossoms ; and the hem
of the group is stitched in at last with purple Phloxes
and gorgeous Golden-rod.

I know no limit indeed to the combinations which
a man may not affect who has an eye for color, and a
heart for the light labor of the culture. There is,
unfortunately, a certain stereotyped way of limiting
these shrubberies to a few graceful exotics, — which,
of course, the gardeners commend, — and of rating
the value of foliage by its cost in the nursery. It is
but a narrow and ungrateful way of dealing with
the bounties of Providence. It may accomplish un-
der great care, very effective results ; but they wiU

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 295

not open the eyes of men of humble estates to
the beauties that are lurking in the forest all around
them, and which only need a little humanizing care to
rival the best products of the nurseries. Steering clear
of this intolerance, I have domesticated the Whit0-
birch, and its milky bole is without a rival among
all the exotics ; the Hardbeam (Carpinus), with its fine
spray, and the Witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginica) with
its unique bloom upon the bare twigs of November,
are thriving in my thickets. The swamp Azalias, and
the Kalmias I have transferred successfully, in their
season of flowering.* There are also to be named
among the available native shrubs, — the Leather-wood
(Dirca palustris) with delicate yellow bloom, glossy
green leaves, and an amazing flexibility of bough, on
which once a year my boy forages for his whip-
lashes ; the Spice-wood (Laurus benzoin) is always
tempting to the children by reason of its aromatic
bark, and in earliest spring it is covered with fairy
golden flowers ; the spotted Alder is a modest shrub
through the summer, but in autumn it flames out
in a great harvest of scarlet berries, which it carries
proudly into the chills of December ; the red-barked
Dog-wood (Cornus sanguinea) supplies annually a
great stock of crimson whips, and a charming liveli-

* A much safer way is to give the young plants a season or
two of domestication in a patch of nursery ground.

296 MY FARM.

ness of color for any interior rustic ornamentation,
which a wet day may put in hand ; the Swamp- willow
is the very earliest of our native shrubs, to feel the
heats of the March sun, and season after season, the
little ones bring in from its clump, its silvery strange
tufts of bloom, and say : " The Willow mice have
come, — and the spring."

N"or must I forget the Barberry, beautiful in its
bloom, and still more beautiful with its crimson fruit,
— the May-flower, the Sumac, the Sweet-brier, the
Bilberry, with its fairy bells, and the whole race of
wild vines — among which not least, is the luxuriant
Frost-grape, tossing its tendrils with forest freedom
from the tops of the tallest trees, and in later June
filling the whole air with the exquisite perfume of its
blossoms.

It may seem that a great estate and wide reach
of land may be demanded for the aggregation of all
these denizens of the wood ; yet it is not so ; I have
all these and more than these, with room for their
own riotous luxuriance, in scattered groups and
copses, without abstracting so much as an acre from
the tillable surface of the land. The brambles, thick-
ets, and unkempt hedge-rows which half the farmers
of the country leave to encroach upon the fertility
and order of their fields, work tenfold more of harm,
than the coppices which I have planted on rocky de«

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 297

clivities, and on lands, else unserviceable ; or as a
shelter to my garden or poultry yard, — as a 'screen
from the too curious eyes of the public ; — tangled
wildernesses, not without an order of their own, •
. offering types of all the forest growth, where the
little ones may learn the forest names, and habit — a
living book of botany, whose tender lessons are read
and remembered, as the successive seasons waft us
their bloom and perfume.

These groups will, of course, demand some care
for their effective establishment ; care is a price we
must all pay for whatever beautiful growth we secure
— whether in our trees or our lives.

It is specially imperative that all turf be removed,
wherever a group of shrubs or forest trees are to be
planted ; trenching is by no means essential, and
with many of the forest denizens, promotes a woody
luxuriance that delays bloom. lily own practice has
been to compost the turf as it was taken up, upon the
ground, with lime, and possibly a castor-pomace, or
other nitrogenous fertilizer ; this I reserved for a top-
dressing, as the shrubs might seem to require, and no
other application of manure is ever made. Three
times, the first year, and twice, the second year, it
may be necessary to give hoe-culture, in order to
keep the grass and other foreign growth in abeyance.
After this, a single dressing is amply sufficient ; and
13*

298 MY FARM.

on his after-dinner strolls to the thickets, the planter
will no*t forget his pruning-knife and his saw.

A little patch of good, and thoroughly tilled nur-
sery-ground is very convenient as a tender upon
these wood-groups, as well as upon the orchard. -
Within a small one of my own — of less than an
eighth of an acre, I have now thriving hundreds of
hemlocks, white-pines, birches, maples, alders, vines,
beeches, willows, kalmias, — with which I may at any
time thicken up the skirts of the established groups
to any color I like, or plant a new one upon some
scurvy bit of land, which has proved itself unremu-
nerative under other croppings.

Altogether, these shows of forest foliage, with
here and there an exotic, or a fruit-tree thrown in, —
involve less cost than one would give to an ordinary
crop of corn ; and when the corn is harvested, the
crop is done ; but with my shrubberies — of which I
know every tree from the day of its first struggle
with the changed position — the weird, wild growth
is every year progressing — every year presenting
some new phase of color or of shape : — every spring
I see my trees rejoicing in a flutter of young leaves,
and then wantoning — like grown girls — in the lusty
vigor of summer : in autumn I look wistfully on
them, wearing gala-dresses, whose colors I dare not
name, and when these are shivered by the frost, —

HINDRANCES AND HELPis. 299

tranquilly disrobing, and retiring to the sleep of
winter.

Rural Decoration.

AMONG the things which specially contribute
to the charms of a country-home, are those
thousand little adornments, which a person of quick
observation and ready tact can easily avail himself
of; and while gratifying his own artistic perceptions,
he can contribute to the growth of a humble art-love,
which it is to be hoped will some day give a charm
to every road-side, and to every country cottage. It
is by no means true that a taste of this kind must
necessarily — like Sir Visto's — prove a man's ruin.
The land is indeed a great absorbent ; and if no dis-
cretion be brought to the direction of outlay in
adornments and improvements, or if they be not or-
dered by a severe and inexorable simplicity, it is quite
incredible what amounts of money may be expended.
I have in an earlier portion of this volume, hinted
at certain changes which may be made, in the throw-
ing out of some half dozen angular and unimportant
enclosures, at the door, into open lawn — in the re-
moval of unnecessary fences, and the establishment
of groups of shrubbery to hide roughness, or to fur-
nish shelter : all which involve little expenditure, and
are not in violation of any rules of well-considered

300 MY FARM.

economy. I may now add to these the effects of
little unimportant architectural devices, not requiring
a practical builder, and which while they lend a great
charm to landscape, give an individuality to a man's
home.

The reader will perhaps allow me to particularize
from my own experience. There were, to begin
with, some four or five disorderly buildings about
the farm-house — sheds, shops, coal-houses, smoke-
houses— built up of odds and ends of lumber — boards
matching oddly, some half painted, others too rough
for paint — altogether scarcely bad enough for removal,
and yet terribly slatternly and dismal in their general
effect. They were not worth new covering ; painting
was impossible ; and whitewashing would only have
lighted up the seams and inequalities more staringly.
A half a mile away was a little mill, where cedar
posts were squared by a circular saw, and the slabs
were packed away for fuel (and very poor fuel they
made). One day, as my eye lighted upon them, an
idea for their conversion to other uses struck me, and
fructified at once. I bought a cord or two at a nom-
inal rate, and commenced the work of covering my
disjointed and slatternly outbuildings with these
rough slabs. It was a simple business, requiring
only even nailing, with here and there a little * fur-
ring out ' to bring the old angles to a square, with

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 301

here and there the deft turning of a rude arch, with
two crooked bits, over door or window. Farm la-
borers, under direction, were fully competent to the
work ; and in a couple of days I had converted my
unsightly buildings into very tasteful, rustic affairs,
harmonizing with the banks of foliage behind and
over them, and giving capital foothold to the vines
which I planted around them.

In keeping with their effect, I caused gates to be
constructed of the simplest material, from the cedar
thickets ; varying these in design, and yet making
each so simple as to admit of easy imitation, and to
unite strength, solidity, and cheapness. If, indeed,
these latter qualities could not be united, the work
would not at all meet the end I had in view — which
was not merely to produce a pretty effect, but to
demonstrate the harmony of such decorative work
with true farm economy. One often sees, indeed, rus-
tic-work of most cumbrous and portentous dimensions
— overladen with extraordinary crooks and curves,
and showing at a glance immense labor in selection
and in arrangement. All this may be pleasing, and
often exceedingly beautiful ; but it is a mere affecta-
tion of rural simplicity ; it wears none of that fit and
simple character which would at once commend it to
the eye of a practical man as an available and imitable
feature. If I can give such arrangement to simple

302 MY FARM.

boughs, otherwise worthless, or to pine-pickets of
simple cost — in the paling of a yard, or the tracery
of a gate, as shall catch the eye by its grace of out-
line, and suggest imitation by its easy construction,
and entire feasibility, there is some hope of leading
country tastes in that direction ; but if work shows
great nicety of construction, puzzling and complicated
detail, immense absorption of labor and material, it
might as well have been — so far as intended to en-
courage farm ruralities — built of Carrara marble.

Again a stone wall, or dyke, is not generally
counted an object of much beauty, except it be laid up
in hammered work ; this, of course, is out of the ques-
tion for a farmer who studies economy : but suppose
that to a substantial stone fence of ordinary construc-
tion, I am careful, by a choice of topping-stones, to
give unbroken continuity to its upper line ; and sup-
pose that the abutments, instead of wearing the usual
form, are carried up a foot or more above this line in a
rude square column, gradually tapering or ' battering '
toward the top ; suppose upon this top I place a flat
stone nearly covering it, and upon this a smaller stone
some four inches in thickness, and again, upon tlie
last, the largest and roundest boulder I can find. At
once there is created a graceful architectural effect,
which gives a new air to the whole line of wall. Yet
the additional labor involved is hardly to be reckoned.

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 303

Gates, in all variety, dependent on position and
service, offer charming opportunity for simple and
effective rural devices. Far away in the garden it
may be worth while to throw a rude rooflet over one,
where a man may catch refuge from a shower ; in au-
other quarter, you may carry up posts and link them
across in rustic trellis, to carry the arms of some toss-
ing vine ; a stile, too, where neighbors' children, for-
getful of latches, are apt to stroll in for nuts or ber-
ries, or on some cross-path to school, may, by simple
adjustment of log steps and overhanging roof of
thatch, or slabs, take a charming effect, and work
somewhat toward the correction of that unflinching
and inexorable insistance upon rights of property,
which induces many a crabbed man to nail up his
gates, and deny himself a convenience, for the sake
of circumventing the claims of an occasional stroller.

Rustic seats are an old and very common device ;
but with these, as with gateways and palings, sim-
plicity of construction is the grand essential. I see
them not unfrequently so fine and elaborate, that one
fears a shower may harm them ; and when so fine as
to suggest this fear, they had much better be of rose-
wood and bamboo. A simple bit of plank between
two hoary trunks — held firmly in place by the few
bits of gnarled oak-limbs from which arms, legs, and
back are adroitly — hinted, rather than fashioned — is

304 JfT FARM.

more agreeable to country landscape, fuller far of
service and of suggestion, than any of the portentous
rustic-work in city shops.

The due adjustment of colors is also a thing to be
considered in the reckoning of rural effects ; thus,
with my old weather-stained house, I do not care to
place new paint in contrast ; the old be-clouded tint
harmonizes well with the rustic work of fences and
outbuildings ; while away, upon the lawn, or opening
into green fields, or — better still — in the very bight
of the wood, I give the contrast of a brilliant and
flashing white.

I am touching a very large subject here, with a
very short chapter. Indeed, there is no end to the
pretty and artistic combinations by which a man who
loves the country with a fearless, demonstrative love,
may not provoke its rarer beauties to appear.
Flower, tree, fence, outbuilding — all wait upon his
hands ; and the results of his loving labor do not end
when his work is done ; but the vines, the trees, the
mosses, the deepening shadows, are, year after year,
mellowing his raw handiwork, and ripening a new
harvest of charms. And in following these, I think
there is an interest — not perhaps quotable on 'Change,
but which rallies a man's finer instincts, and binds
him in leash — not wearisome or galling — to the great
procession of the seasons, ever full of bounties, as of
beauties.

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 305

Flowers.

THERE is a class of men who gravitate to the
country by a pure necessity of their nature ;
who have such ineradicable love for springing grass,
and fields, and woods, as to draw them irresistibly
into companionship. Such men feel the confinement
of a city like a prison. They are restive under its
restraint. The grass of an area patch of greensward
kindles their love into flame. They linger by florists'
doors, drawn and held by a magnetism they cannot
explain, and which they make no effort to resist.
They are not necessarily amateurs, in the ordinary
sense of that term. I think they are apt to be pas-
sionate lovers of only a few, and those the commonest
flowers — flowers whose sweeet home-names reach a
key, at whose touch all their sympathies respond.

They laugh at the florist's fondness for a well
rounded holly-hock, or a true-petalled tulip, and ad-
mire as fondly the half-developed specimens, the
careless growth of cast-away plants, or the accidental
thrust of some misshapen bud or bulb. I suspect I
am to be ranked with these ; my purchase of an ox-
eye daisy on the streets of Paris will have already
damaged my reputation past hope, in the eyes of
the amateur florists. If these good people could
eee the homely company of plants that is gathered

306 MY FARM.

every winter in my library window, they would be
shocked still farther.

There is a careless group of the most common
ferns ; a Rose-geranium, a Daphne, a common
Monthly-rose, are the rarest plants I boast of. But
there are wood-mosses with a green sheen of velvet ;
they cover a broad tray of earth in rustic frame-work,
in which the Geraniums, the mosses, the Daphne,
and a plant of Kenilworth-Ivy coquette together.
An upper shelf is embossed with other mosses ; there
is a stately Hyacinth or two lifting from among them,
and wild ferns hang down their leaves for a careless
tangle with the Geraniums and Ivy below. Above
all, and as a drapery for the arched top, the Spanish
moss hangs like a gray curtain of silvered lace.

A stray acorn, I observe, has shot up in the tray,
and is now in its third leaf of oak-hood ; in the cor-
ners, two wee Hemlock-spruces give a background of
green, and an air of deeper and wilder entanglement,
to my little winter-garden. A bark covering, with
bosses of acorn-cups, and pilasters of laurel-wood,
sharpened to a point, make the lower tray a field of
wildness, — fenced in with wildness. The overhanging
bridge (I called it an upper shelf) is a rustic gallery
— its balcony of twisted osiers filled in with white
mosses from old tree-stumps, and the whole support-
ed by a rustic arch of crooked oaken twigs. Finally,

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 307

the cornice from which the Spanish moss is pendant,
is a long rod of Hazel, around which a vine of Bitter-
sweet has twined itself so firmly, that they seem in-

»

corporate together ; and to their rough bark the
moss has taken so kindly, that it has bloomed two
full years after the date of its first occupancy. There
are daintier hands than mine that care for this little
garden of wildness, and give it its crowning grace ;
but here — I may not speak their praise.

The other southern window is at a farther remove
from the open wood-fire ; its floral show is, therefore,
somewhat different ; and the reader will, I trust, ex-
cuse me a little particularity of description, since it
will enable me to show how much may be done with
limited material and space.

Upon the window-sill, — some eighteen inches in
breadth by forty in length, — are placed four bits of
oak-wood five inches in length, squarely sawn from a
young foKest tree, which serve as standards or sup-
ports, to a tray of plank five inches in depth, and cov-
ered with unbarked saplings, so graduated in size, as
to make this base (or tray) appear like the plinth of a
column. This is filled with fine garden-mould, and
there are grooves in the plank-bottom communicating
with one drainage hole, beneath which is placed an
earthen saucer. Fitting upon this tray is a glazed
case with top sloping to the sun, and with its quoins

808 MY FARM.

and edges covered with bark, and embossed with
acorn-cups — to correspond with the base. The fitting
is not altogether so perfect as that of a Wardian case,
but quite sufficient for all practical purposes.

Throughout the summer I keep this little window-
garden stocked with the most brilliant of the wood
mosses ; a slight sprinkling once in thirty days keeps
them in admirable order ; and if I come upon some
chrysalis in the garden whose family is unknown, I
have only to lodge it upon my bed of mosses, and in
due time I have a butter-fly captive for further exam-
ination. As the frosts approach I throw out my
mosses, and re-stock my garden with fragrant violets
and a few ferns. These keep up a lusty garden show
until January, when again I change the order of my
captives — this time incorporating a large share of
sand with the earth in the tray — and setting in it all
my needed cuttings of Verbenas, of Fuchsias, and of
Carnations. They thrive under the glass magically ;
and by early March are so firm-rooted and rampant in
growth, that I can- pot them, for transfer to a fresh-
laid pit out of doors. I now amend the soil, and
sprinkling it with a dash of ammoniacal water, sow in
it the Cockscomb, Peppers, Egg-plants, and whatever
fastidious plants require special care, while along the
edges I prove my over-kept cabbage and clover seed.
All these make their way, and in due time come to

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 309

their season of potting, when I give up my little gar-
den to a careless array of the first laughing flowers
of spring.

Can you tell me of so small a window anywhere
that shows so many stages of growth ? Nor have I
named all even yet. A rustic arch, steep as the Ki-
alto at Venice, overleaps this tiny garden, and bears
upon its centre a miniature Swiss chalet, while down
either flank, upon successive steps, are little bronze
mementos of travel — among which the delicate ten-
drils of a German-ivy (planted upon a ledge of its
own) intertwine and toss their tender leaflets into the
doors and windows of the chalet.

But I am lingering in-doors, when my book is es-
sentially an out-of-door book.

I am not about to lay down any rules for flower-
beds or for flower culture ; the gardening books are
full of them ; and by their aid, and that of a dexterous
gardener, any one may arrange his parterres and
his graduated banks of flowers, quite secvndum
artem. And I suppose, that, when completed, these
orderly arrays of the latest and newest floral wonders
are enjoyable. Yet I am no fair judge ; the apprecia-
tion of them demands a ' booking-up ' in floral science
to which I can lay no claim. I sometimes wander
through the elegant gardens of my town friends,
fairly dazzled by all the splendor and the orderly

310 MY FARM,

ranks of beauties ; but nine times in ten — if I do not
guard my tongue with a prudent reticence, and allow
my admiration to ooze out only in exclamations — I
mortify the gardener by admiring some timid flower,
which nestles under cover of the flaunting Dahlias or
Peonies, and which proves to be only some dainty
weed, or an antiquated plant, which the florists no
longer catalogue. Everybody knows how ridiculous
it is to admire a picture by an unknown artist ; and
I must confess to feeling the fear of a kindred ridi-
cule, whenever I stroll through the gardens of an ac-
complished amateur.

But I console myself with thinking that I have
company in my mal-adroitness, and that there is a
great crowd of people in the world, who admire spon-
taneously what seems to be beautiful, without wait-
ing for the story of its beauty. If I were an adept,
I should doubtless, like other adepts, reserve my ad-
miration exclusively for floral perfection ; but I thank
God that my eye is not as yet eo bounded. The
blazing Daffodils, Blue-bells, English-cowslips, and
Striped-grass, with which some pains-taking woman
in an up-country niche of home, spots her little door-
yard in April, have won upon me before now to a
tender recognition of the true mission of flowers, as
no gorgeous parterre could do.

With such heretical views, the reader will not be

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 31 1

surprised if I have praises and a weakness for the
commonest of flowers. Every morning in August,
from my chamber window, I see a great company of
the purple Convolvulus, writhing and twisting, and
over-running their rude trellis, while above and be-
low, and on either flank of the wild arbor, their fairy
chalices are beaded with the dew. A Scarlet-runner
is lost — so far as its greenness goes — in the tangle
of a hedge-row, and thrusts out its little candelabras
of red and white into the highway, to puzzle the pas-
sers-by, who admire it, — because they do not know it.
A sturdy growth of Nasturtium is rioting around the
angle of a distant mossy wall, at the end of a woody
copse — so far away from all parterres, that it seems
to passers some strange, gorgeous wild-flower ; and
yet its blaze of orange and crimson is as common and
vulgar as the wood-fire upon a farmer's hearth. Hol-
ly-hocks— so far away you cannot tell if they be
double or single (they are all single) — lift their stately
yellows and whites in the edge of the shrubbery;
Phloxes, purple and white, hem them in ; and at their
season a wilderness of Roses bloom in the tangled
thicket.

Dotted about here and there, in unexpected places
• — yet places where their color will shine — are clumps
of yellow Lilies, of Sweet- William, of crimson Peonies,
of Larkspur, or even (shall I be ashamed to tell it ?)

312 MY FARM.

of Golden-rod and of the Cardinal flower (Lobelia) ,
In a little bed scooped from the turf and bordering
upon the nearer home-walks, are the old-fashioned
Spider-wort, and that old white Lily, which Raphael
makes the Virgin hold on the day of her espousals.
And yet you may go through half the finest gardens of
the country and never find this antiquated Lily ! The
sweet Violet and the Mignonette have their place in
these new borders, as well as the roses. Cypress and
Madeira vines twine, in leash with the German ivy,
over a pile of stumps that have been brought down
from the pasture ; under the lee of a thicket of pines,
among lichened stones heaped together, is a group of
ferns and Lycopodiums; and the sweet Lily of the Val-
ley,— true to its nature and quality, — thrives in a dark
bit of ground half shaded between two spurs of a
bushy thicket.

Of course, there are the Verbenas, for which every
year a fresh circlet of ground is prepared from the
turf, and a great tribe of Geraniums, to bandy scar-
lets with the Salvias ; and the Fuchsias, too — though
very likely not the latest named varieties ; nor are
they petted into an isolated, pagoda-like show, but
massed together in a little group below the edge of
the fountain, where they will catch its spray, and
where their odorless censers of purple and white and
crimson may swing, or idle, as they will. And among

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 313

the mossy stones from amid which the fountain gur-
gles over, I find lodging places, not only for rampant
wild-ferns, but for a stately Calla, and for some
showy type of the Amaryllidae.

It is in scattered and unexpected places, that
I like my children to ferret out the wild-flowers
brought down from the woods — the frail Colombine
in its own cleft of rock, — the Wild-turnip, with its
quaint green flower in some dark nook, that is like
its home in the forest — the Maiden's-hair thriving in
the moist shadow of rocks ; and among these trans-
planted wild ones of the flower-fold, I like to drop
such modest citizens of the tame country as a tuft of
Violets, or a green phalanx of the bristling Lilies of
the Valley.

Year by year, as we loiter among them, after the
flowering season is over, we change their habitat,
from a shade that has grown too dense, to some
summer bay of the coppices ; and with the next year
of bloom, the little ones come in with marvellous
reports of Lilies, where Lilies were never seen before
— or of fragrant Violets, all in flower, upon the
farthest skirt of the hill-side. It is very absurd, of
course ; but I think I enjoy this more — and the rare
intelligence which the little ones bring in with their
flashing, eager eyes — than if the most gentlemanly
gardener from Thorburn's were to show a Dahlia,
14

314 MY FARM.

with petals as regular as if they were notched by the
file of a sawyer.

Flowers and children are of near kin, and too
much of restraint or too much of forcing, or too
much of display, ruins their chiefest charms. I love
to associate them, and to win the children to a love
of the flowers. Some day they tell me that a Violet
or a tuft of Lilies is dead ; but on a spring morning,
they come, radiant with the story, — that the very
same Violet is blooming sweeter than ever, upon some
far away cleft of the hill-side. So you, my child, if
the great Master lifts you from us, shall bloom — as
God is good — on some richer, sunnier ground !

We talk thus : but if the change really come,

it is more grievous than the blight of a thousand
flowers. She, who loved their search among the thick-
ets— will never search them. She, whose glad eyes
would have opened in pleasant bewilderment upon
some bold change of shrubbery or of paths, will never
open them again. She — whose feet would have danced
along the new wood-path, carrying joy and merri-
ment into its shady depths, — will never set foot upon
these walks again.

What matter how the brambles grow? — her dress
will not be torn : what matter the broken paling by
the water? — she will never topple over from the
bank. The hatchet may be hung from a lower nail

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 315

now — the little hand that might have stolen posses-
sion of it, is stiff — is fast ! God has it.

And when spring wakens all its echoes — of the
wren's song — of the blue-bird's warble, — of the plain-
tive cry of mistress cuckoo (she daintily called her
mistress cuckoo) from the edge of the wood — what
eager, earnest, delighted listeners have we — lifting
the blue eyes, — shaking back the curls — dancing to
the melody ? And when the violets repeat the
sweet lesson they learned last year of the sun and of
the warmth, and bring their fragrant blue petals
forth — who shall give the rejoicing welcome, and be
the swift and light-footed herald of the flowers?
Who shall gather them with the light fingers, she
put to the task — who ?

And the sweetest flowers wither, and the sweet-
est flowers wait — for the dainty fingers that shall
pluck them, never again !

1} Envoi.

I HAVE now completed the task which I had as-
signed to myself; and I do it with the burden-
some conviction that not one half of the questions
which suggest themselves in connection with Farm-
life in America, can be discussed — much less resolved
— within so narrow a compass. Yet I have endeav-
ored to light up, with my somewhat disorderly array

316 MY FARM.

of hints and suggestions, those more salient topics
which would naturally suggest themselves to all who
may have a rural life in prospect, or who may to-day
be idling or planning, or toiling under the shadow of
their own trees.

There are no grand rules by which we may lay
down the proportions of a life, or the wisdom of this
or that pursuit ; every man is linked to his world of
duties by capacities, opportunities, weaknesses, which
will more or less constrain his choice. And I am
slow to believe that a man who brings cultivation,
refinement, and even scientific attainment, may not
find fit office for all of them in country life, and so
dignify that great pursuit in which, by the necessity
of the case, the majority of the world must be always
engaged. Pie may contribute to redeem it from those
loose, unmethodical, ignorant practices, which are, in
a large sense, due to the farmer's isolation, and to the
necessities of his condition. And although careful
investigation, study, and extended observation in
connection with husbandry, may fail of those pecu-
niary rewards, which seem to be their due, yet
the cause in some measure ennobles -the sacrifice.
The cultivated farmer is leading a regiment in the
great army whose foraging success is feeding the
world ; and if he put down within the sphere of his
influence — riotous pillage — wasteful excesses, and by

, HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 317

his example give credit to order, discipline, and the
best graces of manhood, — he is reaping honors that
will endure : — not measured by the skulls he piles on
any Bagdad plains, but by the mouths he has fed —
by the flowers he has taught to bloom, and by the
swelling tide of harvests which, year by year, he has
pushed farther and farther up the flanks of the hills.

I would not have my reader believe that I have
carried out as yet within the limits of the farm herein
described all that I have advised — whether in the
things which relate to its productive capacity, or to
its embellishment. All this ripens by slow progres-
sion which we cannot unduly hasten. Nor do I know
that full accomplishment would add to the charm ; I
think that those who entertain the most keen enjoy-
ment of a country homestead, are they who regard it
always in the light of an unfinished picture — to which,
season by season, they add their little touches, or
their broad, bold dashes of color ; and yet with a
vivid and exquisite foresight of the future completed
charm, beaming through their disorderly masses of
pigments, like the slow unfolding of a summer's day.

In all art, it is not so much the bald image that
meets the eye, as it is the crowd of suggested images
lying behind, and giving gallant chase to our fancy —
which gives pleasure. It -is not the mere palaces in
the picture of Venice before my eye, which delight

318 MY FARM.

me, but the reach of imagination behind and back of
them — the shadowy procession of Doges — the gold
cloth — the Bucintoro — the plash of green water kiss-
ing the marble steps, where the weeds of the Adriatic
hang their tresses, and the dainty feet of Jessica go
tripping from hall to gondola. It is not the shaggy,
Highland cattle, with dewy nostrils lifted to the
morning, that keep my regard in Rosa Bonheur ; —
but the aroma of the heather, and of a hundred High-
land traditions, — a sound — as of Bruar water, — a
sudden waking of all mountain memories and soli-
tudes.

Again it must be remembered by all those who
have rural life in anticipation, that its finer charms,
and those which grow out of the adornments and
accessories of home, are dependent much more upon
the appreciative eye and taste of the mistress than
of the master. If I have used the first person some-
what freely in my descriptions, it has been from no
oversight of what is justly due to another ; and I
would have, the reader believe — what is true — that
all the more delicate graces which are set forth, and
which spring from flowers or flowering shrubs, and
their adroit disposition, are due to tenderer hands,
and a more provident and appreciative eye than mine.

I think that I have not withheld from view the
awkwardnesses and embarrassments which beset a

HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 319

country life in New England, — nor overstated its
possible attractions. I have sought at any rate, to
give a truthful picture, and to suffuse it all — so far as
I might — with a country atmosphere ; so that a man
might read, as if the trees were shaking their leaves
over his head, — the corn rustling through all its
ranks within hearing, and the flowers blooming at his
elbow.

Be this all as it may, — when, upon this charming
morning of later August, I catch sight, from my win-
dow, of the distant water — where, as at the first —
white sails come and go : — of the spires and belfries
of the near city rising out of their bower of elms —
of the farm lands freshened by late rains into un-
wonted greenness ; — of the coppices I have planted,
shaking their silver leaves, and see the low fire of
border flowers flaming round their skirts, and hear
the water plashing at the door in its rocky pool, and
the cheery voices of children, rejoicing in health and
the country air, — I do not for a moment regret the
first sight of the old farm house, under whose low-
browed ceiling, I give this finishing touch to the last
chapter of MY FABM OF EDGEWOOD.

4835

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