Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 Form L 1
 
 STATi NORMAL SU. 
 
 I A I.- . 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 SEP 4 1931 
 
 1 8 1935 
 
 
 
 MAR 26'69 
 MAR ' 4 1P69 
 
 
 Form L-9-5m-7,'j
 
 MY FAEM 
 
 BY DON? G. MITCHELL
 
 STAT! NORMAL SCHOOL, 
 
 f/t? 
 
 MY FARM 
 
 OF EDGEWOOD: 
 
 A COUNTRY BOOK 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "REVERIES OF A BACHELOR" 
 
 " it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles covered the face 
 thereof, and the stone-wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw and 
 considered it well : I looked upon it, and received instruction" 
 
 PEOVEBBS xxiv. 31. 
 
 NEW YOBK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS 
 1884
 
 COP TRIG OT, J863, fSSJ. 
 
 BY DONALD G. MITCHELL 
 
 TROWS 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 
 NEW YORK.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 A FRIEND asks, "Are you not tired, then, of 
 * *- that fancy of Farming? Is it not an expensive 
 amusement ; is it not a stupefying business ? 
 
 " Do you find your brain taking breadth or color out 
 of Carrot-raising, 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 his, looking after some eidolon) to love the country 
 so far as to plant himself there, and grow into the trade 
 of farming ? A victory over the forces of nature, and of 
 the seasons, compelling them to abundance, is no 
 doubt large ; but is not a victory over the forces of
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 mind, which can only come out of sharp contact with 
 the world, immensely larger ? " 
 
 In my reply, loving the country as I do, and wishing 
 to set forth its praises ; and believing as I do, in the 
 God-appointed duty of working land to its top limit of 
 producing 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 
 Meliboeus in the eclogue, 
 
 EN IPSE CAPELLAS 
 
 PROTENUS /EGER AGO! 
 
 In short, in my reply, I beat about the bush : so much 
 about the bush in fact, that this book came of it. 
 
 EDGEWOOD, 1863.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE SEARCH AND FINDING, . . I 
 
 II. TAKING REINS IN HAND. 
 
 AROUND THE HOUSE, 45 
 
 MY BEES, . . . . . . 51 
 
 CLEARING UP, 57 
 
 WHAT TO Do WITH THE FARM, ... 64 
 
 DAIRYING, 69 
 
 LABORERS, 75 
 
 A SUNNY FRONTAGE, 93 
 
 FARM BUILDINGS, 97 
 
 THE CATTLE, 104 
 
 ///. CROPS AND PROFITS. 
 
 THE HILL LAND, 117 
 
 THE FARM FLAT, 127 
 
 AN ILLUSTRATION OF SOILING, . . .137 
 
 AN OLD ORCHARD, 143 
 
 THE PEARS, 153 
 
 MY GARDEN, 160 
 
 FINE TILTH MAKES FINE CROPS, . . 165
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 FACE 
 
 SEEDING AND TRENCHING, .... 168 
 How A GARDEN SHOULD LOOK, . . . 171 
 
 THE LESSER FRUITS, 176 
 
 GRAPES, 184 
 
 PLUMS, APRICOTS, AND PEACHES, . . . 189 
 
 THE POULTRY, 194 
 
 Is IT PROFITABLE ? 202 
 
 DEBIT AND CREDIT, 205 
 
 MONEY- MAKING FARMERS, . . . .211 
 DOES FARMING PAY? 218 
 
 IV. HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT, 227 
 
 AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY, . . . 229 
 A GYPSEOUS ILLUSTRATION, .... 234 
 SCIENCE AND PRACTICE, .... 241 
 
 LACK OF PRECISION, 248 
 
 KNOWING TOO MUCH, 252 
 
 OPPORTUNITY FOR CULTURE 256 
 
 ISOLATION OF FARMERS, . . . .261 
 
 DICKERING, 268 
 
 THE BRIGHT SIDE, 275 
 
 BUSINESS TACT, 282 
 
 PLACE FOR SCIENCE, 286 
 
 ./ESTHETICS OF THE BUSINESS, . . . 291 
 
 WALKS, 296 
 
 SHRUBBERY, 301 
 
 RURAL DECORATION, 307 
 
 FLOWERS, 314 
 
 L'ENVOI, 325
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING.
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 
 
 T T 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 vagrancy, 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 exu- 
 berance and lustiness by the recent hospitalities of 
 a green English home, with its banks of Laurestina, 
 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 adver- 
 tisement for the morning papers, running, so nearly 
 as I can recall it, thus :
 
 4 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 bab- 
 ble, 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- 
 farming 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 hero
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 5 
 
 and there with old and mossy orcharding ; the west 
 shore rose in a stiff bluff that was packed close with 
 hemlocks and maples ; while beyond the bluff a rat- 
 tling 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, surging 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
 
 6 MY FARM. 
 
 brook that came sauntering leisurely out from the 
 wood, at the bottom of the glen ; a slope from the 
 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 whisk- 
 ing their tails, but they are none of mine. 
 
 Then, it seemed the home should be upon an 
 island, looking down and off to the sea, where ships 
 shortened sail, and bore up for the channel buoys, 
 which lay bobbing on the water. There, the farm 
 land ended 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 about 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, showing half a dozen 
 gushing springs which plied their work jauntily till 
 the ebb came, and then, after coquetting and toying 
 with their lover, the sea were lost in his embrace.
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. ^ 
 
 Only a fancy ! If there be such a lookout 
 
 from farm windows, the ships come and go without 
 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 
 feeding 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 on which ships tack, and tack again
 
 8 MY FARM. 
 
 comes streaming to my eye as I sit quietly in my 
 chair. 
 
 It was not from mere caprice that my advertise- 
 ment had been worded as it was. For the mere es- 
 tablishment of a country home, one hundred acres 
 might seem an unnecessarily large number, as in- 
 deed 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 some- 
 what enthusiastic curiosity to know, and to deter- 
 mine by actual experiment, if farm lands were 
 simply a cost and an annoyance 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 agricultu- 
 ral pursuits. 

 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 9 
 
 With fifty or a hundred acres, however, steaming 
 under the plough, and with crops opening succes- 
 sively into waving fields of green into featheiy 
 blossom, into full maturity ; too large for waste ; 
 too considerable for 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 intelligent decision of the question 
 whether a man is richer in the cultivation of a 
 hundred acres, or of ten ; whether, in short, farm- 
 ing is a mere gross employment, remunerative, like 
 other manual trades, to those immediately con- 
 cerned ; or whether it is a pursuit subject to the 
 rules of an intelligent direction, and will pay the 
 cost of such direction, without everyday 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 important 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 jour-
 
 io MY FARM. 
 
 ney 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 de- 
 termines to be a country liver, I hardly know a hap- 
 pier mean of distance than three hours from the city. 
 If, indeed, he 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 tasting 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 natu- 
 rally 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 
 utterly 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 belong in the kitchens of winter ; I do not say 
 nay to this : but I do say that a country home with- 
 out some one open chimney, around which in time 
 of winter twilight, when snows are beating against
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. u 
 
 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 
 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 extrav- 
 agant crop. Thirty years on rocky, wild land, else 
 unserviceable, 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
 
 12 MY FARM. 
 
 patriarchal grace to say nothing of an annual har- 
 vest 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 tempesta Mosses plant their white 
 blight, as gray hairs come to a man ; but the core is 
 sound, and the life sap swift, and in it are the juices 
 of a thousand leaves. 
 
 A wood, 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 
 window. Bird-nesting boyhood comes again to sit 
 astride the limbs to hunt for slippery elm, or the 
 fragrant leaves of young wintergreen, or the aro- 
 matic 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 
 Apennines ; the hemlocks bring to memory the kin- 
 dred 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 beyond the old French town of Poligny, and
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 13 
 
 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, 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 believe 
 there is nothing in nature which so enlaces one's 
 love for the country, and binds it with willing fet- 
 ters, as the silver meshes of a brook. Not 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 pen- 
 itent, 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
 
 14 MY FARM. 
 
 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 for you, summer after summer. 
 I do not forget that poor Shenstone ruined himself 
 by his coquetries with the trees and brooks at Lea- 
 sowea 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 
 country home. A lake view and a river view are 
 well in their way, but the bills 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 joyous strain to the eye in looking on them 
 which a sea view provokes. The ocean seems to 
 absorb all narrowness, 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 sympa- 
 thies touch by the glitter of a sail.
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 15 
 
 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 neighbor'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 
 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 
 companionship that gives rein and verge to a man's 
 humanity. 
 
 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 consume, 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
 
 1 6 MY FARM. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 amrm my choice, with respect to all tem- 
 perate regions. If this be true of European coun- 
 tries, 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
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING, 17 
 
 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 
 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 few 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. 
 Delille chased his rural phantoms beyond the Bur- 
 gundian mountains, before they had taken their best 
 form. 
 
 But in the English Isle by Abergavenny, by 
 Merthyr, 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.
 
 1 8 MY FARM. 
 
 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- 
 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. 
 
 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.
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 19 
 
 Another, " in case I found nothing to suit else- 
 where," could recommend "a small place of ten 
 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 
 farmer'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 architec- 
 ture seemed to me rather disproportionate to the 
 land ; inadmissible 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
 
 20 MY FARM. 
 
 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 living in the pretentious house of another 
 man's ordering 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 pro- 
 voke 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 engross- 
 ing importance as compared with its rural surround- 
 ings, then it must be in agreement with the tastes 
 and character of the occupant, or it is a pretentious 
 falsehood. 
 
 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 neighbor-
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 21 
 
 hood 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 gentlemen of character would be permitted 
 to purchase, and where the refinements of city inter- 
 course 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 man- 
 agement of which, I am sorry to say, the amenities 
 of the town are not greatly superior to the amenities 
 of the country. 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 buyers. A community of cooks, or of coal- 
 heavers, I can conceive of, but a community of rural- 
 ists, or of amateur farmers, quite passes my compre- 
 hension. 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 Dutchman or Irishman, the
 
 23 MY FARM. 
 
 cows are to be fed, the weeds pulled, the chickens 
 plucked, and the new industry and profit developed 
 generally. It is very much as if a man were to enter 
 upon the business of whaling by taking rooms at the 
 Pequod House, and negotiating with some enter- 
 prising skipper to tow a few tame whales into har- 
 bor, 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 
 occipitio prior eat. 
 
 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 very 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
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 23 
 
 country property thirty miles from the city, in a 
 favorable location. The house was not large or ex- 
 pensive, possibly not extensive enough ; there was 
 old wood upon the place, the surface charmingly 
 diversified, and in 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 
 definite information in regard to the exact size of 
 the property, or terms 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 
 property ; " 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.
 
 24 MY FARM. 
 
 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 of the northern railways, and after an hour's 
 ride, was put down at a station some five miles dis- 
 tant from the property. I drove across the country 
 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 meas- 
 ured, as I fancied, the fifth mile, that I for the first 
 time saw a party from whom I might ask special 
 directions. I may describe this party as a tall man 
 in red beard and red fur cap, with a black-stemmed 
 porcelain pipe in his mouth, and trowsers 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 V "
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING, 2$ 
 
 "Yah yah," and his smile has now grown eager 
 and familiar. 
 
 His place is a little farther on ; and I ask him to a 
 seat beside me. 
 
 " It is a farm he has to sell ? " 
 
 " Yah yah, farm." 
 
 I ask if the view is good. 
 
 "Yah good yah." 
 
 I venture a question in regard to the mill. 
 
 "Yah mill yah." 
 
 " Grist mill ? " I ask. 
 
 "Yah mill." 
 
 " For sawing ? " I add, thinking possibly he might 
 misunderstand me. 
 
 " Yah sawing.' 
 
 I venture to inquire 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 
 cultivation, 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.
 
 26 MY FARM. 
 
 "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 and 
 house ; but the mill remained where was the mill ? 
 
 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. Van 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 prop- 
 erty was so curiously and amazingly repugnant to 
 all the rural fancies I had ever entertained, whether
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING, 27 
 
 Aesthetic, or purely agricultural, that I was ex- 
 cessively interested. 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 (which had very likely sprung of 
 unpleasant familiarity with the dam actual) he be- 
 came explosively demonstrative 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 dish 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
 
 28 MY FARM. 
 
 pond, der land, vat you call der slope dis isb 
 mine." 
 
 I suggested the mention of a water view in the 
 advertisement 
 
 "View, "said my red-bearded friend; "vat you 
 call view ? " 
 
 I explained as I could, teutonically. 
 
 " Dam ! der vater view ! (with emphasis) ; dish is 
 it ; der pond, ish it no vater ? hein ! dam (puff)." 
 
 Even now I look back with a good deal of self- 
 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 
 straggling trunks of the drowned trees, and the im- 
 perturbable insistance of the German, with his ex- 
 pletive dam and his black-stemmed porcelain pipe 
 as I think of escapes from some threatening pesti- 
 lence. 
 
 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 
 careless luxuriance ; there were rounded banks of 
 hills, and meadows through which an ample stream
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 29 
 
 (?ame 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 house-yard 
 that compassed the dwelling. And from the door, 
 underneath cherry trees, one could catch glimpses 
 of the great stretch of the Hudson into which the 
 brook passed ; and the farther shores were so dis- 
 tant, that the Hudson looked like a bay of the sea. 
 A gaunt American who was in charge of the prem- 
 ises 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
 
 30 MY FARM. 
 
 doan't know but you be, but doan'fc look jist like out) 
 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 
 pennyrial ; ten acres on't wouldn't keep a good cos- 
 set sheep." And my friend expectorates with a good 
 deal of emphasis. 
 
 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 tin's effect was
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 31 
 
 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 's what 
 driv the folks off, in my 'pinion." 
 
 " Ah, they do have the fever about here, then ? " 
 
 " 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 'ts comin' ; 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-
 
 32 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 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 wildnerness. 
 
 The occupant and owner of the place of may be 
 seventy acres was one of those wiry, energetic, 
 restless young men of New England stock, thrifty,
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 33 
 
 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 
 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 
 warranted 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 the 
 sea, the brook, the 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 attention ; 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 
 3
 
 34 MY FARM. 
 
 inner feeling was kindled into open revolt against 
 the man's presumption, 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 rep- 
 resentatives in the State of Iowa, or Minnesota. 
 There are men who carry in their presuming, rest- 
 less 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 capi- 
 tal fight with danger of all sorts ; he knows no yield- 
 ing to fatigues to any natural obstacles, or to con- 
 science. It is hard to conceive 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, impassioned 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
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 35 
 
 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 plundered and piloted me through 
 all manner of out-of-the-way places, became fatigu- 
 ing 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 quie- 
 tude of the place which I had known in other days, 
 still lingered 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 col- 
 lege still seemed dreaming out its classic beati- 
 tudes, and the staring rectangularity of its enclos- 
 ures and buildings and paths appeared to me only a 
 proper expression of its old geometric and educa- 
 tional 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
 
 36 MY FARM. 
 
 stopped ; and presently catch faint images of a sooty 
 stairway, begrimed 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 belching voices break out in a pas- 
 sionate chorus of shouts ; as the eye gains upon the 
 sootiness and gloom, it makes out the wispy, wavy 
 lines of a few whips moving back and forth amid the 
 uproar 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 car- 
 riages ; they may be black, or white, or gray, or kins- 
 folk you see nothing but becloaked figures pass- 
 ing through ; portmanteaus fall with a slump, and 
 huge dressing cases fall with a slam, upon what seems, 
 by the ear, to be pavement ; luggage trucks 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, police, cabmen, stairway, and all ;
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 37 
 
 there is a crazy shout of some official, a jerk, a dash 
 figures still flitting up and down the sooty stair- 
 way 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 glistening 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 .* 
 
 A friend called upon me shortly after my arrival, 
 and learning the errand upon which I had been 
 scouring no inconsiderable tract of country, pro- 
 posed 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 
 
 * It is perhaps needless to say that the lapse of twenty years 
 has made a change in the approaches ; and the traveller is 
 now set down at a station which ia flanked on one side by 
 full sweep of the harbor waters and which should (and might) 
 be flanked on the other, by a City Green, with its trees and 
 fountain.
 
 38 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 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 over-reach- 
 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 turning 
 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 tuft-
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 39 
 
 ing 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 Beichenbach ; and how we 
 ascended again, drifting through another limb of the 
 village, where the little churches stood ; and how 
 we sped on past neat white houses, rising gently, 
 skirted by hedgerows of tangled cedars, and pres- 
 ently 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 Kichmond 
 hill, and had luxuriated in the valley scene from the 
 cote of St. Cloud. But neither one nor the other for- 
 bade my open and outspoken admiration of the view 
 before me. 
 
 I have a recollection of making my way through
 
 40 MY FARM. 
 
 the hedging likes, 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 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 
 uneasy 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 farm-land, afoot, that very 
 afternoon. I remember tramping through the wood,
 
 THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 41 
 
 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 
 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 become 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
 
 42 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 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 fountain, 
 and with the fragrance of those lilacs around me, 
 that I close this initial chapter of my book, and lay 
 down my pen.
 
 n. 
 
 TAKING EEINS IN HAND.
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 
 
 Around the House. 
 
 A LTHOUGH possessing all the special requisites 
 of which I had been in search, yet the farm 
 was by no means without its inaptitudes and rough- 
 nesses. 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 establish- 
 ment 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 
 outbuildings standing awry, and showing rhom- 
 boidal angles in their outline. These approached 
 the house very nearly, so nearly, in fact, that in
 
 46 MY FARM. 
 
 one direction at 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 Stramo- 
 nium. There were the invariable clumps of purple 
 lilacs, in most unmanageable positions ; a few strag- 
 gling bunches of daffodils ; an ancient garden with 
 its measly looking, mossy gooseberries ; a few 
 strawberry plants, and currant bushes keeping up 
 interruptedly the pleasant formality of having once 
 been set in rows, and of having nodded their crim- 
 son tassels at each other across the walk. There 
 were some half dozen huge old pear trees, immedi- 
 ately in the rear of the house, mossy, and promising 
 inferior native 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 vege- 
 table jaundice, the yellows, which throughout New 
 England has proven in so many instances 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 47 
 
 by adventurous boys, ignorant of curvilinear har- 
 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 
 and sleighs, looking out of place in June and 
 submitted 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 in- 
 firm 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
 
 48 MY FARM. 
 
 axe, or put the saws to sharp service ; for in bargain- 
 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, 
 syringas, 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 archway, 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 hos- 
 pitalities of a certain warm-blooded West Indian, 
 who in gone-by years had lighted up the country 
 home with cheery festivities. I would have cher- 
 ished the lantern if it had not long before disap- 
 peared ; 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 49 
 
 look, by a certain quaintness of outline. This he 
 had done by extending the area of the lower story 
 some ten feet, in both front and rear, while the roof 
 of this annex was concealed by a heavy balustrade, 
 perched upon its 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 date 
 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 leakage, 
 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 
 tbe 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 
 4
 
 So MY FARM. 
 
 that your quarters by night are three or four feet 
 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 on 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 
 concealed ; I have a recollection that on one of my 
 furtive 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 handker- 
 chief 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 51 
 
 to another of her disturbed haunts in buttery and 
 kitchen, with a philosophic indifference. I should 
 not 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 do- 
 mestic animals ; they care little who is master, or 
 what are the overturnings, if their pickings are se- 
 cure ; 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 in- 
 disposed 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-
 
 52 MY FARM. 
 
 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, 
 it was the moth that found its way into their hives ; 
 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 in- 
 terfere 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 
 
 * The Rev. Charles Butler, in his "Feminine Monarchic" 
 (London, 1609), after speaking in Chapter VII. of " Deir Ene- 
 mies," continues: "But not anyone of des", nor all des* 
 togeder, doo half so muc harm to de Bees, as de Bees. Apis 
 apt, ut Jiomo Tiomini, Lupus. Dey mak de greatest spoil bot 
 of hees and of hoonie. Dis robbing is practised all de year."
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 53 
 
 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 recollection of the sharp screams of a 
 little " curl pate " that have once or twice pierced my 
 ears, as she ventured into too close companionship, 
 has indisposed 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, as 
 I have said, 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 forgetf ulness ; 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
 
 54 MY FARM. 
 
 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 aimat medio- 
 crement ; on se passionne pour elles." 
 
 I have a neighbor, a quiet old gentleman, who is 
 possessed of this passion ; his swarms multiply in- 
 definitely ; 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 
 swarms. 
 
 Many of the old writers tell pleasant stories of the 
 amiable submission of their favorites to gentle hand- 
 ling ; but I have never had the curiosity to put this 
 submission to the test. I remember that Van Am- 
 burgh 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. Lom- 
 bard'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.
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 55 
 
 M. Lombard was a French lawyer, who was for a 
 long time imprisoned in the dungeons of Bobe- 
 spierre ; and when that tyrant reformer was be- 
 headed, this prisoner gained his liberty, and went 
 into the country, where he became a farmer, and 
 wrote three or four books about the bees : among 
 other_ things he says, 
 
 " A young girl of my 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 impor- 
 tant 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, experienc- 
 ing no injury, was delighted above measure at the 
 novel sight, and so entirely freed from all fear, that
 
 56 MY FARM. 
 
 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, 
 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 noth- 
 ing 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 fountain, and 
 are sedulously exploring the water.
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 57 
 
 Clearing Up. 
 
 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 ef debris, of unne- 
 cessary palings, of luxuriant corner crops of nettles 
 and burdocks, of mouldering masses of decayed 
 vegetable matter, of old conchologic deposits, and 
 ferruginous wreck ; all this clearance being not so 
 much agricultural employment, as hygienic. There 
 seems to have been a mania with the old New Eng- 
 land householders, in the country, for multiplying 
 enclosures, 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 worthless vegetation in corners that no cultiva- 
 tion 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 
 enclosures, 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 little
 
 58 MY FARM. 
 
 be \vildered garden to the south, with the strag- 
 gling peach orchard in the rear ; and all these merged 
 again, by the removal of a tottling wall, with the val- 
 ley pasture that lay southward, where now clumps 
 of evergreen, and azalias, and lilacs crown the little 
 swells, and hide the obtrusive angles of barriers be- 
 yond, 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 division palings has 
 been done away with ; the inaccessible angles of 
 enclosures which fed monstrous wild growth, are 
 submitted to even culture and cropping ; an under 
 drain through the bottom of the valley 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 or- 
 chard, and by the waste way of the fountain at the 
 door, now discharges 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 
 welcome every opening April with a riotous uproar 
 of voices. Even the scattered clumps of trees stand
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 59 
 
 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. 
 
 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 reve- 
 nue will warrant ; and I propose to illustrate in this 
 book no theories of improvement, whether as re- 
 gards ornamentation or increased productiveness, 
 which a sound economy will not authorize. Agri- 
 cultural successes which are the result of simple, 
 lavish expenditure, without reference to agricultural 
 returns, are but empty triumphs ; no success in any
 
 60 MY FARM. 
 
 method of culture is thoroughly sound and praise- 
 worthy, 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 agri- 
 culture, should bear in mind, first of all, that their 
 endeavors will have healthy influence, only so far as 
 they are imitable ; and they will be imitable only so 
 far as they are subordinated to the trade laws of 
 profit and losa Farming 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.
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 61 
 
 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 looks handsome ; but don't pay." 
 Such observers 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, 
 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 hill- 
 sides strown thick with great granite boulders span- 
 gled 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 col- 
 umbines then yawing away between its green
 
 62 MY FARM. 
 
 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 grapevines 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 
 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.
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 63 
 
 These gates opened upon a straggling cattle yard, 
 ' whose surface was so high and dense, as to dis- 
 tribute a powerful flow of yellow streamlets in very 
 awkward directions after every shower. One angle 
 of this yard it was necessary to traverse before reach- 
 ing 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 
 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.
 
 64 MY FARM. 
 
 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 im- 
 provements 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? 
 
 What to Do irith the Farm. 
 
 are not a few entertaining people of the 
 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 farming, 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 65 
 
 shall shape all the agricultural operations, by the 
 rules of his own experience ; but however extended 
 this experience 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 
 capabilities of his land ; and very disagreeably un- 
 satisfactory to one who has entertained the pleasing 
 illusion that farm lands should not only be capable 
 of paying their own way, but of making respecta- 
 ble return upon the capital invested. Your accom- 
 plished farm manager usually of British birth and 
 schooling, but of a later American finish, is apt to 
 entertain the 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 estab- 
 lish the owner in a conspicuous position on the prize 
 lists of the County or State Societies, and excite the 
 gaping wonderment 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 di- 
 rection that is not limited by commercial proprieties 
 5
 
 66 MY FARM. 
 
 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 accumu- 
 lating 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, 
 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 67 
 
 native cow, bought specially to add to the resources 
 of the fine-blooded dam ; and with these things in 
 their mind they 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 
 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 ad- 
 mire 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 com- 
 mittee-man, than he does farmer." And when they 
 read of him in their agricultural journal if they
 
 68 MY FARM. 
 
 take one as a progressive, and successful agricul- 
 turist, 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 jus- 
 tify and commend the craft to a thoroughly earnest 
 worker. 
 
 Having brought no ambition of this sort to my 
 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 69 
 
 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 ploughing ; 
 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 ? 
 
 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. 
 
 A NY 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
 
 70 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 the mark, and assumed for his doctrine a universality 
 of application which practice will not warrant. My 
 observation warrants me in believing 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 workings which vegetable cul- 
 ture involves, as a light loam. 
 
 Travellers who are trustworthy, teD us that the 
 grape from which the famous Constantia wine is
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 71 
 
 made, at the Cape of Good Hope, is grown from the 
 identical stock which on the Khine banks, makes an 
 inferior and totally different wine : and my own ob- 
 servation 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 
 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
 
 72 My FARM. 
 
 many old-fashioned gentlemen are disposed to affirm, 
 that all land which does not so incline, is necessarily 
 inferior 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 
 generally a tenacity and a retentiveness of moisture, 
 which forbid that frequent and early tillage, that is 
 essential to other growths ; and upon careful reckon- 
 ing, 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 agricultural 
 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 neighbor- 
 hood 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 everyday mar- 
 ket, 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 seh 1 the hay ? Unfortunately, this esperi-
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 73 
 
 merit 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 ma- 
 nurial 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- 
 making, involves grazing ; and can be most profit- 
 ably conducted on natural grass lands, and at a large 
 distance from market, since the transport of these 
 commodities 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 country, as in Great Britain, being now con- 
 ducted upon the soiling principle that is, the sup- 
 ply of green food to the cows, in their enclosures or 
 stalls.
 
 74 MY FARM. 
 
 What plan then could be better than this ? Trans- 
 portation to market was small ; the demand con- 
 stant ; 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 re- 
 cuperating lands which have suffered from injudi- 
 cious overcropping. Their cultivation, unless upon 
 fields which are already in a high state of tilth, in- 
 volves a large outlay for fertilizing materials and for 
 labor which at certain seasons must be at abso- 
 lute command. 
 
 In view of these considerations, which I commend 
 to the attention and to the criticism of the Agri- 
 cultural Journals, I determined that I would have 
 my herd of milch cows, and commence professional 
 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.
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 75 
 
 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 dairy, the blue- 
 birds are singing in the maples. If an uneasy milker 
 kicks over the pail, there is a patch of " Jenny Lands " 
 that makes a fragrant recompense. If the thunder 
 sours the milk, the nodding flowers and the rejoicing 
 grass give the shower a welcome. 
 
 Laborers. 
 
 "I TAVING 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 nowadays are mostly Cormaught-
 
 76 MY FARM. 
 
 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 I, as pathetically : Thus fares he, and all 
 his care is he may get his full wage, and a good jol- 
 lification " nixt St. Parthrick's day." 
 
 This is only my way of introducing the labor ques- 
 tion, 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 77 
 
 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 ax helve 
 on rainy days ; by adroit manipulation, they could 
 relieve a choking cow, or as deftly, hive a swarm of 
 bees. Their furrows indeed were not of the straight- 
 est ; but their control of a long team of oxen was a 
 miracle of guidance. They may have carried a bit 
 of Cavendish twist in their waistcoat pockets ; they 
 certainly did not waste time 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 thre,a cords of 
 
 wood between sun and sun. With bait, ^set, and a 
 
 r 
 keen-whetted six-pound Blanchard, th4 -aid such 
 
 clean and broad swathes through the fie*, ^s of dewy 
 herdsgrass, as made " old-country-men <J stare. By 
 a kind of intuition, they knew the locality of every 
 tree, and of every medicinal herb that grew in the 
 woods. Rarest of all which they possessed, was an 
 acuteness of understanding, which enabled them to
 
 78 MY FARM. 
 
 comprehend an order before it was half uttered, and 
 to meet occasional and unforeseen difficulties, with a 
 steady assurance, as if these had been an accepted 
 part of the problem. It was possible to send a man 
 of this sort 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 bring- 
 ing it down ; and finally, for its sure and prompt 
 delivery at the point indicated. Your Irishman, on 
 the other hand, balks at the first turn ; he must have 
 a multitude of chains ; 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 dimen- 
 sions ; but "begorra, it's 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, h ."begins to doubt if it be indeed a chest- 
 nut or a poplar ; and casting his eye aloft to measure 
 
 r 
 
 it anew, ai ( ancient woodpecker drops something 
 smarting u; his eye ; and his howl starts the rumi- 
 nating tean. into a confused entanglement among the 
 young wooi 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 79 
 
 lodged in the top of an adjoining 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- 
 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 thwack- 
 ing terribly among the foremost fighters of the war 
 (1862). 
 
 Here and there remains an aged representative of 
 the class, with all his nasal twang and his aptitude 
 for a score of different services ; but the chances are, 
 if he has failed of placing himself in the legislative 
 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
 
 8o MY FARM. 
 
 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 a fine bird, but he does 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. Under 
 the old system of growing all that a man might need 
 within his own grounds, a proper farm education 
 embraced a considerable knowledge of a score of 
 different crops and avocations. The tendency is 
 now, however, to centralize attention upon that line 
 of cropping which is best suited to the land ; this 
 limits the range of labor, while the improved me- 
 chanical appliances fill a thousand wants, which were 
 once only to be met by a dexterous handicraft at 
 home. None but a few sharp-faced old gentlemen 
 of a very ancient school, think nowadays 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 81 
 
 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 clear- 
 ings 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 Arca- 
 dians. Meliboeus will not do the milking, nor Tity- 
 rus, though there shall be plenty of snoozing 
 under the beech trees. It is also lamentably true 
 that the uncouth and unkempt Irish or Germans, 
 whom it becomes necessary to employ, place no pride 
 or love in their calling like the English farm laborers, 
 or like that gone-by stock of New England farm 
 workers at whom 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 come 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 
 shouldering a hod, or scraping hides for a soap 
 boiler. The German, too, however accomplished a
 
 82 MY FARM. 
 
 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 mar- 
 kets. 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 Mor- 
 mons, 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 innocency that demands the supervision of 
 a good farm teacher. 
 
 Such a teacher your foreman may be, or he may 
 not be ; if the latter, and he have 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 
 presence, and to permit of your suggestions cher- 
 ish 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.
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 83 
 
 And here comes under observation that romanti- 
 cism about equality of condition and of tastes, which 
 many kindly and poetically-disposed persons 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 exag- 
 gerated 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 the odors of the new-mown hay. The plain 
 truth is, however, that if a man perspires largely in 
 a cornfield of a dusty day, and washes hastily in the 
 horse trough, and eats in shirt sleeves that date their 
 cleanliness three days back, and loves fat pork and 
 cabbage "neat," he will not prove the Arcadian com- 
 panion at dinner, which readers of Somerville im- 
 agine, neither on the score of conversation, or of 
 transpiration. Active, every-day farm labor is cer- 
 tainly not congruous 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 squander it upon toilet labors ; and a long 
 day of close field-work leaves one in very unfit mood 
 for appreciative study of either poetry or the natural 
 sciences. 
 
 The pastoral idea, set off with fancies of earthen
 
 84 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 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 gleesorne 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 85 
 
 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 pleas- 
 antly 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 main- 
 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 
 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
 
 86 MY FARM. 
 
 my window on the bill ; but not a pleasant one. A 
 wild, sweeping, gallant blaze, that wrapped old 
 powder-post timbers in its roar, and licked through 
 crashing sashes, and came crinkling through the 
 roof in a hundred wilful jets, and then lashed and 
 overlaid the whole with a tent of vermilion, above 
 which there streamed into the night great, yellow, 
 swaying pennants 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 de- 
 termine 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 
 obtained from the farm wood ; and from the same 
 source might also be derived the saw logs for ex- 
 terior covering. But from the fact that pine is very 
 much more suitable and durable for cover, than the 
 ordinary timber of New England woods, the economy 
 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 farm- 
 houses on the Downs of Hampshire, made almost 
 entirely from the flints of the neighboring chalkbeds ;
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 87 
 
 and in Cumberland and Westmoreland very substan- 
 tial and serviceable cottages are built out of the 
 rudest stones, the farm laborers assisting in the 
 work. Now, there were, scattered along the road- 
 side, as along most countiy roadsides of New Eng- 
 land a great quantity of small, ill-shapen stones, 
 drawn thither in past years from the fields, and serv- 
 ing only as the breeding ground for pestilent briers. 
 These stones I determined 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 de- 
 monstrate not only the possibility of employing the 
 humblest materials at hand, but also of securing 
 durability and picturesqueness in conjunction with 
 a rigid economy. 
 
 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 ex- 
 posed. The cementing material was simple mortar,
 
 88 MY FARM. 
 
 made of shell lime and sharp sand ; the only excep- 
 tion 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 
 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 Meyringen. 
 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 disguised or concealed by little protecting
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 89 
 
 rooflets of plank. Thus far, simple economy gov- 
 erned every part of the design ; but to give increased 
 architectural effect, as well as comfort, a porch, with 
 peak corresponding 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 unstripped of its bark. If it has not 
 been removed, there is a parsonage house at Amble- 
 side 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, in- 
 stead of being completed in staring red, were carried 
 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 architectural 
 device demanded dexterous handling, I cannot al- 
 lege its economy ; but its extra cost was so trifling, 
 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
 
 90 MY FARM. 
 
 brick and stone of the bouse, 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 chief est 
 (Ampelopsis Hederacea), are fastening into the 
 crevices, 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 re- 
 pair ; there is but little paint to renew ; it is warm 
 in winter ; 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 
 blacksmith's shop ? " " Was it a saw mill ? " and with 
 a loud appreciatory " guffaw " the critics pass by. 
 
 Our 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 come to regard it with a kindly in-
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 91 
 
 terest. It mates so fairly with the landscape, it 
 mates so fairly with its purpose ; it is so resolutely 
 unpretending, and carries such air of permanence 
 and durability, 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 culti- 
 vated 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 undertook 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 ? 
 
 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 
 large chambers of good height under the roof, as
 
 92 MY FARM. 
 
 well as dairy room in the east end of the cellar 
 was between eleven and twelve hundred dollars. 
 The estimates given me for a wooden house, of the 
 stereotyped 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 rea- 
 son of its novelty ; the stone mason charges for the 
 possible difficulties of overcoming his inexperience 
 in the material. The carpenter rates the rough join- 
 ing 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, notwith- 
 standing these drawbacks, the work was accom- 
 plished within the limits of cost which the most 
 economic would have reckoned essential to a build- 
 ing of equal capacity. 
 
 It is further to be considered that while I paid 
 skilful masons for this rough work the same price 
 which they exacted for the nice work of cities, it 
 would have been quite possible for an intelligent 
 proprietor 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 architectu- 
 ral experience, because I believe that such meagre 
 details of construction as I have given may be of
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 93 
 
 service to those having occasion to erect similar ten- 
 ant 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 con- 
 struction. 
 
 A Sunny Frontage. 
 
 OJUCH a farmhouse as I have described, should 
 ^-' have, in all northern latitudes, a sheltered posi- 
 tion and a sunny exposure. Of course, a situation 
 convenient 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 imperative 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. 
 
 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 pre- 
 tending front-side upon some dusty street or high-
 
 94 MY FARM. 
 
 way, 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 Museum, that lies there in state, like 
 a king's coffin. The occupant^ meantime, will be 
 living in some back corner, 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 engrosses 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 household affections through all time. No sea 
 so distant, 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 win-
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 95 
 
 dow, 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 gather- 
 ing 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 house- 
 builder. In the farm cottage, whose principal feat- 
 ures I have detailed, I have given fifty feet of front- 
 age 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 distribution counts thus : a miniature parlor 
 with its lookout to the street, and a broad window 
 to the south ; 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 
 by a wash room, or scullery, from which a second
 
 96 MY FARM. 
 
 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 control. 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 roadside. 
 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 window will print on every winter's 
 morning a golden prayer upon the floor ; and every 
 summer's morning the birds and bees will repeat it, 
 among the flowers at the southern door.
 
 Los Angeles, Cai, 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 97 
 
 Farm Buildings. 
 
 "1 TAYING 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, stand- 
 ing at all imaginable angles, and showing that ex- 
 traordinary 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 buildings erected ? The stanch timbers 
 and the serviceable condition of many of them for- 
 bade this, as well as considerations of prudence. 
 Besides which, I have no admiration for that incon- 
 gruity 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 con- 
 trast 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 progression. It 
 has chanced to me to see here and there through 
 the country very admirable appliances of machinery 
 and buildings, which, on the score of both cost and 
 needfulness, were out of all proportion to the fer- 
 7
 
 98 MY FARM. 
 
 tility and the order of the fields. I see, too, not un- 
 frequently, very showy palings in the neighborhood 
 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 distributed 
 in giving a general neatness and effectiveness to oil 
 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 
 grosser domestic animals ; and it is an imperative 
 condition of the arrangement of all farm buildings
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND, 99 
 
 in our climate 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 
 manurial resources of whatever kind, whether by 
 undue exposure, or by leakage, And in this connec- 
 tion, 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 cer- 
 tainly confirms the fact that such as is taken from 
 under cover, provided only the moisture is sufficient, 
 is worth the double of that which has been exposed 
 to storms. What chemical laws relating to agricul- 
 ture confirm 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 expensive tank, to which drains should con- 
 duct all the wash from the courts and stables. But 
 this would involve water carts, and other appliances,
 
 ioo MY FARM. 
 
 liable to injury under rough handling besides de- 
 manding a nicety of tillage, and a regularity of dis- 
 tribution which, at first, could not be depended on. 
 That the liquid form is the one, under which manu- 
 rial 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 f ertilizing 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 pinch- 
 ing northwesters, and by a list (as seamen say) to 
 the southeast, 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 quagmire, 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 101 
 
 private, staggering under the rations of a major- 
 general. I cut off the rations. With the stones 
 which were in and about the yard, I 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 through a few 
 tiles in the lower terrace wall, upon the head of a 
 long heap of compost, which was ordered to be al- 
 ways replaced, as soon as removed. The leakage of 
 the water trough being cured, its overflow was con- 
 ducted to the pasture below, where the second over- 
 flow, for the stream was constantly running, 
 would do no injury, and would be available as a 
 foraging mudpool for the ducks. By this simple 
 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 fur- 
 tive examination of the compost heap which receives 
 the flow from above.
 
 102 MY FARM. 
 
 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- 
 ough reconstruction ; but only as one of those sim- 
 ple, 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 theo- 
 ries of Mechi or of Liebig. A ragged-coated man 
 should be grateful for a tight bit of linsey-woolsey 
 to his back, until such time as he comes to the dig- 
 nity of broadcloth. 
 
 Four-fifths of those who undertake farming, 
 not as an amusement or simply as an occupation, but 
 as the business of their life, and upon whom we are 
 dependent 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 " farmsteading " are as much Greek to them, as 
 the " Works and Days " of Hesiod. A hint, there- 
 fore, 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 the 
 matter of farm constructions, are totally different 
 from American need, in all northern latitudes. The
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 103 
 
 British farmer can graze his turnips into January ; 
 and I have seen a pretty herd of Devon cows crop- 
 ping a fair bite of grass, under the lee of the Devon 
 Tors, 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 November at the latest, and there is rarely a 
 good bite upon 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, sit- 
 uated 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.
 
 104 MY FARM. 
 
 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- 
 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. 
 
 " "TYT"HAT sort o' cattle d'ye mean to keep, 
 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-
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 105 
 
 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, 
 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 pleas- 
 ure 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
 
 lo6 M Y FARM. 
 
 milker of all as it chanced having lineage in 
 which the Ayrshire, the Shorthorn and Devon were 
 all blended. 
 
 I 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 
 liberty to make his choice of cattle, with the same 
 coolness with 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 impor- 
 tant service, we are apt to measure fitness by some- 
 thing more intrinsic. 
 
 The cattle breeders are unquestionably doing 
 great benefit to the agricultural interests of the 
 country ; but the essential distinction between the
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 107 
 
 aims of the breeder and fanner should not be lost 
 sight of. The first seeks to develop, under the best 
 possible conditions of food and shelter, those points 
 in the animal 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 has 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 peafowl, 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 f ollerin' 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 lif e) ; 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
 
 108 MY FARM. 
 
 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 proper- 
 ties 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 thigha 
 It is perhaps needless to say, that such minute ob- 
 servation as would alone justify a decision based 
 upon this theory, might sometimes prove awkward, 
 and embarrassing. Upon the whole, I should coun- 
 sel 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 re- 
 flections and suggestions of certain adjoining farmers 
 I was by no means proud of the appearance of the 
 little herd of twelve or fourteen cows with which 
 operations were to commence. 
 
 * The interested agricultural reader may consult ' ' Clioix d(# 
 Vacfies Laitieres, par M. Magne, Paris," for full exhibit of 
 the system.
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 109 
 
 The popular belief, that all jockey ism and cheatery 
 is confined to horse dealings, is too limited. Who- 
 ever will visit the cow stables in Kobinson street, or 
 near to Third avenue, upon a market day, may ob- 
 serve a score or two of animals with painfully dis- 
 tended udders (the poor brutes have not been milked 
 in the last forty-eight hours), throwing appealing 
 glances about the enclosure, and eyeing askance cer- 
 tain bullet-headed calves, which are tied in adjoining 
 stalls, but which have no more claim upon the ma- 
 ternal 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 
 incautious enough to test by a glance into her 
 mouth. Not a tooth in her old head. 
 
 I looked accusingly at the rural owner, who
 
 I io MY FARM. 
 
 was quietly cutting a notch in the top rail of his 
 fence. 
 
 "Waal, yes kind o' 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 feed- 
 ing, to cumber with a complicated piece of neck 
 furniture, to forbid her filching surreptitiously what 
 properly belonged to the pail. Self-milkers are not 
 profitable. I have faith in the doctrine of rotation, 
 and the quick 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 government 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
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. in 
 
 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 ! soh, 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- 
 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 tender- 
 ness, until the conquest seemed almost made ; wh^en 
 suddenly pail, stool, and man would lapse together, 
 and a stream of curses carry away all record of the 
 tenderness. We came back at last to Patrick's origi- 
 nal suggestion ; the legs must be tied. A short bit 
 of thick rope passed around one foot and loosely 
 knotted, 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
 
 112 MY FARM. 
 
 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 reformer into control of the dairy. The 
 rope was barbarous ; he didn't believe in such 
 things ; he had seen kicking cows before. A little 
 firmness and gentleness 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 discarded. 
 
 "Well, Patrick," said I, two days after, "how 
 fares the cow ? " 
 
 " 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 inquiriea 
 
 "Begorra, she's kicked him again!" screamed 
 Patrick ; " and it's a divil's own bating he's been giv- 
 ing 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.
 
 TAKING REINS IN HAND. 113 
 
 The moral of the story is, if a cow is an invet- 
 erate 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 out- 
 rageous violence. 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 young 
 Alderney bull, and a pair of sturdy 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 my 
 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.

 
 m. 
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 
 
 The Hill Land. 
 
 ~T)EFOBE 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.
 
 n8 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 flower- 
 ing shrubs, and its little pool, under the willows, 
 that receives the drainage. Elsewhere, beyond, and 
 higher, the surface of the hill 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 gran- 
 itic 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 hah* 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 ad- 
 joining rocks, would have been at fault upon my hill- 
 side. 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. 119 
 
 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 precise 
 people would call a sandy loam), well knitted to- 
 gether 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 unin- 
 viting ; pictorially, it was rounded into the most 
 graceful of cumulated swells, and all glowing with 
 its wild verdure ; 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 England 
 will have occasion some day to submit to themselves, 
 if they have not done so already. Overfeeding 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 regi- 
 men they grow thinner and thinner. The annual 
 excoriation of the brush above ground, seems only 
 to provoke a finer and firmer distribution of the
 
 120 MY FARM. 
 
 roots below ; and the depasturing by cows par- 
 ticularly of milch animals, folded, or stalled at night 
 will gradually and surely diminish the fertilizing 
 capital of such grazing land. It is specially notice- 
 able 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 de- 
 grees, with its seams of old wintry torrents, its oc- 
 casional boulders, and its matted myrtle roots ; and, 
 
 * This is perhaps more apparent than real, from the fact 
 that upon level lands the droppings are more evenly dis- 
 tributed.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 121 
 
 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 places, 
 leaving harsh yellow scars, that will defy the mel- 
 lowest 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 
 succesfully 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 to-
 
 122 MY FARM. 
 
 gether, 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 of 
 the hill, great festoons of 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 stillness, 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 convenient, and 
 least available for fencing purposes, I constructed an 
 easy roadway, leading by gradual inclination from 
 top to bottom ; other stones were laid up in a sub- 
 stantial wall, which supplies the place of a stagger- 
 ing and weakly fence, that every strong north- 
 wester prostrated ; still others, of a size too small 
 for any such purpose, were buried in drains, which 
 diverted the standing moisture from one or two 
 sedgy basins on the hill, and discharged the flow
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 123 
 
 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, fertilized wholly by the 
 flow of water which was only harmful in its old lo- 
 cality. 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 slumberously, with a 
 little careful watching and tending, for weeks to- 
 gether. I was thus in possession of a comparatively 
 smooth surface, not so far disintegrated 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 re- 
 moval, I have set little coppices of native evergreens, 
 which, without detracting in any appreciable degree 
 from the grazing surface, will, as they grow, have 
 charming effect, and offer such modicum of shade
 
 124 MY FARM. 
 
 as all exposed pasture lands need. One who looked 
 only to simple farm results, would certainly never 
 have planted the little coppices, or hedged them, as 
 I have done, against injury. But it appears to me 
 that judicious management of land in the neighbor- 
 hood of large towns, should not ignore wholly, the 
 conservation of those picturesque effects, which at 
 no very remote time, may come to have a market- 
 able 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 1 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 shimmering sea. A little 
 never-failing spring bubbles up a few yards away ; 
 and to the westward and northward, the land piles 
 in easy slope, making sunny shelter, where, first 
 on all the hillside, the snow vanishes in Spring.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 125 
 
 The Indian people had a quick eye for such advan- 
 tages of position. 
 
 In still further confirmation, I have turned up an 
 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
 
 126 MY FARM. 
 
 than not doing it at all. But it is well to consider 
 before entering upon such a campaign, if the end 
 will justify the labor ; and if the recovered strips of 
 land will carry remunerative 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 pas- 
 tures. 
 
 "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 consideration the green mantle albeit of 
 brambles and wild vines with which Nature covers 
 her roughnesses ; and I like to see in the stream- 
 ing tendrils, and in the nodding tassels of bloom 
 which bind and tuft these wild thickets of the hills,
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 12? 
 
 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 
 no inveterate improver should ever tempt me to ex- 
 tirpate the dandelions from the green carpet of my 
 lawn, or to cut away the wild Kalmia bush which in 
 yonder group among the rocks, is just now redden- 
 ing into its crown of blossoms. 
 
 The Farm Flat. 
 
 TT 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 dividing 
 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
 
 128 MY FARM. 
 
 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 ? " 
 
 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 engross- 
 ing 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 129 
 
 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- 
 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 year, 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 
 feedjng. 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 
 9
 
 130 MY FARM. 
 
 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 wander- 
 ing over the fields of the Continent, I came upon a 
 little pot of it, under the wing of the Madeleine, on 
 the streets of Paris. It was a dwarfish specimen, 
 and 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 car- 
 ried it to my rooms, and established it upon my 
 balcony, where, while the flower lasted, I made a 
 new Picciola of it. And as I watered it, and watched 
 its green buttons of buds unfolding the white 
 leaflets, wide visions of rough New England grass- 
 lands came pouring with the sunshine into the Paris 
 window, and with them, the drowsy song of lo- 
 custs, 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 131 
 
 lost their color, which I plucked from the walls of 
 Borne, 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 Kenilworth. 
 It clambers over a rustic frame within the 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 that 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 the 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 Kobsart, 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 Kenilworth. 
 
 But this is not farming. 
 
 " Coombs," said I, " what shall we plant upon the 
 flat?" not that I had no opinion on the subject,
 
 132 MY FARM. 
 
 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 ' 
 
 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 ac- 
 quired 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 germi- 
 nation, and give vigorous start, and the New Eng- 
 land farmer, if he give clean and thorough culture 
 
 which, under such circumstances, involves little
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 133 
 
 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 
 amount of fertilizers, a smaller harvest. And it is 
 precisely this 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 surface 
 feeder ; for these reasons, it accommodates itself bet- 
 ter than most farm crops, to an awkward and care- 
 less 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 fertility. 
 It has so rank an appetite for the inorganic riches 
 of a soil, as to forbid any accumulation of that valu- 
 able 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 3 4 MY FARM. 
 
 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 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 al- 
 lowance 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 135 
 
 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 herd of cows, during the 
 heats of August and September. For this object, I 
 have found the best results in drilling eighteen 
 inches apart, upon inverted sod, thoroughly ma- 
 nured ; 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 
 sowing 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 practice 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 growing 
 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
 
 136 MY FARM. 
 
 succeeded by turnips) : Second, carrots, Mangel, or 
 potatoes : 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 de- 
 mand. 
 
 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 
 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 because 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 
 advantages. 
 
 The reader is spared this ; but he must pardon
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 137 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 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 impor- 
 tant article of his dress. 
 
 I fancy two or three astute old gentlemen leaning 
 over the border fence, as the work of demolition 
 goes on. 
 
 " The Squire 's makin' this ere farm inter a parade- 
 ground, a'n't he ? " says one ; and there is a little, 
 withering sarcastic laugh of approval
 
 138 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 expense for diggin' o' post holes," which remark is 
 so obviously sound, that it is passed by in silence. 
 
 The clearance, however, goes forward swimmingly. 
 The new breadth which seems given to the land as 
 the dwarfish fields disappear one after another, de- 
 velops 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 irregular 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-
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 139 
 
 pie open arches at either end ; the middle opening, 
 high and broad, so that loaded teams may pass 
 beneath ; the two flanking arches, lower, and 
 opening 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 carts 
 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 as manure pit, and gangway for the 
 teams which deposit from time to time their contri- 
 butions 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. Other times, throughout the growing season,
 
 140 MY FARM. 
 
 they belong in the open and airy stalls. The crops 
 'which are to feed them, are pushing luxuriantly 
 within a stone's throw of their quarters. An active 
 man with a sharp scythe, a light horse-cart and Cana- 
 dian 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 
 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, the cattle are withdrawn to their 
 winter quarters, for their dietary of cut-feed, oil- 
 cake, occasional bran and roots.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 141 
 
 They leave behind them in their summer banquet- 1 
 ing house, a little Bhigi of fertilizing material not 
 exposed to storms, neither too dry nor too moist, 
 and of an unctuous fatness, which will make sundry 
 surrounding fields, in the next season, carry a heav- 
 ier 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 
 the old plan of waste by poaching and by ex- 
 posure of all manurial material to the fierce beat of 
 the sun, and to the washings of rain storms. I per- 
 ceive 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 appre- 
 hension that this or that enclosure may be needed 
 for grazing, and so, bar the use. I perceive that a 
 well-regulated system must govern all the farm 
 labor, and that there will be no place for that loose- 
 ness of method, and carelessness about times and 
 details, which is invited by the old way of turning 
 cattle abroad to shirk for themselves. 
 
 No 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
 
 142 MY FARM. 
 
 no worrying of the Buckeye in old and weedy cor- 
 ners ; not a reed or a Golden-rod can wave anywhere 
 in triumph. The eye sweeps over one stretch of 
 luxuriant 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 col- 
 oring. There are no crooked rows, no gores, no 
 gatherings. 
 
 If the reader has ever chanced to sail upon a 
 summer's day up the river Seine, he will surely re- 
 member the beautiful checker-work of crops, which 
 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 
 cultivated shore-land challenge his wonder and ad- 
 miration. I name the scene now, because it shows 
 a cultivation without enclosures ; nothing but a tra- 
 ditional line which some aged poplar, or scar on 
 the chalk cliff marks, between adjoining proprie- 
 tors ; 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 
 peasant 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 143 
 
 An Old Orchard. 
 
 A CEKTAIN proportion of mossy, ragged or- 
 -^-*- charding belongs to almost every New England 
 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 some- 
 what 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 made up of a 
 promiscuous array of tussocks of wild-grass, dwarfed 
 daisies, struggling sorrel, with here and there a
 
 144 MY FARM. 
 
 mullein lifting its yellow head, and domineering over 
 the lesser wild growth. Occasional clumps of hick- 
 ory, 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 re- 
 spects the best way ; but the record of errors in so 
 experimental 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 decli vity, 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 agricultural enormity. 
 The mowers complain that the broken limbs, torn 
 down by ice storms, are a pest; the tenant com- 
 plains of its deep shade ; one or two neighboring 
 sawyers have made enticing propositions for its stal- 
 wart 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 f ertilizers
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 145 
 
 as could be brought together, from home resources 
 and from town stables, with certain addenda of lime 
 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 wore ; 
 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 bear- 
 ing that delightful little dessert fruit the Lady 
 
 10
 
 146 MY FARM. 
 
 apple. And I think my pains added somewhat to 
 their thrift ; they are sturdy, and full of leaves every 
 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 re- 
 stored. 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 excel- 
 lence. 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 Wei- 
 gelia. The fruit too (such as the curculio spares), is 
 full and round ; but there is not a specimen of it 
 which is not bored through by the inevitable grub 
 of the apple-moth. 
 
 Besides the varieties I have particularized, there 
 were the Tallinan and Pound Sweetings sparsely
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 147 
 
 represented ; and the Rhode Island Greening, which 
 I will fairly admit, has made a better struggle 
 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 Au- 
 gust, as surely as I count upon the rains which fol- 
 low 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 Russet, 
 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 emi- 
 nent 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 wih 1 , with good reason, 
 aver that no fruit trees can make successful struggle
 
 148 MY FARM. 
 
 against firmly rooted grass. From all tilled crops, 
 within whose lines there are spaces of the brown 
 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 to- 
 bacco and whale-oil soap, by which the tree has a 
 weekly bath, and an odor of uncleanness. But in
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 149 
 
 view of a large orchard, where apples make a leafy 
 pyramid measured by cubic yards, and cherries carry 
 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 
 reformation, 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
 
 150 MY FARM. 
 
 simple dressings, tillage, and washings that were 
 bestowed somewhat vainly upon the others, quick- 
 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, mak- 
 ing 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 compost, 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 pene- 
 trative power upon the soil. The method is Bacon- 
 ian (fodiendo et aperiendo terram circa radices ip- 
 sarum) ; it is thorough, but it is expensive ; and a 
 farmer must consider well if his trees, soil, mar-
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 151 
 
 ket, and the populousness of the insect world will 
 warrant it. 
 
 For my own part, so far as regards a market crop 
 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 depre- 
 dations of insects, nor will it bear distant transpor- 
 tation. 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 smal 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-
 
 152 My FARM. 
 
 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 ; 
 as well as a constant battle with the borers and 
 bark lice, intermittent campaigns against the cat- 
 erpillar and canker-worm, and a great June raid 
 upon the whole guerrilla 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 wan- 
 ton luxuriance, and too sedate to show any great ex- 
 hilaration from the ammoniacal salts. Pruning is 
 not much recommended in the books ; yet I have 
 succeeded 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 153- 
 
 troop in flocks to the June feast, and the boy 
 pickers who take toll as they climb, and the 
 outstanding twigs, which shake defiance to all lad- 
 ders and climbers I think he is a fortunate man 
 who can market from forty-year-old trees, one bushel 
 in three. 
 
 Of the position for a cherry orchard, and of its 
 likings in the way of soil and climate, nothing better 
 can be said, than Palladius wrote fourteen centuries 
 ago : " Cerasus amat coeli statum frigidum, solum 
 vero positionis humectce. In tepidis regionibus parva 
 provenit. Calidum non potest sustinere. Montana, 
 vel in collibus constituta regione laetatur" * 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. 
 
 ri ijto condition of the pears was far worse than 
 -* 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 
 
 * Lib. xi., Tit. 12.
 
 154 MY FARM. 
 
 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 cut 
 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 pomoio- 
 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 New England it 
 is a lost variety. Happily, however, its boughs take
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 155 
 
 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- 
 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 ex- 
 tremity of every 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 pomologists. 
 
 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 fertil- 
 izers and the cleaning process, which have given ram- 
 pant 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,
 
 156 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 Bon-Chretien. Here and there I have religiously 
 guarded some old variety of Sugar-pear, or of Ber- 
 gamot, by reason of the pleasant associations of 
 their names, and by reason of an old-fashioned re- 
 gard 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 
 confounds 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 appre- 
 ciated his learning ; but I do not. My tastes are 
 simple in this direction ; and I feel a blush of con- 
 scious humility when he comes upon one of my old- 
 time trees, staggering under a load of fruit which 
 is not in the books. It is very much as if a gentle- 
 man 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 157 
 
 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 
 scornful 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 
 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 was 
 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 consider- 
 ing 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 cer- 
 tain localities, will not thrive, or produce fair speci- 
 mens, without incorporation upon the quince stock. 
 Such, in my experience, are the Duchess d'Angou- 
 leme, and the Vicar of Winkfield. The finest fruit of 
 the Belle Lucrative, and the Bonne de Jersey, I also 
 invariably take from dwarf growth.
 
 158 MY FARM. 
 
 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. 
 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, 
 in 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 laugh- 
 ing 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 
 second or third year after planting, let him by all 
 means plant the dwarfs. Yet even then his sue-
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 159 
 
 cess is uncertain, 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 pan- 
 niers on their arms. Nay, I have myself met them 
 returning from such furtive errand, with a basket 
 laden from the fruiterer's stock, carefully hidden 
 under their skirts ; and I have gone my way (pre- 
 tending not to see it all), humming to myself, 
 
 carpent tua poma nepotes ! 
 
 Want of success in orcharding is more often at- 
 tributable 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 depredat- 
 ors, and fruit with certainty. There are other re- 
 gions, 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 extra- 
 ordinary attention, and in which the whole insect 
 tribe seems doubly pestiferous. 
 
 The pear is by no means so capricious ; it will
 
 160 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 cultivation, will disappoint ; and the farmer who neg- 
 lects any crop, will find, sooner or later, that what- 
 ever is worth planting, is worth planting well ; what- 
 ever is worth cultivating, is worth cultivating well ; 
 and that nothing is worth harvesting, that is not 
 worth harvesting with care. 
 
 My Garden. 
 
 T 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 en- 
 trance is overshadowed by a cherry-tree, which must 
 be nearly half a century old, and which, as it niches 
 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-
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 161 
 
 edged circle, that is filled and crowned with one 
 cone-shaped Norway-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 belts and curves. Westward is 
 a level open space, devoted to long parallel lines of 
 garden vegetables. The slope, by reason of its sur- 
 face and its crops, is subject only to fork-culture ; the 
 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 shrub- 
 bery, and perennial herbs, as to forbid any thorough 
 action of the plough. By the simple device, how- 
 ever, of giving to the garden the shape of a long 
 parallelogram, and arranging its trees, shrubbery, 
 and walks, in lines parallel with its length, and by 
 establishing easy modes of ingress and egress at 
 either end, the plough will prove a great econo- 
 mizer; 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 
 it
 
 1 62 MY FARM. 
 
 those farmers who are compelled to measure nar- 
 rowly the 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- 
 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 
 garden now is. I must confess that I love these 
 savage waymarks of progressive tillage as I love 
 to meet here and there, some stoli d old-time thinker, 
 whom the rush of modern ideas has left in pictu- 
 resque 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 163 
 
 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- 
 lings 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 
 dew-berries, huckle-berries, 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 what- 
 ever 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-
 
 1 64 MY FARM. 
 
 or, its boughs and tendrils stretching heaven-ward ; 
 and I never water a reluctant hill of yellowed cucum- 
 bers, and coax it with all manner of concentrated 
 fertilizers into bearing, but I think of the elegant 
 education of the dapper Dr. , and of the sap- 
 py, 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 
 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 \vell purchased, at the cost of a few feet 
 of land. Nor 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 build- 
 ings or high enclosures may give it more conven- 
 iently in many situations ; a steep, sudden hillside 
 may give it best of all ; but it should never be for- 
 gotten that while we humor the garden soil with 
 what the plants and trees best love, we should also 
 give their foliage the protection against storms
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 165 
 
 which they covet ; and which, in an almost equal de- 
 gree, 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 sufferers under it, and take on a pinched 
 look of age, and expend a great stock of vital energy 
 in the contest. 
 
 Fine Tilth makes Fine Crops. 
 
 "TTTITH 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 fertilizers are 
 present ; but such fine feeders as belong to the gar- 
 den can lay no hold upon them ; they want delicate 
 diet. Farmers are often amazed by the extraordi- 
 nary vegetable results upon the sandy soil of a city 
 dooryard, which they would count comparatively 
 worthless ; not considering, that aside from the
 
 1 66 MY FARM. 
 
 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 di- 
 gestible. Masses of unbroken farm-yard material 
 are no more suited to the delicate organization of 
 garden-plants, than a roasted side of bacon is suited 
 to a child's diet. They may struggle with it indeed. 
 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 grossuess. 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 specimen of fruit and 
 vegetable though by no means all it should have 
 been was perfect in outline, well developed, free 
 from every sting 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 167 
 
 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 so- 
 cieties for agricultural encouragement persist in 
 giving premiums to so called fat cattle ; mere 
 monsters not of good, wholesome, muscular fibre, 
 well-mottled but mountains of adipose substance, 
 which no Christian can eat, and which are only dis- 
 posed of 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
 
 1 68 MY FARM. 
 
 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. 
 
 Seeding and Trenching. 
 
 TF 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 Linnsean 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-
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 169 
 
 ing any needed dressing, the requisite thinning, the 
 insect depredators, and the mode of defeating them 
 is, for the most part, withheld. That the matter 
 is not without importance, one will understand 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 ?" 
 " 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 seed of 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
 
 1 70 MY FARM. 
 
 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 effect it 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 guano. 
 
 For a good garden, as I have said, a deep rich soil 
 is essential ; and to this end trenching is desirable ; 
 but trenching will not always secure it, for the pal- 
 pable 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 vege- 
 tables, has been, by the frenzy of trenching, buried 
 under fourteen inches of villainous gravelly hard- 
 pan, brought up from below, in which all seeds sick- 
 ened, and all plants turned pale. "Whatever 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 ex- 
 pended, 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.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 171 
 
 The amateur fanner, however, is not staggered by 
 any such difficulties ; indeed, he courts them, and 
 
 
 
 delights 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 
 thorough admixture, is most effective and judicious ; 
 nor should any thoroughly good garden be estab- 
 lished upon soil which will not admit of it, and jus- 
 tify it. If otherwise, my advice is, not to trench, 
 but sell to an amateur. 
 
 How a Garden should Look. 
 
 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 gar- 
 den 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-
 
 1 72 My FARM. 
 
 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, 
 perfect cleanliness, is another matter ; and is so 
 feasible and so telling in effect, that no farmer has 
 good excuse for neglecting it Effective groupings, 
 again, of dwarf trees and fruit shrubbery, whether 
 in rows, curves, or by gradations of size, give points 
 of interest, and contribute to the attractions of a 
 garden. 
 
 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- 
 collars, 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-col- 
 ored 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 core upon the neatness of
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 173 
 
 his yard and garden, 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, liv- 
 ing 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 flowers ; they cannot rival the 
 variety ; but they can stamp lines of grace, and har- 
 mony of arrangement upon the merest door-yard of 
 vegetables and pot-herbs. 
 
 Here let me outline, in brief, what a farmer's gar- 
 den 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 often 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
 
 174 MY FARM. 
 
 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 of 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, 
 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-cul- 
 ture, which all these crops demand, will admit of 
 any arrangement he may prefer, and he may enliven 
 the groupings, 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 climbing 
 Limas, or the London Horticultural setting off the
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 175 
 
 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 Au- 
 gust, may have Swedes sown in their shadow in the 
 first days of July, so that when the Chinas have ful- 
 filled their mission, there shall be a new line of pur- 
 ple 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 the 
 full flow of the melons that have been planted at 
 intervals among them. The cauliflower will find 
 grateful shade under the lines of sweet corn, and the 
 newly-set winter 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
 
 176 My FARM. 
 
 which, in spring, he sees the first, faint, upheaving, 
 tufted lines of green from his Dan-OTlourkes, 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 triumphs. 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 sun- 
 shine is loaded with booty. 
 
 The Lesser Fruits. 
 
 "TT^ROM the time when I read of Mistress Doctor 
 "*" Primrose's gooseberry wine, which the Doctor 
 celebrates in his charming autobiography, I have 
 entertained a kindly regard for that fruit But my 
 efforte 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- 
 seedling, make a better show, and with ordinary
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 177 
 
 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 Lancashire. 
 
 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 Eoaring-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 
 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 thor- 
 oughly enriched, pruned severely, watered abun- 
 dantly, and mulched (if possible) with kelp, fresh 
 from the sea shore. Thess conditions and appli- 
 ances may give a clean cheek, even to the Conquer- 
 ing-Hero. 
 
 But it is not so much for any piquancy of flavor
 
 178 MY FARM. 
 
 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 miniature scaffoldings, or swam 
 in porcelain saucers and of bristling thickets in 
 Cowper'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. 
 Gooseberries, like the English, are rather indigest- 
 ible. 
 
 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 179 
 
 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 mouth, 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. 
 
 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 
 platter, the tidy hostess, with arms akimbo, look- 
 ing proudly on it all : the leaves flutter idly at the 
 latticed window, through which I see wide stretches 
 of level meadow, broad-armed windmills flapping
 
 l8o MY FARM. 
 
 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, 
 and successive dips in the sugar. The Scotch fruit 
 was acid, I must admit, but the size was monumen- 
 tal. 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 181 
 
 Wengern Alp tired and thirsty when a little 
 peasant girl appeared with a tray of blue saucers, 
 brimming 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 ad- 
 mitted 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 
 (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 proportions for a 
 mere show upon the exhibition tables. The ama- 
 teurs would smile at those I have ; but I console 
 myself with reflecting that they smile at a great deal 
 of goodness which is not their own. They are full
 
 1 82 MY FARM. 
 
 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 considera- 
 tion. 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. I do not think that for an hour he recovered 
 from the shock to his sensibilities. 
 
 Of raspberries, commend me to the Red-Antwerp, 
 and the Brinckle's Orange ; but to insure good fruit- 
 age, 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.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 183 
 
 The New-Kochelle 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 for- 
 est, 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 eat- 
 ing 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. 
 
 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 souppon 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.
 
 1 84 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 repeat 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 ; 
 Bat, lest your fetters prove too weak, 
 Ere I your silken bondage break, 
 Do you, O brambles, chain me too, 
 And, courteous briers, nail me through. 
 
 Grapes. 
 
 TF the associations of the gooseberry are British, 
 -* those of the vine are thoroughly Judaoan. 
 There is not a fruit that we grow, which has so 
 venerable and so stately a history. Who does not 
 remember the old Biblical picture in all the primers, 
 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 
 
 *Andrew Marvell.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 18$ 
 
 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 I " 
 
 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 onea 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 devel- 
 oped and closely compacted bunch of the Diana 
 grape. 
 
 The Catawba has its advocates, and it is really a 
 dainty fruit if it have good range of sun, and is not
 
 1 86 MY FARM. 
 
 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 completely to 
 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 
 sunny bunches, where every berry is fully rounded, 
 and every cluster symmetrical. It must have care in
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 187 
 
 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 affluence 
 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 
 which positions do not abound, where a vine may 
 clamber, and feed upon resources that are worse
 
 1 88 MY FARM. 
 
 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 better promise than any other, of a really 
 good domestic wine. 
 
 I am surprised to find in the course of my drives 
 back in the country, how many of our old-time farm- 
 ers 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 
 heavy sugaring, which gives an innocent and bounc- 
 ing percentage of alcohol.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 189 
 
 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 lif e, 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. 
 
 T 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 is trifling, in comparison with the mischiefs
 
 igo MY FARM, 
 
 of the arch-enemy, the curculio. The few trees 
 which I found suffering under black-knot in its 
 most aggravated 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 suc- 
 ceeded 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 resources to jar off the vermin, gather 
 them and kill them ; or second, to deluge the young 
 fruit with a wash that shall nauseate the enemy ; or 
 third, to shield the trees or fruit with a gauze cover- 
 ing, that shall forbid attack. They are good devices 
 against any enemy ; but extermination is a slow 
 process ; if you nauseate the enemy, you are nause- 
 ated 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 lux- 
 uries, must be paid for in fourfold its value. 
 
 I would by no means undervalue the plum ; least 
 of all, that prince or princess of plums, Reine-Claude
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 191 
 
 (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 lus- 
 cious and cheap perfection, crowning the peasants' 
 gardens, I am a little dishearted at thought of the 
 tobacco washes, and whale-oil soap and syringes, 
 with which we must enter into combat with the cur- 
 culio, 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 dinner 
 at Vefour's, or the Truis-Freres. It is an old fruit ; 
 the Persians had it ; the Egyptians have gloried in 
 it these centuries past; Columella names it in his 
 garden 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 the 
 peach. " Inseritur in se, in amygdalo, in pruno : sed ARME- 
 NIA, rxL PR^ECOQUA prunis, duracina amygdalis melius ad- 
 hcerescunt," etc.
 
 I 9 2 MY FARM. 
 
 It will be remembered that in an early chapter 1 
 made mention of certain dilapidated peach trees 
 upon the premises, which were even then showing 
 unfailing signs of the "yellows." This vegetable dys- 
 pepsia has long since carried them oft 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 prevented. Next, comes a curi- 
 ous, foul twisting of the leaves, due may be to 
 some minute family of aphides ; but this can be 
 mitigated by judicious pruning ; after these escapes, 
 
 * Since the original publication of this book, peach cnl- 
 tnre has made great advances in Southern New England, and 
 there are shrewd fruit growers who make large and profitable 
 crops in many districts of Connecticut and Massachusetts. 
 The dfsicki-ata for success would seem to be a site for or- 
 chard secure from late spring frosts selection of vigorous 
 stock a free cultivation of the ground in early summer, 
 with subsequent mulching of the entire surface untiring 
 watchfulness against the borer judicious heading in of the 
 top (in late autumn or very early spring), and liberal supply 
 of potash and bone material in way of dressing. 
 
 Prof. Penhallow's observations and experiments at Hough- 
 ton Farm, N. J., would seem to promise full conquest of that 
 old foe, the "Yellows." 
 
 April, 1884.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 193 
 
 and when your mouth is watering in view of a lus- 
 cious harvest, there appear symptoms of a new dis- 
 ease ; the leaves cease to expand ; the fruit takes on 
 a premature bloom, and a multitude of little shoots 
 start here and there from the bark, being weakly at- 
 tempts to struggle against the consuming "yellows." 
 And if all these difficulties be fairly escaped or over- 
 come, there remains the damaging fact, that in two 
 winters out of five, in many New England exposures, 
 the extreme cold will utterly destroy the germ of 
 the fruit buds. 
 
 Notwithstanding these drawbacks, however, I con- 
 tinue to put out from year to year, a few young 
 trees ; not making regular plantations, but dotting 
 them about, in shrubberies, and in unoccupied gar- 
 den corners, 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 temper- 
 ature 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 
 13
 
 I 9 4 MY FARM. 
 
 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. 
 
 T KNOW not whether to begin my discourse of 
 -*- poultry with a terrific onslaught upon all 
 feathered creation, or to speak the praises of the 
 matronly fowls, which supply delicate spring chick- 
 ens to the table, and profusion of eggs. When, on 
 some ill-fated day, a pestilent, painstaking hen, with 
 her 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 195 
 
 there some tid-bit of a butterfly ; taking their siesta 
 with a wing 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 regu- 
 lar hours for such as the mistress may have to be- 
 stow, they are yet rebellious against undue or extra- 
 ordinary 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 say, as logically, as 
 ever any old-school dialectician in his metaphysical 
 homilies. 
 
 Nothing could be more charming than the ar- 
 rangement, matured with the co-operation of an in- 
 genious 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 architectural 
 galleries through which they were to promenade in 
 the intervals of these maternal duties adroit dis- 
 position of courts, and feeding troughs, so that 
 there should be no ill-advised collision, but it was
 
 196 MY FARM. 
 
 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 lodgement 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 gar- 
 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 
 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS, 197 
 
 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 earn- 
 est 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 af- 
 fectation. They summon their little families into 
 close order, as if fearing contagion, and eyeing each 
 other, wander apart, without a sign of companion- 
 ship, or a gobble of leave-taking. 
 
 I must not forget the groups of Guinea-fowl, who 
 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 tom- 
 turkey, in which, though worsted, and eventually 
 killed, she showed a fine chivalrous pluck. They 
 
 * Buffon : De la Pintade.
 
 198 MY FARM. 
 
 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,* I like the 
 Guinea-fowl ; they are excellent layers, enormous 
 devourers of insects a li ttle over-fond, it is true, 
 of young cauliflowers, and grapes, yet a stanch, 
 lively, self-possessed bird ; and notwithstanding the 
 sneers of Varro,f whose taste must have been poor 
 in the matter of poultry, excellent eating. 
 
 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 infan- 
 tile ailments, and their invalid caprices outmatch all 
 the nostrums of the doctors. Yet some old specta- 
 cled lady in the back country, with nothing better 
 
 * 
 
 fLib. III., De Re Rust. Hs novissimse in triclinium 
 ganearium introierunt e culina propter fastidium hominuiu. 
 Veneunt propter peuuriam maguo.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 199 
 
 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 curtail- 
 ment of their liberties with more cheerfulness ; but 
 there is after all, no biped of which I have knowl- 
 edge, that does not glory in freedom. The Black 
 Spanish 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 nec- 
 essary, 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 
 healthful vegetation. If too small for this, it is im- 
 peratively necessary for thrift, that they have a run 
 of an hour each day before sunset
 
 200 MY FARM. 
 
 The oldest English writer upon the subject of 
 poultry was a certain Leonard Mascall, who wrote 
 about the year 1581 when Queen Mary was fret- 
 ting 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, ordring, and governmente 
 of poultrie." Among his headings are "How to 
 keepe egges long," " How to have egges all win- 
 ter," "Of hennes that hatches abroad, as in 
 bushes," " Of turquie hennes, profite and also dis- 
 profite." 
 
 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 
 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-
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 2or 
 
 tion of an ancient cow-shed). Any considerable 
 chilliness of the atmosphere, however, if they are 
 long exposed to it, checks their laying propensi- 
 ties, 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 then: lives out with bare sabres, 
 and then lolled home in chariots, to dine on thrush- 
 es, fatted in the dark. We, good Christians that 
 we are, shudder at thought of such barbarism ; 
 we pit 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 
 pdte de foie 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.
 
 202 MY FARM. 
 
 hit Profitable? 
 
 "TTTHEN I have shown some curious city visitor 
 all these belongings of the farm have en- 
 listed 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 
 questioning, "Isn't it confoundedly expensive, 
 though, getting 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." 
 
 " To be sure, you're quite right ; " and I think he 
 admitted the observation, as many city people in- 
 cline to, as a new idea. "But," he added, with an 
 awkward inquisitiveness, "Do you ever get any 
 money back ? "
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 203 
 
 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 ob- 
 serve 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 surroundings 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 tempt- 
 ed 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 the capabilities of money by which all 
 men and women stand tempted to-day. The Para- 
 dise tree is not popularly supposed to grow largely 
 on the farms of amateurs.
 
 204 MY FARM. 
 
 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 busi- 
 ness) is only an elegant luxury ; absorbing in a quite 
 illimitable manner, all loose funds at the disposal of 
 the adventurer, and returning smooth fields, sleek 
 cattle, delicious fruits, and possibly, a few annual 
 premiums. We never get at their "memoranda," 
 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 distrust ; and I 
 think there is an earnest belief among shrewd ob- 
 servers, that the razor straps, soaps, and dressing- 
 cases of Leaden-Hall street (where his original busi- 
 ness lies), are, in a large degree, creditors 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, 
 cannot take shelter under cover of Mr. Mechi's fig- 
 ures. 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 205 
 
 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. 
 
 T ET 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 be 
 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 large a home consump- 
 tion, 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
 
 2o6 My FARM. 
 
 moderate. In any event, it will simplify the com- 
 parison 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 rSAR EDGEWOOD FARJf. 
 
 DR. 
 
 To Valuation of live stock, . . . $1,200 00 
 
 " Interest on do., 72 00 
 
 " Purchase of new stock, . . 300 00 
 
 " Labor, 1,200 00 
 
 " Hay and grain bought, . . . 150 00 
 
 " Seeds, trees, etc., . ... 150 00 
 
 " Manures, 250 00 
 
 " Wear and tear of implements, . . 100 00 
 
 " Taxes, insurance, and incidentals, . 100 00 
 
 $3,522 00 
 CR. 
 By Valuation stock, close of yr., . . $1,400 00 
 
 Sales do., 250 00 
 
 " do. milk, 600 00 
 
 " do. butter, 50 00 
 
 " do. vegetables, .... 60 00 
 
 " do. fruits, 10 00 
 
 " do. eggs and poultry, . . . 25 00 
 " do. sundries, . . . . 75 00 
 
 $2,470 00 
 " Balance (loss), 1,052 00 
 
 $3,522 00
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 207 
 
 First years of any adventure do not offer a very 
 appetizing show least of all the adventure of re- 
 storing a neglecl ed 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 
 Continental. 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. 
 
 DR. 
 
 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
 
 2o8 MY FARM. 
 
 CR. 
 
 By Valuation stock, close of yr., . . $1,600 00 
 
 " Sales do., 200 00 
 
 " do. milk, 1,650 00 
 v 
 
 " 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 : 
 
 FIFTff YEAR. 
 
 DR. 
 
 To Valuation of stock $1,700 00 
 
 " Interest on do., 10200 
 
 " Purchase of new stock, . . . 180 00 
 
 " Labor bills, 1,000 00 
 
 " Manures, 100 00 
 
 " Grain purchased, .... 130 00 
 
 " Seeds, trees, etc., .... 60 00 
 
 ~" Wear and tear of implements, . . 100 00 
 
 " Insurance, taxes, and incidentals, . 120 00 
 
 $3,492 00 
 " Balance (gain), 988 00 
 
 $4,480 00
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 209 
 
 CR. 
 
 By Valuation stock, close of yr., . . $1,700 00 
 
 " Sales do., ...... 230 00 
 
 " do. milk 1,900 00 
 
 " do. vegetables, .... 250 00 
 
 " do. fruit 150 00 
 
 " 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 
 
 14
 
 2io MY FARM. 
 
 Leaving profit of $700, which is equivalent to ten 
 per cent upon the supposed capital ; all this, un- 
 der the cheerful hypothesis that personal super- 
 vision is a mere amusement, and is not justly 
 chargeable to the farm. If otherwise, and the over- 
 look be rated as Government or corporate officials 
 rate such service, the credit balance becomes igno- 
 miniously small 
 
 It is to be considered, however, that the growing 
 productive capacity of the soil, under generous 
 management, may be estimated at no small per- 
 centage ; and the inevitable increase in value of 
 all lands in the close neighborhood of growing 
 towns, may be counted in the light of another per- 
 centage. 
 
 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 di- 
 rectly either to the farm culture, or conditions of 
 culture not all essential perhaps, but all contrib- 
 utory. 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 211 
 
 farm account is quite lost in the blaze of agricult- 
 ural splendor. 
 
 I do not at all deny the charm of such luxuries. 
 I only say that they are luxuries ; and in the pres- 
 ent state of the butter and egg markets, must be 
 paid for as such. And the life that is lived amid 
 such luxuries is not so much a farm life, as it is a 
 life a long way from town. 
 
 Bus Tioc vocari debet, an domus longef 
 
 It is the irony of Martial in the concluding line of 
 his Faustine epigram ; and with it, I whip my chap- 
 ter of figures to a close. 
 
 Money-Making Farmers, 
 
 TTTHERE 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 esti- 
 mates 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 perpetual presence, stretch the ten-hour system
 
 212 MY FARM. 
 
 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 tremen- 
 dous 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 emi- 
 grant, before he has learned the current rate of 
 wages ; gifted with a quick scent for all offal, which 
 may be had for the cartage, and which goes to pig 
 food, or the fermentation of compost. 
 
 I think I 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 
 blueness 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 meetings" to say nothing of domestic 
 practice.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 213 
 
 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 ; 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-complex- 
 ioned 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 re- 
 newed, 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 un- 
 der 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 170 field, and commences a new bit of wall 
 a disunited link, which possibly his heirs may
 
 214 MY FARM. 
 
 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 stuff- 
 ing, and sales to the " packer " of the town. Every 
 year he tells their weight to his neighbors, between 
 services, at meeting with his thumb and fore- 
 finger in the pocket of his black waistcoat, and the 
 same sly twinkle in his eye. 
 
 Every spring he has his " veals " four, six, ten, 
 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 pro- 
 cured 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.
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 215 
 
 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 pro- 
 prieties ; 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 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 ad- 
 dress him in the field, he stops leans on his hoe 
 and is willing to lavish upon me the only valua- 
 ble 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
 
 216 MY FARM. 
 
 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 Mississippi ; the names of many are written down 
 in the dead-books of the war. 
 
 Our money-saving farmer has his daughter too, 
 with her Chrysanthemums and striped-grass at the 
 door, and her pink monster of a Hydrangea. She 
 has her Lady's Book, and her Ledger, and on such 
 literary food grows apace ; but such reading does 
 not instil a healthy admiration for the dairy or 
 butter-making ; rosy cheeks and incarmined arms 
 do no 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 sal-
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 217 
 
 lowness, unhealthiness, narrowness not even the 
 well-developed physique of the town girl, who has 
 the pavements 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 
 every-day life of the father; and when common 
 sympathies 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. 
 
 From these causes it is, that Dorothy will very 
 likely grow into a wrinkle-faced old maid, hopeful 
 of anything 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 lif e ; not recognizing the hero- 
 ism of successful struggle with mediocrity and 
 homely duties ; yearning for what is not to be 
 hers, she is the ready victim of illnesses against
 
 2i8 My FARM. 
 
 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 warning spoken ; the 
 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-making farmers, 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, 
 without glow or reach a life whose parlors have 
 been always closed. 
 
 Does Farming Pay f 
 
 A ND now let us prcciser the whole matter, and 
 4-*- 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-
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 219 
 
 tiona 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 moneyed result this year, 
 and the next year, and the year after ; but it is that 
 which insures to the land a constantly accumulating 
 fertility, in connection with remunerative results. 
 The theory of the agricultural doctors, that every 
 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 Lo- 
 thians, or Belgian gardens ; but for neglected or 
 poor soil, a larger restoration is needed ; if not by 
 manures, then by tillage or drainage. Exact equi- 
 poise is difficult, and implies no advance. It is nei- 
 ther easy nor desirable to be forever balancing one- 
 self 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
 
 220 MY FARM. 
 
 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 (fa- 
 cultas impendendi)* is at the bottom of all signal 
 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 in- 
 volve heavy losses, is stimulated to constant activity 
 and watchfulness. The farmer, on the other hand, 
 inheriting his little patch of land, and feeling rea- 
 sonably sure of his corn and bacon, and none of 
 
 *The language of Columella, which is as keen and as 
 much to the point now as in the time of Tiberius : " Qui 
 stiulium agricclationi dederit, sciat hcec sibi advocanda : pru- 
 dentiam rri, facultatem impendendi^ roluntatem agendi."
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 221 
 
 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, wakeful- 
 ness, have their hazards, and always will ,; but if a 
 man sleep, the worst that can befall him is only a 
 bad dream. This lethargy on the part of so many 
 who are content with their pork dinners and small 
 spendings, is very harmful to the Agricultural in- 
 terests of the country. Young America abhors 
 sleepiness, and does not gravitate, of choice, toward 
 a pursuit which seems to encourage it. The conclu- 
 sion and the conviction have been, with earnest 
 young men, that a profession which did not stimu- 
 late to greater activity 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 prog- 
 ress 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 under- 
 taken farming as a mere amusement, has greatly 
 damaged its character as a pursuit worthy the en-
 
 222 MY FARM. 
 
 listment of earnest workers. Our friend, Mr. Tall- 
 weed, 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 com- 
 mitting an Agricultural debauch. And an Agricult- 
 ural 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 tem- 
 per, and the capacity to wait If he plant a thou- 
 sand 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
 
 CROPS AND PROFITS. 223 
 
 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 fenc- 
 ing, 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 exuber- 
 ance ; who dawdles over his fermentations, while the 
 neighbor'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 
 lucrative pursuit. If, however, a man be entirely in 
 earnest, if he have the sagacity to see all over his 
 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.
 
 IV. 
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS.
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 
 
 The Argument. 
 
 TT 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 
 fanciful, 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
 
 228 MY FARM. 
 
 always profit, and the other always loss. There are, 
 I am sure, a great many Practical failures in the 
 world, and the number of Fanciful successes is un- 
 bounded. 
 
 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 ca- 
 price. Xo 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 need- 
 less to say that I hope for sensible readers, and 
 direct my observations accordingly. With this in- 
 tent I propose, in this last division of my book, to 
 review all the helps and hindrances 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 nug- 
 gets of information or suggestion, as the case may
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 229 
 
 be ; and the reader who is pastorally inclined, may 
 find frequent dashes of country perfume, that shall 
 deftly cover the ammoniacal scents. 
 
 Agricultural Chemistry. 
 
 ~VTT~HEN 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 farm- 
 ing, which chemistry does not cover, and probably 
 never will. People talk of agricultural chemistry as 
 if it were a special chemistry for the farmer's advan- 
 tage. The truth is (and it was well set forth, I re- 
 member, in a lecture of Professor Johnson's), there
 
 230 MY FARM. 
 
 is no such thing as agricultural chemistry ; and the 
 term is not only a misnomer, but misleads egregi- 
 ously. There is no more a chemistry of agriculture 
 than there is a chemistry of horse-flesh, or a con- 
 chology of egg-shells. Chemistry concerns all or- 
 ganic and 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 indus- 
 try. 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 because it is not agricultural, and 
 because it deals in certainties, and not plausibilities. 
 There is such a thing as religion, and it helps, some- 
 times, to purify Democrats and sometimes Republi- 
 cans ; 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 agri- 
 cultural chemistries, are agricultural truths, as well
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 231 
 
 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 ; 
 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 furnish 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 
 chemist to detect any in the soil of a pear-orchard. 
 And even if the acid were a mineral acid, and were 
 neutralized it must be remembered that to 
 neutralize, is only to establish change of condition, 
 and not to destroy ; how know you that the little 
 fibrous rootlets will not presently be laying their
 
 232 MY FARM. 
 
 fine mouths to the neutral 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 or white 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 
 increased 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 combina- 
 tions ; 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 main-mast of a three-decker ship. A farm- 
 er 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 exam- 
 ination he finds it to possess a large percentage of 
 soluble phosphoric acid, he will advise its use as a
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 233 
 
 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 dress- 
 ings 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 is concerned, by simple chemical 
 investigation ; nor could it be so determinable, un- 
 less you could establish the crop and feed it, under 
 those conditions of alienation from all other in- 
 fluences, by which or under which alone, the chem- 
 ist is enabled to establish the severity of his conclu- 
 sions. 
 
 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 
 ah 1 the carbonic 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 dimensions. Faithful and long-continued 
 observation of the mysterious processes of nature, 
 will alone justify a theory of plant nutrition. A 
 large part of this observation is supplied by the his-
 
 234 MY FARM. 
 
 tory of farm-experiences, and another part is sup- 
 plied by the earnest investigations of special scien- 
 tific 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 evidence well, not pre- 
 suming hastily that either practical experience, or a 
 special science has, as yet, a monopoly of all the 
 truths which lie at the base of the " mystery of hus- 
 bandry." 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 Boussin- 
 gault 
 
 A Gypseous Illustration. 
 
 rjlHE farming community has a great respect for 
 "*- 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
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 235 
 
 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- 
 what too loosely and rashly in his theories of ap- 
 plied science. Naturally enough, confident in the 
 results of his own investigation, he entertains a cer- 
 tain contempt for a merely empirical art ; he under- 
 values 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 un- 
 varying 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 fer- 
 tilizing action of gypsum. 
 
 A farmer, for instance, finds himself within easy 
 reach of a large supply of this salt, and being chem- 
 ically 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.
 
 236 MY FARM. 
 
 At the outset I may remark, that farm-experience 
 has as yet found no law by which to govern the ap- 
 plication 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 ap- 
 plication ; 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 past- 
 ure that delights 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 manu- 
 rial 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 doubtless 
 glad to get a handle to their talk about plaster ; and 
 so for a dozen years or more, the lucerne and clover
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 237 
 
 went on absorbing the gypsum. At last some in- 
 quisitive party ascertained, by careful experiment, 
 that a field of clover not treated with gypsum, con- 
 tained 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 ab- 
 sorption 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 
 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 sili- 
 cates, and worried them into soluble shape ; and its 
 lime, on the other side, flew off at the geine, pound- 
 ing that into a good relish ; in short, he made out 
 so charming a little theory, so vivacious in its ac- 
 tion, so appetizing to turnips, and so authorita- 
 tively 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, comes
 
 238 MY FARM. 
 
 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, 
 entertains us with the report, in his mildly au- 
 thoritative 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 first book appeared in America, if I am not mistaken, 
 in 1841.
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 239 
 
 his lime dumped upon his clover -field, when he re- 
 ceives a copy of Dr. Liebig's final work upon the 
 Natural 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 ara- 
 ble 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 left to look to for an explanation of the favora- 
 ble action 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 mys- 
 teries 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
 
 240 MY FARM. 
 
 suffer more from the pestilent iteration of 
 terers 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 
 C S H 4 O 8 + 2HO for malic acid, would tell an un- 
 truth or take airs upon himself. Yet I think it may 
 be safely conceded that a rash man, or a mischiev- 
 ous man may cover falsehood under such formulae, 
 as easily 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 require- 
 ments of the case ; nor have I a doubt but that in
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 241 
 
 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. 
 
 T REMEMBER once, in company with a crowd 
 -*- of interested auditors, listening to a justly dis- 
 tinguished pomologist, who, in the course of his 
 peroration in praise of scientific study, suggested 
 the 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 to. 
 Yet it seemed not a very bad thing to say. The 
 lesser pomologists all wagged their heads approv- 
 ingly, 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 certain 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 
 16
 
 242 MY FARM. 
 
 evasively. In general, I find that the most modest 
 opinions in regard to the agricultural aids of ap- 
 plied science, come from the men of most distin- 
 guished 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 pretentious claims, for 
 the quiet confidence and far-sighted moderation of 
 real science. Even so we find a General in com- 
 mand 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, and knowing the positions only 
 by the confused roar of artillery, will pompously 
 threaten to bag every man of the enemy I 
 
 But aside from the exaggeration alluded to, 
 and of which I should reckon so minute a soil- 
 analysis as to determine what ground would most 
 favor the development of pectose in a baking pear, 
 and of pectic acid in a Bartlett, a fair sample, 
 there are other hindrances to the effective and 
 profitable co-laboration of scientific men with the 
 practical farmer. The latter has a wall about him 
 of self-confidence, ignorance of technicals, great 
 common-sense, and awkward prejudices, which the 
 scientific man, with his precision, his fineness of ob- 
 servation, his remote analogies, and his impatience
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 243 
 
 of guess-work, is not accustomed or fitted to under- 
 mine. He may breach indeed successfully 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 reforma- 
 tion. The backslider, I will call him Nathan, 
 is breaking up a field, and is applying the manure 
 in an unfermented 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 5 ," 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?"
 
 244 MY FARM. 
 
 " Waal, d'nTmow ; kind o' 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." 
 
 " Ammony, is it? Waal, guanner has a pooty 
 good smell tew ; my opinion is, that manure ought 
 to have a pooty strong smell, or 'tain't 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 ma- 
 nure 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 kind o' like puttin' water to 
 half a glass o' spent ; it makes a drink a plaguey 
 sight stronger'n water, no doubt o' that ; but after 
 all's said and dun, 'tain't so strong as the rum. 
 (Haw, Buck ; why don't ye haw ! ) " 
 
 Scientific gentleman wipes his spectacles, but fol- 
 lows after the plough.
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 245 
 
 "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? " 
 
 " Doan't know but it might ; but I ha'n't much 
 opinion o' yaller dirt, nohow ; I kind o' 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 ! ") 
 
 "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."
 
 246 MY FARM. 
 
 " Waal, that's kind o' 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 ? " 
 
 " Doan't blieve it would, nohow, between you and 
 L 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 thunderin' sight o' work. (Gee, Bright ! 
 -g'lang, Buck!)" 
 
 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 ? "
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 247 
 
 " (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 off 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 
 under a tree, wakes up, sniffs sharply at the bottom 
 of the stranger's trowsers meditating such hy- 
 draulic comment as pushes the man of science into 
 active retreat. 
 
 I have written thus much, in this vein, to show 
 the defensible position of many of the old style 
 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 slat- 
 ternly husbandry. Nor can I omit to say in this
 
 248 MY FARM. 
 
 connection, that the free interchange of questions 
 and answers, and unstarched companionship of our 
 State Agricultural Conventions, are among the best 
 means of breaking down the walls of demarcation, 
 and establishing chemical affinities between Science 
 and Practice. 
 
 Lack of Precision, 
 
 riTtLE manufacturer, in ordinary times, can tell us 
 -*- 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 de- 
 pendent in a greater or less degree upon contingen- 
 cies of wet, or dryness, or cold, over which he has 
 no control, is less positive ; and as a consequence, I 
 think, he grows into an exceedingly loose habit of 
 thought in all that regards his business affairs. 
 Notwithstanding his punctiliousness in moneyed de- 
 tails, and his sharpness at a bargain, he has a more 
 vague idea of his real whereabouts 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 grows, 
 it is Loss.
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 249 
 
 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 consumption, 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 investiga- 
 tion. 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. 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 tricky politi- 
 cians 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, kind o' yaller ; 'tain't fairly caught 
 hold o' the dung yit" (pegging away with his hoe).
 
 250 MY FARM. 
 
 " Do you think there's any profit in growing corn, 
 hereabout ? " 
 
 " Waal don't know as there is much ; kind o' 
 like to make a little pork, and have a little about for 
 the hena" 
 
 " 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 kind o' 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 s'pose they might about; but kind o' 
 like to have 'em about home." 
 
 " Have you ever tried carrots ? " 
 
 " Waal no ; kind o' back-achin' work to weed 
 carrits." 
 
 And not only does this apathetic indifference to 
 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 farmer 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
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 251 
 
 this is very absurd ; great work involves great .abor ; 
 and great labor has its price. You may do it in the 
 night, and caU 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 farm- 
 ing, until we learn if the 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 mus- 
 cle, to waste them in the dark. Every spade or 
 hammer-stroke 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 be- 
 fore hours must be estimated at the sum such 
 labor would command 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
 
 252 MY FARM. 
 
 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 farmer, who 
 has competed for a premium upon his carrots, and 
 who has the effrontery to put down the cost of cul- 
 tivating 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 around the track. 
 
 Knotting too Much, 
 
 T SOMETIMES see in the papers, advertisements 
 
 of gardeners, who can be seen at Thorburn's in 
 
 John Street, on stated mornings, when they hold
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 253 
 
 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 
 extreme lover of flowers, dared no more to pick a 
 rose without permission of "Wallace," than he dares 
 to be caught reading an unpopular journal. " Wal- 
 lace " is instructed ; but in the assertion of his au- 
 thority, 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 perqui- 
 sites of the accomplished gardener. 
 
 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 
 individuality 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
 
 254 MY FARM. 
 
 worse, and which puts a raw edge upon country so- 
 cialitiea 
 
 I find no man BO 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 " 'tain'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 scrutinising contempt for out- 
 sidedness of whatever sort his supreme and in- 
 eradicable faith in his own peculiar doctrine, 
 whether of politics, religion, ethnology, ham-curing, 
 manuring, or farming generally. 
 
 It is not alone that me"n of this class cling by a 
 particular method of culture, because their neigh- 
 borhood has followed the same for years, and the 
 results are fair ; but it is their pure contempt for
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 255 
 
 being taught; their undervaluation of what they 
 do not know, as not worth knowing ; their convic- 
 tion 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 inferior 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 what 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 
 newspaper. 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 
 "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
 
 256 MY FARM. 
 
 so fine a point, so immovable, with such guys of 
 prejudice staying him on every side, so subtle and 
 yet so narrow, so shrewd and yet so small, so 
 intelligent 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. 
 
 F INHERE 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 
 a-field since four. And are not these four hours to 
 be made good to him in sleep or rest ? The man 
 who rises at four, and works all day, as farmers 
 work, or Avho is even a-tield all day, is sleepy at nine
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS, 257 
 
 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 he 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 straightforward 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 agri- 
 cultural journal and others, may be, to whose read- 
 ing 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 wisdom 
 that glorieth in the goad, and that driveth oxen." 
 There may be a spice of exaggeration in the dogma 
 of Ecclesiasticus ; but whoever undertakes the occu-
 
 258 MY FARM. 
 
 pation 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 a sweaty confirmation 
 of its general truth. Or let hirn 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 cen- 
 tred in the plough-beam, and nervously watching 
 its little pitches and yaws ; he lifts a hand cautiously 
 to wipe the perspiration 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 is again in place ; no 
 more wiping of the forehead until the headlands are
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 259 
 
 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. Re- 
 freshed 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 really did ? There are no 
 " wee-tipped " daisies to beguile him ; not a mouse 
 is stirring ; only a pestilent mosquito is twanging 
 somewhere 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 fel- 
 low to lie off under the shade for a while, and " im- 
 prove his mind." But he has no Burns in fact, no 
 pocket in his overalls ; besides 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 baiting. He
 
 2<3o MY FARM. 
 
 has a sharp appetite for the beef and the greens, but 
 not much, at the nooning, for Burns or Bishop But- 
 ler. 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 systematic 
 farm-work, will give the horses a thorough rubbing- 
 down ; afterward, if he cherish cleanly prejudices, 
 the fine young fellow will have need for a rub- 
 bing-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
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 261 
 
 hydrates, and oxides, and peats again, mix strangely ; 
 a horned beetle dashes at his forehead, and makes 
 him wakeful for a moment ; there is a frog droning 
 in the near pond very drowsily "peats peats 
 peats ; " the drift of the professor is lost ; Pat ru- 
 minates on the step ; a big miller flaps out the flame 
 of his candle ; it is no matter 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. 
 
 T AM reminded that a farmer has no need to fag 
 -*- himself with hard field work. To a certain ex- 
 tent 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 
 imperative presence, with its associations, and its 
 comparative isolation. 
 
 Of the more familiar associations, a type may be 
 had in Pat, sitting on the doorstep at dusk, ruminat-
 
 262 MY FARM. 
 
 ing and smoking a black-stemmed pipe. The isola- 
 tion is less obvious, but more galling. Farms do 
 not 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 fanners. They meet 
 behind the church, between services, in a starched 
 way ; they drive to town-meetings in their best tog- 
 gery, and discuss ballotings and the weather pos- 
 sibly 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 al- 
 ready 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 sheep 
 
 * A strong effort, I am glad to see, is making to establish 
 them in various parts of the country. In my own neighbor- 
 hood 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 a season.
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 263 
 
 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 
 between church services about bludgeons and buck- 
 shot, but never make a concerted urgent protest ; or 
 if they rally so far as to send one of their own peo- 
 ple 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 Eelations," not worth the car- 
 cass 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 
 flanking walls. It is possible they may get an airing 
 in the agricultural journals ; but good and service- 
 able as these journals are, their statements do not 
 influence, 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, 
 sooner or later, grating sorely. Whatever love of 
 the pursuit its cares, indulgences, attractions, 
 successes may engross him, a certain attrition
 
 264 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 offer but dead contact, and possess none of that 
 kindling magnetism which comes from personal in- 
 tercourse. Type grows wearisome at last, however 
 stocked with information and gorgeous fancies ; and 
 a man frets for the lively rebound 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 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 (it's 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
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 265 
 
 "your grounds," lie calls them, if it be only a potato 
 garden). 
 
 Presently bis 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, 
 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 
 "laryngeal 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
 
 266 MY FARM. 
 
 ft 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 ; but shall not a host keep his guest in good 
 humor ?) 
 
 "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 ditch- 
 ers 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,
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 267 
 
 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 relaxa- 
 tion. 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 
 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 
 bien gante, and carefully read up to the latest dates ; 
 still you shall betray yourself Jn some old dinner- 
 joke dead long ago. And the friends will say 
 kindly, after you are gone, "How confoundedly 
 seedy Rus. 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 ner- 
 vous sensorium of a continent, with its wiry 
 nerves raying like a spider's web, in ah 1 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 establish affinity. In a dozen quar- 
 ters a boy puts you right ; and some girl tells you
 
 268 MY FARM. 
 
 newnesses you never suspected. The rust is on 
 your sword ; thwack as hard as you may, you can- 
 not flesh it, as when it had every day scouring into 
 brightness. 
 
 Dickering. 
 
 Ql 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 bar- 
 gaining. 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 French- 
 woman with her hand full of gloves, behind her 
 dainty counter, asks the double of what her goods 
 are worth, you are no way surprised. You accept 
 the enormity, as a symptom of the depravity of her 
 race, which is balanced by the suavity of her man- 
 ner. 
 
 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 pass- 
 ing him on the other side of the street. 
 
 And yet all this is to be met (and conquered, I
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 269 
 
 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 thou- 
 sand a year income, should have insisted upon a 
 deduction of two cents a bushel in the price of his 
 potatoes, in view of a quart of small ones, that had 
 insinuated themselves in the interstices : I think I 
 hear his horse-laugh now, as he replied " Why, 
 sir, it's the way he grew rich." 
 
 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 availa- 
 ble. There are customers who insist upon chaffer- 
 ing with the " boss." Such an one has dropped in, 
 
 
 
 on a morning 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
 
 270 MY FARM. 
 
 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'r hoss." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " Middlin' lump of a hoss." 
 
 "Yes, a nice horse." 
 
 " D'nTcnow as you know it, but sich hosses ain't 
 so salable as they was a spell back." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 " They're gittin' a fancy for bigger hosses." 
 
 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 lightislr load. Don't call him spavined, do 
 ye?" 
 
 " No, perfectly sound." 
 
 " That looks kind o' 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."
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 271 
 
 " 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 
 dollars for that air hoss wouldn't ye ? " 
 
 " A hundred dollars is the price, and I gave fifty 
 more." 
 
 " Don't say ! Gave a thunderin' sight too much, 
 Squire." 
 
 " Pat, you may put up the horse ; I don't think 
 the gentleman wants him." 
 
 "Look a-here, Squire; ef you was to say 
 something like seventy, or seventy-five dol- 
 lars, 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."
 
 272 My FARM. 
 
 " That's a good p'int ; but them that's worked till 
 they git quiet, kind o' gits the spirit lost out on 'em 
 ain'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 
 nigher 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, and a fifty there, Squire, 'tain't worth 
 talkin' about ; 111 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 111 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."
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 273 
 
 " And, Patrick, you ain't 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 glad on'i Had kind o' 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 woodland to 
 sell, the purchaser spends an hour in impressing 
 upon me his "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 voluble 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 bilin'." In short if I 
 were to take the opinions of my excellent friends 
 
 the purchasers for truth, I should be painfully 
 
 18
 
 274 MY FARM. 
 
 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 sharpening 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- 
 f erers ; they yield to them without serious struggle. 
 The extent and manner of their losses, under the 
 engineering abilities of those wiry old gentlemen 
 who drive sharp bargains, is something quite be- 
 yond their comprehension. It would be well if 
 harm stopped here. But this huckstering spirit ia 
 very leprous to character. 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 manner of disguisements about the 
 cow he has to sell, will adopt the same artifices and 
 quibbles about the opinion he wishes to force upon 
 your acceptance. Let him mend by showing all the
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 275 
 
 spavins in the next horse he has for sale (there will 
 be some, or he would never sell) ; and his refor- 
 mation is not altogether hopeless. 
 
 The Bright Side. 
 
 rriHIS far I have been dealing with the shadows 
 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 fatigues, the chaffering bargainers do not fully 
 describe or give limit to the good old profession 
 of farming. And even when these clouds hin- 
 drances 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 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 
 the 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 max-
 
 276 MY FARM. 
 
 ims for farm management, which are not without 
 their significance and value to every farmer to-day. 
 And hitherward, across the blue wash of the Adri- 
 atic, 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 ama- 
 teur agriculturist, and planted Soracte and Lucre- 
 tilis in his poems wrote so minutely, and with 
 such rare sagacity, upon all that relates to country 
 living, and to country thrift, that I might to-mor- 
 row, 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 me for 
 the product a prize at the County Fair if, indeed, 
 the shoots did not rival those famous ones of Ra- 
 venna of which Pliny speaks weighing three to 
 the pound. 
 
 I know a poet too, whose music 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 of the 
 later emperors of the East Porphyrogenitus has
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 277 
 
 left no more enduring monument of his reign, than 
 the compend 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. 
 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 recommend a country life in our time, except 
 that life have charms in itself to pique a man's
 
 278 MY FARM. 
 
 poetic sensibilities 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 sugges- 
 tions. Rotation of crops, surface drainage, ridging 
 of lands, composting of manures, irrigation, and the 
 paring and burning of stubble-lands are all hinted 
 at, if not absolutely advised, in treatises written ten 
 centuries ago. Nor 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 dexterous use of implements would 
 manage a grain field, a meadow, or an orchard, bet- 
 ter than the half of New England farmers. 
 
 At first blush, it seems very discouraging to think 
 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,
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 279 
 
 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 obedi- 
 ence 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 I think 
 scientific farmers are willing to admit. Over and 
 over it happens that some uncouth, raw, strapping, 
 unread man succeeds, year after year, in making 
 crops which astonish the neighborhood. You know 
 he has no science, - nitrogen, is Greek to him ; sul- 
 phuric acid, for all he can tell, might lie in the juice 
 of an apple ; he knows nothing of fermentations 
 nothing of physiology, yet his crops are monstrous. 
 His tools are something old, though firm and com- 
 pact ; his team is always in good order, although 
 his barns may be somewhat shaky.
 
 280 MY FARM. 
 
 He conld 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 timed 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 splen- 
 did. 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 chem- 
 istry and fine farming. Of course I do not mean to 
 join him in his sneers ; I only mean to illustrate 
 how a large sagacity, guided by its own instincts, 
 has very much to do with good farming ; and in a 
 way not clearly explicable 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 Hopi- 
 taux and the Chirurgical, and yet who has that rare 
 insight which enables him to detect and wrestle 
 with disease strangely well. His long observa- 
 tion, his comparison of trifles, his estimate of the 
 moral forces at work are so just and discriminat- 
 ing, that he brings a tremendous power of judg- 
 ment to the case. Put him in a room for consulta-
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 28 1 
 
 tion, and his gray eye tweaks, his lips work ner- 
 vously ; 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 learning 
 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 con- 
 founds 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 hus- 
 bandry, will succeed, without a knowledge of the 
 principles on which its more important operations 
 are based. And the practice of such a man, if faith- 
 fully recorded in all its details, would be of more 
 service in the illustration of scientific laws, than the 
 halting experience of a half dozen neophytes, who 
 work by the vague outline of some pet theory. I 
 had rather have such a man for tenant than one 
 fresh from the schools, bringing an exaggerated no- 
 tion of salts, and a large contempt for sagacity. If 
 on some day of latter summer the milch cows rap- 
 idly fall away in their " yield," I should expect the
 
 282 MY FARM. 
 
 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 vet- 
 eran, 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. 
 
 i 
 
 Business Tact. 
 
 A KIN 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 coun- 
 try-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 business ways and methods. The retired 
 trader, who plants himself some day beside him, 
 bringing his old prompt habits of the counter, will
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 283 
 
 very likely, if a shrewd observer, outmatch him in a 
 corn crop, outmatch him in pork, outmatch 
 him in everything, if 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 
 investment 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 con- 
 founded by the results, will loosely attribute them 
 all to a lavish and thriftless expenditure of money. 
 But the conclusion is neither logical, nor warranted, 
 
 in the majority of instances, by the facts. No 
 superior fruit can be grown without labor and ex- 
 treme care, and if these be controlled by a business 
 system, they will be far more economically bestowed, 
 than when subject to no order in their application.
 
 284 MY FARM. 
 
 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, re- 
 serving 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 care- 
 fully staked, and for a year or two show a thrifty 
 look. But the spring temptation to put a crop be- 
 tween 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. 
 
 From beginning to end there has been no busi-
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 285 
 
 ness forecast of the requisite labor involved, no 
 method in its prosecution no estimate of the 
 scheme as a business 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 
 livelihood in agricultural pursuits, with less of en- 
 ergy, less of promptitude, less of calculation, and 
 greater unthrift generally, than would be compat- 
 ible 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 indifference, and a sleepy pas- 
 sivity, is immense. There are farmers who yield to 
 the temptation gracefully and completely. The stir, 
 the wakefulness, the promptitude that seize upon 
 new issues, develop new enterprises, create new de- 
 mands, 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, be- 
 tween 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 the fattening of fine beeves, but
 
 286 My FARM. 
 
 whether the life and the rural occupations offer 
 verge and scope for the development of his culture 
 whether land and landscape will ripen under 
 assiduous care into graces that will keep his attach- 
 ment strong, and enlist the activities of his thought ? 
 Let us inquire. 
 
 Place for Science. 
 
 "DECAUSE a man cannot revolutionize fanning 
 - ' 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. Be- 
 cause 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 in- 
 quirers who direct their view to agricultural in- 
 terests, deal with problems which are within the 
 farmer's domain ; and if their solutions are not al- 
 ways final or directly available, the very intricacy of 
 their nature must pique his wonder, and enlist his 
 earnest inquiry. 
 
 A magnificent mystery is lying under these green
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 287 
 
 coverlets of the fields, and within every unfolding 
 germ of the plants. The chemist is seeking to un- 
 riddle it in his way ; while we farmers, by grosser 
 methods, are unriddling it, in ours. Checks and 
 hindrances meet us both ; both need an intimate 
 comparison of results for progress. If we sneer at 
 the chemist for his shifting theories in regard to the 
 nitrogenized manures no one of which is suffi- 
 ciently established for the direction of a fixed prac- 
 tice the chemist may return the sneer with in- 
 terest, when he sees us making such application of 
 a valuable salt, as shall lock up its solubility and 
 utterly annul its efficacy. It is a pretty little duel 
 for our intelligent observer to watch : the chemist 
 fulminating his doctrines, 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 chemist 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
 
 288 MY FARM. 
 
 aid, determined the merits of different bags of phos- 
 phates or guanos, that nothing remains but to match 
 these chemical colors as he would match colts, 
 and the race is won. They fancy that the new an- 
 alyses and experiments so delicate and so elabo- 
 rate are by their revelations reducing the art of 
 farming to a simple affair of the mechanical adjust- 
 ment of regularly billeted chemical forces. There 
 could not be a greater mistake made ; so far from 
 simplifying issues, the new investigations demand a 
 larger practical skill, since the conditions under 
 which it works are amplified and extended. The 
 old bases of procedure, if faulty, were at least com- 
 pact ; the experimental farmer dealt with but few, 
 and those clearly defined ; but scientific investiga- 
 tion, 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 ne- 
 cessity of a large supply of decayed vegetable ma- 
 terial. This at least was simple, and the farmer, if 
 he had only his stock of humus, left the further ful- 
 filment of the miracle of growth to wind and weather. 
 In process of time, however, science detected the
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 289 
 
 rare luxuriance which ammonia imparts to plant foli- 
 age, and after refining upon the observation, declared 
 for nitrogen as the great needed element ; schedules 
 were prepared and widely published, in which the 
 various manures were graduated in value, in strict 
 accordance with their respective admixtures of ni- 
 trogenous material The quiet farmer accepts the 
 theory, and considers the wonderful effects that 
 follow the application of the droppings from his 
 dovecot, a demonstration of its truth. 
 
 But he has hardly nestled himself warmly into 
 this belief, modified to a degree by the humus 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 element of the plant. This splinters 
 once again the compactness of our purpose, and 
 puts us upon a keen scent for the soluble phos- 
 phates ; 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- 
 19
 
 290 MY FARM. 
 
 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 meteoro- 
 logical considerations I think a man of toler- 
 able 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 po- 
 tatoes ; the nitrogenous riches have shot up into 
 thickets of rank and watery luxuriance ; the phos- 
 phoric acid has oozed into some unthrifty combina- 
 tion, or has remained locked up in an unyielding 
 nugget of Sombrero. But little disappointments 
 count for nothing, when (as now) we are reckoning 
 the pabulum which agricultural employments fur- 
 nish for intellectual activity. 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 in- 
 vestigation 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 her- 
 baria, and its opportunities for observation ; we 
 want a good monograph of our great national crop 
 of maize so soon as the man shall appear to make
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 291 
 
 it. We want, too, some Buffon (without his foppery) 
 to unearth our field-mice, and to put a great tribe of 
 insect depredators to flight. 
 
 ^Esthetics of the Business. 
 
 TTTHAT is needed, perhaps more than all else, in 
 our agricultural regions, is such intelligi- 
 ble, imitable, 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 aptitude, and for those graces which shall 
 fix his attachment while they plead their lessons of 
 appeal. 
 
 It seems hardly necessary to urge a necessity for 
 this direction of effort. A certain stark neatness, 
 confined mostly to kitchens, pantries, and such por- 
 tions of the door-yard as are under the eye of the 
 goodwife, mostly limits the accomplishment of New- 
 England farmers in this direction. It may be that 
 a staring coat of white paint upon the house com- 
 pletes the investiture of charms ; while, at every 
 hand, heaps of rubbish cumbering the public road 
 and piles of straggling wood, dissipate any illu-
 
 292 MY FARM. 
 
 sion which a well-scrubbed interior, or the fresh 
 paint, may have created. 
 
 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 recep- 
 tacle of all waste material, and foists upon the pub- 
 lic the offal, which he will not tolerate within the 
 limits of his enclosure. And the highway purveyors 
 are mostly as brutally unobservant of neatness as 
 the farmer himself ; nay, they seem to put an offi- 
 cious pride into the unseemliness and rawness of 
 their work ; and it is only by most persistent watch- 
 fulness 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, 
 cumbrous balustrades, with a multitude of shapeless 
 finials, or whimsical pagodas imitations of what 
 cannot be imitated, even if worthy ; but of the 
 hundred nameless graces, wrought of home material, 
 delighting you by their unexpectedness, piquing you
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 293 
 
 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 less. The only idea of elegance and beauty 
 which finds footing, is of something extraneous 
 outside his lif e 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 farmer'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 pastorals 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 charms, which the 
 humblest farmer has in his keeping, and may spend 
 around his door and homestead, with such simple 
 grace, such affluence, such economy of labor, such 
 unity of design, as shall enchain regard, ripen the 
 instincts of his children to a finer sense of the boun- 
 ties they enjoy, and kindle the admiration of every 
 intelligent observer. 
 
 A neglect of these attractions, which are so con-
 
 _>94 MY FARM. 
 
 spicuous along nil 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 
 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 establish- 
 ment, I think the root of the difficulty may lie very 
 much in that proud and sensitive individuality 
 which is the growth of our democratic institutions. 
 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 because 
 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 
 grandiose type, showing vulgar strain toward those 
 adornments 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 contents himself with occupancy of the 
 back-kitchen. If contented with small space, why
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 295 
 
 not, in the name of honesty, declare it boldly, in- 
 stead of covering the truth, under such lumbering 
 falsehood? What forbids giving to the country 
 home a simple propriety of its own, with its own 
 wealth of rural decoration its shrubbery, its vines, 
 its arbors, instead of challenging unfavorable com- 
 parison with an entirely different class of homes ? 
 If a man is disposed to advertise by naming archi- 
 tecture 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 farming interests, or con- 
 tribute very largely to the best charms of our rural 
 landscape. The attempt to better one's condition is 
 always praiseworthy ; but it is only base and ignoble 
 to attempt to cover one's condition 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 He 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 civ- 
 ilization. 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
 
 296 MY FARM. 
 
 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 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 gratitude 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 essentially, 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, 
 arid who drives his team thither, avoiding rock, and
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 297 
 
 tree, and hillock, will give to his line of approach a 
 grace that it would be hard to excel by counterfeit. 
 Pat, staggering from the orchard, under a bushel of 
 Bartlett pears, and seizing upon every accidental aid 
 in the surface of the declivity to relieve the fatigue 
 of his walk zigzagging, as it were in easy curves, 
 is unconsciously laying down though not a grace- 
 ful man a very graceful line of march. And it is 
 the delicate interpretation of these every-day de- 
 flexities, and this instinctive tortuousness (if I may 
 so say), which supplies, or should supply, the land- 
 scape 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 removing 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 useless material that might cumber the high- 
 way, 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,
 
 298 MY FARM. 
 
 and reserve the more available 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 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 lit- 
 tle parterre of flowers dropped in the turf, we are 
 not hurried ; the dainty curves make a pleasant 
 cheatery of the approach. 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 
 doubling upon themselves on some rocky pitch 
 of hill short reaches, concealed each one from the 
 other blinded by thick underwood wantoning 
 in curves, until presently from under a low-branch-
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 299 
 
 ing 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 overgrowth 
 against any glimpse of sky, makes it tenfold rav- 
 ishing. 
 
 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, and their fine mosses creeping into green 
 mats ; I love their irregular borders, with a fern or 
 a gentian nodding over the bounds a pretty syl- 
 van 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 
 remember loitering through day after day, in the 
 rural districts of England, with a sense of enjoy- 
 ment, that never belonged to saunterings in the 
 alleys of Versailles. 
 
 A man does not know England, or English land-
 
 300 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 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 ':
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 301 
 
 Shrubbery. 
 
 TpvOES 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 
 admiration that is almost reverence. The Syringo 
 (Philadelphus) 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 
 have their attractions ; the Mezereum, because it 
 is first comer in the spring, and shows its modest 
 crimson tufts of blossoms, while the March snows 
 are lingering ; 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 
 pleasure will be found. It is not a great burden of 
 bloom from any particular shrub that I aim at. I
 
 302 My FARM. 
 
 do not want to prove what it may do at its best, and 
 singly ; that is the office of the nurseryman, who has 
 his sales to make. But I want to marry together 
 great ranks of individual beauties, so that May flow- 
 ers shall hardly be upon the wane, when the blos- 
 soms 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 shubbery. I want to see the delicate white of 
 the Clematis ( Virginica) hanging its graceful fes- 
 toons 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 twining Bitter-sweet 
 
 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 Hem- 
 locks as if the shadow of a cloud lay just there, 
 and the sun shone on all the rest ; and among the 
 Hemlocks, and reaching in jagged bays above and 
 below them are Sumacs (so beautiful, and yet so 
 scorned) lifting out from all the tossing sea of
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 303 
 
 leaves, their solid flame-jets of fiery crimson ber- 
 ries. Skirting these, and shining under the dip of 
 a Willow, are the glossy Kalmias which, at mid- 
 summer, 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 li mit 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 will 
 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 
 White-birch, and its milky bole is without a rival 
 among all the exotics ; the Hardbeam (Oarpinus), 
 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 trans-
 
 304 MY FA Rip. 
 
 ferred 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 (Lauru8 benzoin) is always tempting to the 
 children by reason of its aromatic bark, and in 
 earliest spring it is covered with fairy golden flow- 
 ers ; the black Alder (Ilex verticillata) 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 sanguined) supplies 
 annually a great stock of crimson whips, and a 
 charming liveliness 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 sea- 
 son 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." 
 
 Nor 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, 
 
 * A much safer way is to give the young plants a season or* 
 two of domestication in a patch of nursery ground.
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 305 
 
 the Bilberry, with its fairy bells, and the whole race 
 of wild vines among which not least, is the lux- 
 uriant 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, hi scattered groups and 
 copses, without abstracting so much as an acre from 
 the tillable surface of the land. The brambles, 
 thickets, 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 declivities, 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 
 
 20
 
 306 MY FARM. 
 
 for their effective establishment ; care is a price we 
 must all pay for whatever beautiful growth we se- 
 cure 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. My 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 on his after-dinner strolls to the 
 thickets, the planter will not forget his pruning- 
 knife and his saw. 
 
 A little patch of good, and thoroughly tilled nurs- 
 ery 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
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 307 
 
 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 un- 
 remunerative 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 ordin- 
 ary 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, tranquilly disrobing, and retiring to 
 the sleep of winter. 
 
 Rural Decoration. 
 
 A MONG the things which specially col'aibute 
 *-*- 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
 
 308 MY FARM. 
 
 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 cot- 
 tage. 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 discretion be brought to the direction of 
 outlay in adornments and improvements, or if they 
 be not ordered by a severe and inexorable simpli- 
 city, 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-consid- 
 ered economy. I may now add to these the effects 
 of little unimportant architectural devices, not re- 
 quiring a practical builder, and which while they 
 lend a great charm to landscape, give an individ- 
 uality to a man's home. 
 
 The reader will perhaps allow me to particularize 
 from my own experience. There were, to begin
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 309 
 
 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 most slatternly and dismal 
 in their general effect. They were not worth new 
 covering ; painting was impossible ; and whitewash- 
 ing would only have lighted up the seams and in- 
 equalities more staringly. A half a mile away was a 
 little mill, where cedar posts were squared by a cir- 
 cular 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 conver- 
 sion to other uses struck me, and fructified at once. 
 I bought a cord or two at a nominal cost, and com- 
 menced the work of covering my disjointed and slat- 
 ternly outbuildings with these rough slabs. It was 
 a simple business, requiring only even nailing, with 
 here and there a little " furring out " to bring the old 
 angles to a square, with here and there the deft 
 turning of a rude arch, with two crooked bits, over 
 door or window. Farm laborers, 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
 
 310 MY FARM. 
 
 capital foothold to the vines which I planted around 
 them. 
 
 In keeping with their effect, I caused gates to be 
 constructed of the cheapest 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, 
 rustic-work of most cumbrous and portentous di- 
 mensions 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 affectation of rural simplicity ; it wears none 
 of that fit and homely 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 boughs, otherwise worthless, 
 or to pine-pickets of little cost in the paling of a 
 yard, or the tracery of a gate, as shall catch the eye 
 by its grace of outline, and suggest imitation by its 
 easy construction, and entire feasibility, there is 
 some hope of leading country tastes in that direc-
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 311 
 
 tion ; but if work shows great nicety of construc- 
 tion, puzzling and complicated detail, immense ab- 
 sorption of labor and material, it might as well have 
 been so far as intended to encourage farm rurali- 
 ties 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 
 question for a farmer who studies economy : but 
 suppose that to a substantial stone fence of ordinary 
 construction, I am careful, by a choice of topping- 
 stones, to give unbroken continuity of its upper line ; 
 and suppose 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 taper- 
 ing 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 thick- 
 ness, and again, upon the last, the largest and 
 roundest boulder I can find ? At once there is cre- 
 ated a graceful architectural effect, which gives a 
 new air to the whole line of wall. Yet the addi- 
 tional labor involved is hardly to be reckoned. 
 
 Gates, in all variety, dependent on position and 
 service, offer charming opportunity for unpreten- 
 tious and effective rural devices. Far away in the 
 garden it may be worth while to throw a rude rooflet
 
 312 MY FARM. 
 
 over one, where a man may catch refuge from a 
 shower ; in another quarter, you may carry up posts 
 and link them across in rustic trellis, to carry the 
 arms of some tossing vine ; a stile, too, where neigh- 
 bors' children, forgetful of latches, are apt to stroll 
 in for nuts or berries, or on some cross-path to 
 school, may, by simple adjustment of log steps and 
 overhanging roof of thatch, or slabs, take a charm- 
 ing effect, and work somewhat toward the correction 
 of that unflinching and inexorable insistence upon 
 rights of property, which induces many a crabbed 
 man to nail up his gates, and deny himself a con- 
 venience, for the sake of circumventing the claims 
 of an occasional stroller. 
 
 Eustic 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 rosewood and bamboo. A single bit of plank be- 
 tween 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 more agreeable to country landscape, 
 fuller far of service and of suggestion, than any of 
 the portentous rustic-work in city shops.
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 313 
 
 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 
 out-buildings ; while away, upon the lawn, or open- 
 ing 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, out-building 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.
 
 MY FARM. 
 
 Flowers. 
 
 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 flor- 
 ists' 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 passionate lovers of only a few, and those the 
 commonest flowers flowers whose sweet home- 
 names reach a key, at whose touch all their sympa- 
 thies respond. 
 
 They laugh at the florist's fondness for a well- 
 rounded hollyhock, or a true-petalled tulip, and ad- 
 mire as fondly the half -developed specimens, the 
 careless growth of cast-away plants, or the acci- 
 dental 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
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 315 
 
 already damaged my reputation past hope, in the 
 eyes of the amateur florists. If these good people 
 could see the homely company of plants that is 
 gathered every winter in my library window, they 
 would be shocked still farther. 
 
 There is a careless group of the most common 
 ferns ; a Kose-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 cur- 
 tain 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 
 corners, two wee Hemlock-spruces give a back- 
 ground 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.
 
 316 MY FARM. 
 
 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 supported by a rustic arch of crooked 
 oaken twigs. Finally, the cornice from which the 
 Spanish moss is pendant, is a long rod of Hazel, 
 around which a vine of Bitter-sweet has twined it- 
 self so firmly, that they seem incorporate 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, there- 
 fore, somewhat different ; and the reader will, I 
 trust, excuse 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 forest tree, which serve as standards or 
 supports, to a tray of plank five inches in depth, and 
 covered with unbarked saplings, so graduated in 
 size, as to make this base (or tray) appear like the
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 317 
 
 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 earthern saucer. Fitting upon 
 this tray is a glazed case with top sloping to the 
 sun, and with its quoins and edges covered with 
 bark, and embossed with acorn-cups to corre- 
 spond with the base. The fitting is not altogether 
 so perfect as that of a Wardian case, but quite suffi- 
 cient 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 un- 
 known, I have only to lodge it upon my bed of 
 mosses, and in due time I have a butterfly captive 
 for further examination. 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 incor- 
 porating 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
 
 3i 8 MY FARM. 
 
 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 fas- 
 tidious 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 
 their season of potting, when I give up my little 
 garden to a careless array of the first laughing flow- 
 ers 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 Ri- 
 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 dexter- 
 ous gardener, any one may arrange his parterres 
 and his graduated banks of flowers, quite secundum
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 319 
 
 artem. And I suppose, that, when completed, these 
 orderly arrays of the latest and newest floral won- 
 ders are enjoyable. Yet I am no fair judge ; the 
 appreciation of them demands a " booking-up " in 
 floral science to which I can lay no claim. I some- 
 times wander through the elegant gardens of my 
 town friends, fairly dazzled by all the splendor and 
 the orderly 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 admir- 
 ing 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 f eeling 
 the fear of a kindred ridicule, whenever I stroll 
 through the gardens of an accomplished 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 
 spontaneously what seems to be beautiful, without 
 waiting for the story of its beauty. If I were an 
 adept, I should doubtless, like other adepts, reserve 
 my admiration exclusively for floral perfection ; but 
 I thank God that my eye is not as yet so bounded.
 
 320 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 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 
 passers-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 crim- 
 son is as common and vulgar as the wood-fire upon 
 a farmer's hearth. Holly-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
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 321 
 
 edge of the shrubbery; Phloxes, purple and pink, 
 hem them in ; and at their season a wilderness of 
 Eoses 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 crim- 
 son Peonies, of Larkspur, or even (shall I be 
 ashamed to tell it ?) of Golden-rod and of the Car- 
 dinal 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 stately 
 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 near 
 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 Valley, 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
 
 322 MY FARM. 
 
 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 the mossy stones from amid which the foun- 
 tain gurgles over, I find lodging places, not only for 
 rampant wild-ferns, but for a stately Calla, and for 
 some showy type of the Amaryllidse. 
 
 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 Colom- 
 bine 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 transplanted wild ones of the flower-fold, I 
 like to drop such modest citizens of the tame coun- 
 try 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
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 323 
 
 of bloom, the little ones come in with marvellous 
 reports of Lilies, where Lilies were never seen be- 
 fore 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 gentle- 
 manly gardener from Thorburn's were to show a 
 Dahlia, 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 
 thickets will never search them. She, whose glad 
 eyes would have opened in pleasant bewilderment
 
 324 MY FARM. 
 
 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, carry- 
 ing joy and merriment 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 
 now the little hand that might have stolen posses- 
 sion of it, is stiff is fast 
 
 And when spring wakens all its echoes of the 
 wren's song of the blue-bird's warble, of the 
 plaintive 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 re- 
 peat 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 wel- 
 come, 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 sweetest 
 flowers wait for the dainty fingers that shall pluck 
 them, never again.
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 325 
 
 L'Envoi. 
 
 ~T 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 re- 
 solved within so narrow a compass. Yet I have 
 endeavored to light up, with my somewhat disor- 
 derly array of hints and suggestions, those more 
 salient topics which would naturally suggest them- 
 selves 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 cultiva- 
 tion, 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 neces- 
 sity of the case, the majority of the world must be 
 always engaged. He may contribute to redeem it
 
 326 MY FARM. 
 
 from those loose, unmethodical, ignorant practices, 
 which are, in a large sense, due to the farmer's iso- 
 lation, and to the necessities of his condition. And 
 although careful investigation, study, and extended 
 observation in connection with husbandry, may fail 
 of those pecuniary rewards, which seem to be their 
 due, yet the cause in some measure ennobles the 
 sacrifice. The cultivated farmer is leading a regi- 
 ment 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 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 har- 
 vests 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 
 progression which we cannot unduly hasten. Nor 
 do I know that full accomplishment would add to 
 the charm ; I think that those who entertain the
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 327 
 
 most keen enjoyment of a country homestead, are 
 they who regard it always in the light of an unfin- 
 ished 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 fore- 
 sight 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 de- 
 light 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 kissing the marble steps, where the 
 weeds of the Adriatic hang their tresses, and the 
 dainty feet of Jessica go tripping from hall to gon- 
 dola. It is not the shaggy, Highland cattle, with 
 dewy nostrils lifted to the morning, that keep my 
 regard in Eosa Bonheur ; but the aroma of the 
 heather, and of a hundred Highland traditions, a 
 sound as of Bruar water, a sudden waking of 
 all mountain memories and solitudes. 
 
 Again it must be remembered by all those who 
 have rural life in anticipation, that its finer charms,
 
 328 MY FARM. 
 
 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 
 country life in New England, nor overstated ita 
 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 
 window, 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
 
 HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 329 
 
 elms of the farm lands freshened by late rains 
 into unwonted 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 FARM OF EDGEWOOD.