CULTURE OF RYE. 101 



mean, has really borne himself towards what seemed his 

 nearest duty, with a faithfulness truly heroic. The oak and 

 the rose are alike dependent upon the broad base of roots 

 that continually and contentedly draw sustenance from the 

 soil ; and the florid and umbrageous superstructures of our 

 modern society found the germs of tlieir growth in the elab- 

 orated sap of the earth, gathered in driblets and savings by 

 many a so-called "skin-flint" rye-grower. 



A spurt of well-doing for the hour has its reward in the 

 hour's applause, but the fight with the unending difficulty of 

 shaping gracefully and graciously the ends of a life upon a 

 sterile New England farm, during the major part of the past 

 seventy-five years, was of the long-winded sort of human ef- 

 forts and struggles tliat will never cease to give inspiring 

 themes to the true poet. For the fact is, we gave our smart 

 est boys and girls to the fat lands of the west, and for years 

 have l)een competing with them in grain-growing with such 

 disadvantages. Our prices, from fields faint with exhaustion, 

 have been struck level as our railways, with the produce of a 

 virgin soil. Looking for the bottom cause of things, it is 

 clear that but for our rye bread — but for the peculiar virtue, 

 as bon,e, and brain, and muscle-producing food of the staunch- 

 est sort, resident in the brown skin of our rye kernels — we 

 could not have held our own in the unequal struggle ! 



The production of this grain in our town at present, (Man- 

 chester,) is not large, as may be understood when I mention 

 that we have no public grist mill within its borders, and but 

 a single run of provender stones in private hands. Our eyes 

 are fixed upon the manufacture of other things than flour, meal 

 and feed. We buy our breadstuffs, or make occasional trips to 

 other and less sophisticated towns, with our single bag of rye, 

 or corn, or buckwheat. It is scarcely worth while for me to 

 do more tlian respectfully refer to the questions of Mr. Secre- 

 tary with regard to our present methods of cultivation, acre- 

 age and maximum, and average production. We sow rye 

 enough so that children who walk two miles to school still 

 know this cereal by sight. We raise, in town, perhaps 

 nearly as much as we use for bread, for we have come to use 



