Addresses — Humbugs. 149 



into the country twice a day, returning on a different road? Poor 

 timber is now worked up into doctors at very short notice. 



How about the agriculturist? I suppose this big word means 

 the humbug farmer of now-a-days; humbug in his house, in his 

 barn; he doubtless had a humbug carpenter — there is hardly any 

 other; humbug in his surroundings; humbug in his seed and in his 

 soil; humbug in his way of farming; humbug in his horses — he is 

 the one who sent the boy for the doctor, and he went afoot to gain 

 time; humbug in his cows — who ever heard of a yearling heifer 

 whose milk was so rich that a pint would make a pound of butter; 

 humbug in his hogs — see that sandy pair that cost one hundred 

 dollars; humbug in his sheep — wool pulled over his eyes at the 

 last fair to the tune of several hundred dollars; will he pan out by 

 humbugging some one else? Fifty dollars for a trio of fowls; how 

 is that for eggs at ten cents a dozen? Did you get rich with the 

 hulless oats and the beardless barley? Have you tried the new 

 corn, one kernel in the hill; the potatoes that are bug proof, or that 

 new kind just from Peru? Have you tried the Jerusalem artichoke, 

 and did your pigs dig their own dinner and make pork for one cent 

 per pound? Did you ever give an order and note for an unlimited 

 supply of lightning rods, and how did you get out? How about that 

 new kind of reaper that stands beside the fence yonder, or that 

 patent churn, up in the garret, or the new dasher that brings butter 

 in five minutes? Lastly, did you ever get acquainted with a patent 

 right man and make your pile, over the left? 



Turn to any calling, business or profession, and it is polished up 

 with brass; sham and shoddy, the best side out; if there is any 

 defect, it is puttied up, varnished and whitewashed, from the wafer 

 to the wooden nutmeg; from the Bank of England to the sand 

 bank; from the highest social circle to the lowest dregs of human- 

 ity; humbug in everything; humbug in man, but oh! oh! what shall 

 I say of woman? — worse and worse. 



Where is humbug more often seen and more seriously felt than 

 in horticulture? You plant a tree with the hope of eating choice 

 fruit some five years hence; you nurse it to life, pet it, lo ! these 

 many years, and what? It blooms and blights, or worse, what it 

 bears is a humbug. It is easy to tell where you bought that tree. 

 A smooth-tongued man called on you, familiary addressing you by 

 name, showed his pictures and glass jars with magnified fruit; a 



