OUR HOMES. 89 



into your pockets. One man takes a particular breed of cattle, 

 the Ayrshires, for instance, and makes the best he can of that ; 

 another takes Devons, or Shorthorns, or Jerseys ; another takes 

 pears. See what has been accomplished by the efforts of Colonel 

 Wilder, in Massachusetts, in introducing pears. Another takes 

 an interest in apples You have not a hundredth part as many 

 apples in the State of Maine as you ought to have. IIow many 

 families do you suppose there were in this State last October or 

 November, that had not a single barrel of apples, or fruit of any 

 kind. I know there were a great many in Massachusetts in that 

 condition. No family ever ought to close the cellar doors in 

 November without at least, four barrels of apples in the cellar. 

 Yet I have no doubt there are more than ten thousand families in 

 the State of Massachusetts that did not have a bushel of apples in 

 the house during the year 1869. 



Are you not going to reform these things ? I see a man before 

 me who raised 2500 bushels of potatoes last year in this State. I 

 saw too bushels of the Early Rose in one bin, and a handsomer 

 sight is not to be seen anywhere. I feel obliged to this man for 

 introducing new varieties of the potato, where the old ones are 

 running out so fast. 



Tiiere is another thing which is a civilizer, which I am in- 

 clined to think a great many people never have thought of. That 

 is the common hoe. Will you tell me what would tempt you to 

 give up the use of the hoe for the year 1810 ? I don't believe 

 there is money enough in the country to induce the State of Maine 

 to give it up for a single year. That is a civilizer. Only think 

 how it is used in all the operations of the garden and the farm. 

 So is the shovel. I remember when we had to work with a shovel 

 made of wood, shod around the edges with hoop iron, I have 

 shoveled many a day with that kind of a shovel. I suppose there 

 were, at that time, shovels made of steel, but I did not see any. 

 You have to hire men to do the digging on your farms, and a man 

 will do more work in one day with a steel shovel with a long 

 handle, than he would do in two days with the old-fashioned one. 

 This is so with all the other tools. The pitchfork used to be made 

 by the village blacksmith, and was four times as heavy as it ought 

 to have been. Take one of the modern pitchforks and see how 

 much more easily you can do the work. 



One word on another topic. I was glad to hear the suggestion 

 of the lecturer, that there should be in every town some person 



