32 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



ods. " Drive a nail where it will go " is a prdverb of our 

 race older than our nation. Farming as a business is pecul- 

 iarly, perhaps painfully, practical, especially about, the sum- 

 mer solstice ; and he who essays to show by theory how to 

 make it more practical still must expect to face a criticism 

 that has in it more common sense than charity. Woe to 

 him if he make one weak statement, though souiid on the 

 ninety and nine ! He sins once, and is judged for all. The 

 Calvinistic Catechism would not condemn him quicker, and 

 not half so hopelessly. A young Scotch dominie was once 

 settled over an old Scotch parish : he had an honest hanker- 

 ing for teaching his flock agriculture as well as theology. 

 An old mentor of a sextOn, who had no fears for his parson's 

 orthodoxy, but felt that he was "shaky" in that rarer sci- 

 ence, " how to get along with people," gave him the advice 

 that Douglas Jerrold, in " The London Punch," gave to 

 young people about to marry, — " Don't ; for," said he, 

 " they'll see ye ken naething about farming, and they'll get 

 to thmk ye dinna ken any thing." And the question. How 

 shall your speaker escape the imputation, always in reserve 

 for the theorist, is serious beyond personal reasons. Will it 

 help his case with those he most desires to reach, to state 

 that he was one of three, who, in the last harvest, cradled 

 down eighteen acres of grain in two days ? Not that he con- 

 siders those days worth telling of for purely personal reasons. 

 Oh, no ! "I think not of them," said Macbeth, when Banquo 

 reminded him of the royal promise of the three weird sisters ; 

 though the truth was, he had been thinking of little else. 

 There is something wonderful in the faith of writers and 

 speakers on agriculture in their ability to make converts to 

 farming, especially of the young men in the fresh flush of 

 early ambition, by depicting the beauties and profits of farm- 

 life. There is, indeed, no more unpromising subject for gush 

 and bosh than a farmer's boy. The actualities of life have 

 sharpened his mental perceptions, and taught him self-reli- 

 ance. " There is an animal," says Charles Reade, " of no 

 great merit, but with the eye of a hawk to detect affectation : 

 it is called a boy." But this much, at least, may we claim 

 for farm-life : if the long week-daj^'s of summer call for terri- 

 ble toil, — the labor even of a slave, — if spring and fall are 

 as busy, barring the heat, winter affords the best form of 



