APPENDIX. xli 



the initiative taken by the college at Amherst, and offering whole- 

 some premiums for drawings from still life and for paintings, and thus 

 encourage the young farmers and their female relatives to develop 

 their talents in such useful and instructive ways. The mere hand- 

 ling and classifying of books in a large library made a most success- 

 ful naturalist, and the close attention the young give to the imple- 

 ments or plants they copy, if it does not develop the inventor or 

 horticulturist, will assuredly interest others in their callings to 

 such a degree, as to invest the old house and the farm with a lustre 

 more attractive than of yore, and vie, perhaps successfully, with the 

 glitter from the distant fields and prairies of other regions. 



Returning again to the spacious hall of the Bristol Society, we 

 find the present Speaker of the House, with his wife, coming, as a 

 wise legislator should, to view and study the products of his con- 

 stituents ; and also the delegate from that society, and his other 

 half, intent, as they had been the whole time of your delegate's 

 visit, to making it agreeable and useful, and in their company, the 

 honey, which appears to be a specialty, was duly inspected, and the 

 dairy department, not preeminent in quantities, though the quality 

 of the butter and cheese was good. 



The vegetable products, of which there was an excellent display, 

 and the flowers which bloomed as in parterres, and the fruits of 

 which, considering the season, there was a good variety, the pears 

 and grapes excelling ; though one contributor from Vermont had 

 enough kinds of crab-apples to sour the whole district, and use 

 up all the sugar in the town. 



In the basement was a large assortment of the heavier agricult- 

 ural machines, comprising the mowers, tedders, horse-rakes, etc., 

 sent by the manufacturing houses of Boston and Providence ; and 

 in fact, the merchants and manufacturers vied with the farmers in 

 making a successful exhibition, even the dentists exhibiting their 

 implements of torture, and the young scholars sending their juvenile 

 drawings, or paintings, or fancy needle-work, and the old ladies and 

 old men treading over again their youthful steps ; — one old lady of 

 seventy-five sending fifteen pair of stockings ; another of eighty- 

 three, a rug and cushion ; and several others of nearly the same 

 age, other home-made fabrics ; an old man of eighty-four, some 

 fine specimens of cabinet work ; whilst in juxtaposition were the 

 worsted ottoman cover of a six-year-old Bertha ; a tidy of an eight- 

 year-old Carrie ; a worsted cushion of another six-year-old called 

 Zilpah ; and several specimens in wax-work and painting of a young 

 master just at the bottom of the ladder of learning — youth and age 

 thus meeting, and completing the circle of life in useful works. 

 6* 



