94 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



out. And all through the winter months, when the crops had 

 been housed in the barns and stored in the cellars, joyful 

 among themselves, as Virgil has it, — the farmers enjoyed 

 mutual feasts. 



There was little of what is called rivalry or envy in those 

 elder days among the farmers. There was a general harmony 

 and good neighborhood. The interest of one was the interest 

 of all. Did one of them have the misfortune to have his house 

 or his barn burnt, his neighbors would raise and finish a new 

 house or barn for him. What famous women were the wives 

 of the farmers who lived in those houses ! How they rose up 

 early and sat up late, and carded wool and flax and spun yarn 

 and knitted stockings and wove cloth ! And they made butter 

 and cheese ; and they raised up sons and daughters all the 

 while. Verily, as Mr. Alexander Everett once wrote, there 

 should an order go forth for a Solemn Bee to assemble in every 

 State in New England with a view to ascertain and preserve 

 the oral traditions of the customs of our ancestors, of the 

 farmers of the early days of our State. 



There were cities in those days, and the line of demarcation 

 between town and country life was sharply drawn. Mr. Bout- 

 well, at the dinner at the last New England Agricultural Fair 

 at Lowell, spoke of the time as past when a man from the 

 country would be known and distinguished from the inhabitants 

 of the city the moment he set his feet in State Street. And 

 here is seen our connection with the great Past. It was so in 

 ancient Greece. As Athens grew in wealth, the richer part, 

 indeed, of the country population were more and more attract- 

 ed to it ; and Isocrates, writing almost four hundred years 

 before Christ, can already contrast his own time with the days 

 when " the houses and establishments in the country were 

 handsomer than those within the walls, and when many of the 

 citizens did not even come to town for the festivals." But 

 there remained a frugal farmer class, strongly conservative of 

 the old simplicity, totally strange to the life of the city, and 

 rarely, in some cases never, visiting it. In the Greek Comic 

 Dramas the temptations which beset the rustic on his visits to 

 Athens are forcibly described. A farmer sends his son to sell 

 wood and barley ; the young man sees a philosopher at the 

 Academy, and to his father's dismay comes back a Cynic. 



