1882.] FARM LIFE. 285 



was remonstrated with for having his daughters feed the calves. 

 He replied that it would not hurt his daughters to feed his calves; 

 and it seems it did not, for they married early and well — one a 

 merchant and the other a farmer, and the one that married a 

 farmer was the mother of a professor in college, of whom I shall 

 speak when further along. I am acquainted with a farmer's 

 daughter that has taken the whole charge of a dairy of twenty-two 

 cows the past season, making over one hundred and twenty-five 

 pounds of butter a week, besides doing the washing for the family, 

 with three or four hired men, and doing some cooking besides. 

 That girl can sing loud as any one, and play the musical instru- 

 ment, or teach school, but prefers house-work to them all. That 

 looks a little hke the olden time; we hope there are many more of 

 them. 



But we will return to the boys. They are not all of the same 

 turn of mind. One is for invention, another mechanical, another 

 fond of books or mathematics, another for speculation. Some 

 have none of these tastes, only for persistent everyday labor on 

 the farm. Nothing disturbs them. But it is useless to force a 

 boy out of his natural bent or aim in life. It is unwise to spoil a 

 good mechanic, to make a poor farmer. If a boy has a strong 

 desire for mechanical work, let him learn the trade of his choice, 

 for a good trade and master of it is better than a poor farm with a 

 poor farmer on it, for failure is stamped upon it, the inevitable 

 result of a mistaken calling. 



Some boys have a desire to do everything. They will try one 

 thing a while, and then another, until they have tried everything 

 they hear of, and never finding their proper place, turning out at 

 last to bo " a square peg in a round hole." Such seldom ever 

 succeed in life. It is a long, straight, steady pull that wins. As 

 I have said, when a boy gets his head full of city notions he is so 

 persistent in his notions and shirking, that we are constrained to 

 let him go, for if he was any one else, boy or a hired man, we 

 would not have him around one week, but when he goes we feel 

 it, for we know not what he will do or make. Amos Lawrence, 

 the great merchant prince of Boston, said that ninety out of one 

 hundred that went into mercantile life failed in business. That 

 is not very encouraging for a farmer's boy to leave home, when he 

 knows not where he can lay his head the first and many succeed- 

 ing nights. 



Up in Litchfield county there lives an old farmer that has al- 



