1857.] 



Chronicles of a Clay Farm. 



395 



other." What on earth wan to be done ? Agriculture was not 

 royal then — there was no " Society's Journal;" no motto-laden but- 

 tons publishing the bans (for the first time), of " Practice with 

 Science ;" no dear little weekly honne houchc of a Gazette, no July 

 gathering of fat cattle and great men to look backward and forward 

 to all the other twelve months. All was dull, blank and cheerless, 

 not to say " flat and unprofitable." 



What was to be done? Apostatize from all the promises and 

 vows made from ray youth up and take it in hand — that is, in a 

 bailiff's hand, which certain foregone experiences had led me to con- 

 ceive was of all things in the world the most oiit of hand (if that 

 may be called so which empties the hand and the pocket too). Such 

 seemed the only alternative. At first it was an impossibility — then 

 an improbability — and then, as the ear of bearded corn wins its for- 

 bidden way up the schoolboy's sleeve and gains a point in advance 

 by every effort to stop or expel it, so did every determination, every 

 reflection counteract the very purpose it was summoned to oppose, 

 and, in short, one fine morning I almost jumped a yard backward at 

 seeing my own name on a wagon ! * 



* We have known more than one nuiu to sell out his "homestead," lying within a 

 few miles of a populous town in an eastern State, because there was too much "swamp" 

 upon it and remove several hundred miles to the west, where he must for years combat 

 the emharrassmeuts of a new country, to settle himself on laud intrinsically worth less, 

 for producttive purposes, per acre, in its best condition, than the repulsive swamps which 

 he had left, simply because he was ignorant of the simple process of drainintc them. 

 Such men were no "book farmers." They ignored all connection of science with agri- 

 culture, by way of agricultural publications, or the association of themselves with agri- 

 cultural societies, and consequently were profniudly ignorant of the existence of a mine 

 more valuable than California gold in the hateful morasses which had driven them away. 

 Had they been reading and iu(|uiriug men they would have converted such worthless 

 swamps, at a comparatively trifling expense, into soils of the most productive character. 

 The quiet vein of satire running through our author's remarks is strikingly illustrative 

 of the populor errors which prevail among ordinary farmers in relation to swampy lands. 



A Sketch — Introductory. 



