MORRIS BIRKBECK, ESQ. 



to you, who have the meadows without bounds, this coppice must 

 be removed, if you please, before you plough for wheat ! 



1008. Let us pause here, then ; let us look at the battalion, 

 who are at work ; for, there must be little short of a Hessian 

 Battalion. Twenty men and twenty horses may husk the Corn, 

 cut and cart the stalks, plough and sow and harrow for the wheat ; 

 twenty two-legged and twenty four-legged animals may do the 

 work in the proper time ; but, if they do it, they must work well. 

 Here is a goodly group to look at, for an English Farmer, without 

 a penny in his pocket ; for all his money is gone long ago, even 

 according to your own estimate ; and, here, besides the expence 

 of cattle and tackle, are 600 dollars, in bare wages, to be paid in a 

 month! You and I both have forgotten the shelling of the Corn, 

 which, and putting it up, will come to 50 dollars more at the least, 

 leaving the price of the barrel to be paid for by the purchaser of 

 the Corn. 



1009. But, what did I say ? Shell the Corn ? It must go into 

 the Cribs first. It cannot be shelled immediately. And it must 

 not be thrown into heaps. It must be put into Cribs. I have 

 had made out an estimate of the expence of the Cribs for ten 

 thousand bushels of Corn Ears : that is the crop ; and the Cribs 

 will cost 570 dollars ! Though, mind, the farmer s house, barns, 

 stables, waggon-house, and all, are to cost but 1500 dollars ! But, 

 the third year, our poor simpleton is to have 200 acres of corn ! 

 &quot; Twenty more : kill em ! &quot; Another 570 dollars for Cribs ! 



1010. However, crops now come tumbling on him so fast, that 

 he must struggle hard not to be stifled with his own super 

 abundance. He has now got 200 acres of corn and 100 acres of 

 wheat, which latter he has, indeed, had one year before ! Oh, 

 madness ! But, to proceed. To get in these crops and to sow 

 the wheat, first taking away 200 acres of English coppice in stalks, 

 will, with the dunging for the wheat, require, at least, fifty good 

 men, and forty good horses or oxen, for thirty days. Faith ! when 

 farmer Simpleton sees all this (in his dreams I mean), he will 

 think himself a farmer of the rank of JOB, before Satan beset that 

 example of patience, so worthy of imitation, and so seldom 

 imitated. 



ion. Well, but Simpleton must bustle to get in his wheat. 

 In, indeed ! What can cover it, but the canopy of heaven ? A 

 barn ! It will, at two English waggon loads of sheaves to an acre, 

 require a barn a hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and twenty- 

 three feet high up to the eaves ; and this barn, with two proper 

 floors, will cost more than seven thousand dollars. He will put 

 it in stacks : let him add six men to his battalion then. He will 

 thrash it in the field : let him add ten more men ! Let him, at 

 once, send and press the Harmonites into his service, and make 

 RAPP march at their head, for, never will he by any other means 

 get in the crop ; and, even then, if he pay fair wages, he will lose 

 by it. 



251 



