78 MY FARM. 



education embraced a considerable knowledge of a 

 score of different crops and avocations. The tend 

 ency is now, however, to centralize attention upon 

 that line of cropping which is best suited to the land ; 

 this limits the range of labor, while the improved 

 mechanical appliances fill a thousand wants, which 

 were once only to be met by a dexterous handicraft 

 at home. None but a few weazen-faced old gentle 

 men of a very ancient school, think now-a-days of 

 making their own ox yokes or their own cheese presses ; 

 or, if their crop be large, of pounding out their grain 

 with a flail. And it is noticeable in this connection, 

 that the implements in the use of which the native 

 workers were most unmatchable, are precisely the ones 

 which in practical farming are growing less and less 

 important every year ; to wit, the axe and the scythe : 

 the first being now confined mostly to clearings of 

 timber, and the second is fast becoming merely a 

 garden implement for the dressing of lawns. 



I perceive, very clearly, from all this, that I am 

 not to be brought in contact with a race of Arcadians. 

 Melibceus will not do the milking, nor Tityrus, 

 though there shall be plenty of snoozing under the 

 beech trees. It is also lamentably true that the un 

 couth and unkempt Irish or Germans, whom it be 

 comes necessary to employ, place no pride or love in 

 their calling like the English farm laborers, or lik 



