PREFACE. 



I DO not deem it necessary to apologize for this memoir of a farmer s 

 visit to England. Every man in travelling will be directed in peculiar 

 paths of observation by his peculiar tastes, habits, and personal interests, 

 and there will always be a greater or less class who will like to hear of 

 just what he liked to see. With a hearty country appetite for narrative, I 

 have spent, previous to my own journey, a great many long winter even 

 ings in reading the books so frequently written by our literary tourists, 

 upon England ; and although I do not recollect one of them, the author 

 of which was a farmer, or whose habits of life, professional interests, 

 associations in society, and ordinary standards of comparison were not 

 altogether different from my own, I remember none from which I did 

 not derive entertainment and instruction. 



Notwithstanding, therefore, the triteness of the field, I may presume 

 to think, that there will be a great many who will yet enjoy to follow 

 me over it, and this although my gait and carriage should not be 

 very elegant, but so only as one farmer s leg and one sailor s leg with 

 the help of a short, crooked, half-grown academic sapling, for a walking 

 stick, might be expected to carry a man along with a head and a heart 

 of his own. 



And as it is especially for farmers and farmers families that I have 

 written, I trust that all who try to read the book, will be willing to 

 come into a warm, good-natured, broad country kitchen fireside rela 

 tion with me, and permit me to speak my mind freely, and in such lan 

 guage as I can readily command on all sorts of subjects that come in 

 my way, forming their own views from the facts that I give them, and 

 taking my opinions for only just what they shall seem to be worth. 



Some explanation of a &quot;few of the intentions that gave direction to 

 my movements in travelling may be of service to the reader. 



The wages, and the cost and manner of living of the labouring men, and 

 the customs with regard to labour of those countries and districts, from 

 which foreign writers on economical subjects are in the habit of deriving 

 their data, had been made a subject of more than ordinary and other than 

 merely philanthropical interest to me. from an experience of the diffi 

 culty of applying their calculations to the different circumstances under 

 which work must be executed in the United States. My vocation as a 



