54 AGRICULTURE IN THE EASTERN AND MIDDLE STATES. 



that looks as if it had been painted e.s white as snow within the 

 past week. 



2. All the houses are of wood, while all the fences are of 

 stone, which in some places lie so thick as to require to be re 

 moved at the rate of a ton from six feet square. 



3. Wood for house and kitchen all sawed and split up into 

 one uniform length and size, and snugly piled away under cover 

 of an open shed, so that the work of house and kitchen may 

 suffer the least possible interruption; in a word, a place for 

 everything and everything in its place. 



4. The &quot;care obviously bestowed in the saving and prepara 

 tion of manure by accumulation and composting, 



5. Universal attention to a bountiful supply of vegetables 

 and fruit adapted to the climate. 



6. Not a poor or superfluous ox, cow, horse, hog, or sheep; 

 the proportion of the short-lived, expensive horse, being, on the 

 farm, wisely and economically small. 



7. The seventh wonder is, after a day s ride in stages at seven 

 and a half miles an hour, or on railroads at thirty, where are 

 these people s staple crops? &quot;What do they make for sale? Where 

 are their stack-yards of wheat, straw and fodder ? Where their 

 tobacco-houses and gin-houses; their great herds of cattle and 

 swine, rooting in the swamps, browsing in the fields, or repos 

 ing in the shade ? How do they contrive to keep out of debt, 

 and never repudiate ? How do they go on improving their 

 rocky farms, carrying stun from their hills to under-drain their 

 meadows, building school-houses within sight of each other, 

 and expending millions on education, while, buying for them 

 selves, one a little bank stock, another a little railroad stock, or 

 that of a neighboring factory, where he sells his milk, apples, 

 poultry and potatoes; once in a while adding to his farm by pay 

 ing one hundred dollars an acre for some smaller parcel in the 

 neighborhood. The key to the riddle is, diversity of industries 

 in general, and of agriculture in particular.&quot; 



The same writer speaks of the eighth wonder, viz., that one 

 county in Massachusetts, to which was apportioned two thou 

 sand dollars of the surplus money distributed by the general 

 government, &quot;to be loaned on good security to the farmers of 

 said county,&quot; could not find a farmer who wanted to borrow 

 money. This, it must be confessed, was more than thirty years 

 ago, before the era of bonds and subsidies. 



