86 THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY 



farmers and the want of system in their plans. Those to 

 which I shall allude will not be such as require anyjextent 

 of capital to rectify. All that will be requisite is a little 

 more of that industry of which our farmers have already 

 so much, or that industry a little differently directed. It 

 is not by great and splendid particular improvements that 

 the interests of agriculture are best subserved, but by a 

 general and gradual amelioration. Most is done for agri- 

 culture when every farmer is excited to small attentions 

 and incidental improvements ; such as proceed, for in- 

 stance, from a constant application of a few plain and 

 common principles. Such are, that, in farming, nothing 

 should be lost, and nothing should be neglected ; that 

 everything should be done in its proper time, everything 

 put in its proper place, everything executed by its proper 

 instrument. These attentions, when viewed in their in- 

 dividual effect, seem small, but they are immense in the 

 aggregate. When they become general, taken in connec- 

 tion with the dispositions which precede and the conse- 

 quences which inevitably follow such a state of improve- 

 ment, they include, in fact, everything. 



Scope of view in a general sense has relation to the wise 

 adaptation of means to their final ends. When applied to 

 a farmer it implies the adaptation of all the buildings and 

 parts of a farm to their appropriate purposes, so that 

 whatever is fixed and permanent in its character, may be 

 so arranged as best to facilitate the labor of the farm and 

 best to subserve the comfort, convenience and success of 

 the proprietor. Our ideas upon this subject may be best 

 collected from inspection. 



If our fellow farmers please, we will therefore in imag- 

 ination adjourn for a few moments, and take our stand 

 first at the door of the farmhouse. I say " at the door.' 7 

 Far be it from me to enter within it. Far be it from me 

 to criticise the department of the other sex, or to suggest 

 that anything peculiarly subject to their management can 

 be either ameliorated or amended. Nor is it necessary ; 

 for I believe it is a fact almost universally true, that where 

 the good man of the family is extremely precise and reg- 

 ular and orderly in his arrangements, without doors, he 

 never fails to be seconded, and even surpassed, by the or- 

 der, the regularity and neatness of the good woman 

 within. 



Let us cast our eyes then about us, from the door of 



