MACHINERY OF THE CLAYS. 255 



nothing can express the truth in shorter phrase than 

 that of old Dobson. . 



"I tell you, Sir, It's a different trade!" * 



* While the systematic division of labor is gradually, yet 

 surely accomplishing both cheapness and perfection, in the 

 mechanic arts, the agriculturist goes daundering along, as of 

 old, ready to try his hand at any thing and every thing, either 

 in soil, cultivation, or crop, as it may happen ; applying his 

 " experience" to each, as they may chance to come in his 

 way, and yet confident that he is instinctively endowed with 

 the requisite knowledge to master them all. It is an unwel- 

 come remark to make, but it is nevertheless true and truth 

 must out that there is no profession under heaven so little 

 understood, and which the majority of those dependent upon 

 it so little care to understand, in its science and in its princi- 

 ples, as agriculture ! Look at the every-day, practical com- 

 mentary of the farmer himself (in competent circumstances) 

 upon his own profession a man proud of his position too, 

 as a tiller of the soil and see to what it amounts: He 

 has three sons. The " brightest," in his own estimation, must 

 be " educated ; " that is to say, go to college forget all his 

 early farm associations and attachments, and prepare to enter 

 into one of the " professions," crowded already into the se- 

 verest competition, and where incessant exertion, and a pecu- 

 liar talent are required to achieve any success whatever. The 

 " sharpest" must be a " merchant," or get his living " by his 

 wits " too often meaning the faculty of overreaching his 

 neighbor; while the "dull" plodding boy if the father 

 be so fortunate as to have such a one probably, in reality, 



