HOW FARMING PAYS. 45 



points, whether the old homestead was yielding a comfortable 

 maintenance for the family under its roof, if the boys and girls 

 were doing their duty in " choring " in the winter and going 

 to school when the opportunity offered. As most of them 

 would swarm and go off when the proper time arrived, the 

 solicitude of the parents was, that their bodies should be 

 healthy, their morals correct, aud their minds sufficiently cul- 

 tivated to enable them to act their parts well in life and do 

 credit to their bringing up ; and the patriots and great men of 

 the preceding generation attest how well these influences 

 worked. Washington loved his farm next to his family ; his 

 best general and most intimate friend, Greene, of Rhode 

 Island, was a country blacksmith, and only laid down the 

 hammer for the sword. Putnam, who so distinguished him- 

 self at Bunker Hill, and was one of the four major-generals 

 of the army, was ploughing in his field at Pomfret, Connec- 

 ticut, when the news arrived of the battle of Lexington, and 

 leaving his plough on the field, hurried to the scene of action. 

 The battle of Lexington was fought on the 19th of April, 

 1775, and news of it reached Berkshire, not by telegraph 

 nor railroad, nor by mail, but by expresses, probably at noon. 

 At sunrise the next morning, Col. John Patterson, of Lenox, 

 with his regiment completely equipped and uniformed, was on 

 the march to Boston. Fired by the same spirit, the regiment 

 commanded by Col. John Fellows, of Sheffield, with equal 

 promptitude and appointment, proceeded to Roxbury. Many 

 of these brave men remained in the service to the close of the 

 war ; nor did the yeomanry of Berkshire, then nor since, in 

 any emergency, falter in their duty to their country in the time 

 of her needs. Farming paid pretty well in those days when, 

 just after the close of the French war and only fifty years 

 after its first settlement, Berkshire was able to send to the 

 seat of war regiments composed mainly of the sturdy sons of 

 the soil. 



General Stark, whose defeat of the British at Bennington, 

 where he told his men they must beat the enemy or "Molly 

 Stark would be a widow that night," prepared the way for the 

 capture of Burgoyne and his army, was in early life a laborer 

 on a farm. In the night before this battle, a minister — 

 believed to have been Rev. Dr. Allen, of Pittsfield — who 



