THE COMING FARMER. 57 



"with the supervision of his stock and business, he will fiucl 

 the longest day too short for his labors. 



And so you see, my friends, the old brown house and the 

 poetic barn, the sunny pasture and the shady brook, haying 

 and harvest, all have disappeared, swallowed up by the insati- 

 able and relentless maw of progress. And as the whirling 

 spinning-wheel of the cottage has been turned into the lum- 

 bering mule of the factory, so the picturesque farm of im- 

 memorial literature aud art is transformed into a milk-mill. 



And now, I need hardly remind you, that I intend this crude 

 and hasty sketch merely as a suggestion. Is the narrow view 

 I have taken capable of a wider range ? Is it not desirable 

 to call to our aid the close calculation of small economies and 

 exact application of the most approved means to ends which 

 characterize the plans of successful manufacturers ? Would 

 it not pay us here near Boston to abandon the old, wide- 

 spread system of half cultivating a territory, and turn to the 

 careful high tillage of a field? 



I am not ignorant that many of our keen Yankee farmers 

 have long ago found this out. They have almost instinctively 

 turned to take the only way out of the dilemma into which 

 all general farming in New England was thrown, when 

 millions of acres of such land, as many of you never dreamed 

 of, were thrown open to the plough at the West, and moved, 

 as it were, within competing distance by the railroads. It is 

 a matter of common fame, that four hundred thousand acres 

 of the improved land, in farms in our State, twenty-five years 

 ago, are now run wild. A handsome principality has been 

 laid waste, during the lifetime of our society in this Common- 

 wealth, aud it was well and wisely done. If another like it 

 could be turned out of cultivation, and the labor wasted upon 

 its slovenly neglect applied to an increased care and culture of 

 more fertile or more favored sites, I believe it would be whole- 

 some for our wallets and strengthening: to our agriculture. 



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