106 ESSEX SOCIETY. 



Essay on Farm Accounts, Farm Diaries, and Agricultural 



Registers. 



By Ben. Perley Poore. 



Agriculture has at length become fashionable ! Octogena- 

 rians who have acquired fortunes in the cities, return to the 

 homesteads which they despised in early life ; and resolute 

 young men, finding little hope of success in the professions or 

 in commerce, look — as did their ancestors — to the ample bosom 

 of nature for their support. Politicians, who generally contrive 

 to own at least a garden, are ever ready to descant upon the 

 dignity of agricultural labor ; while scientific book-worms cul- 

 tivate potatoes, in order to experiment upon the practicability 

 of increasing their growth by electric currents, or to try the 

 virtues of magnetic hoes, in drawing out the rot. 



Our Commonwealth cannot boast of many private collections 

 of paintings or of statuary ; a very insignificant fraction of her 

 sons keep race horses or pleasure yachts, and even the " pomp 

 and circumstance " of militia honor has sadly dwindled into 

 disrepute. But in the environs of every city, near each busy 

 manufacturing village, and in many a secluded spot, trim fences 

 enclose " fancy farms," and buildings of quaint yet often fair 

 proportions, proclaim the wealth, eccentricity, or exotic taste of 

 the amateur husbandman. Many of these gentlemen, by the 

 judicious employment of their capital, and by importing choice 

 stock, confer benefits, (directly or indirectly,) upon the neigh- 

 boring farmers, while others, who madly rush into every new 

 theory, practically illustrate the folly of " sowing Spanish dol- 

 lars, and reaping four-pence-ha'pennies." 



Then we have the great body of Massachusetts yeomanry, 

 so graphically described by Q,uincy, as "men who stand upon 

 the soil and are identified with it ; for there rest their own 

 hopes and the hopes of their children. Men, who have, for 

 the most part, great farms and small pecuniary resources ; 

 men, who are esteemed more for their land, than for their 

 money ; — more for their good sense than for their land ; — and 

 more for their virtue than for either. Men, who are the chief 



