No. 4.] PLEASURES OF FARMING. 371 



THE PLEASURES OF FARMING. 



BY WM, BANCROFT OF CHESTERFIELD. 



Mr. Chairman : — Perhaps I can best arrive at my sub- 

 ject by locating it. My home and farm are on the crest of 

 a western Hampshire hill, 1,500 feet above the sea. In 

 ^vinter it is wind-scourged and blasted by gales from every 

 quarter, yet the mercury never gets as low as in the valleys 

 near me. In summer we are fanned by the western breezes, 

 never knowing a sultry night, with the temperature alw^ays 

 lower than it is beneath us. To have running water in 

 our village is an impossibility. It runs away from us in 

 every direction, and yet our homesteads are honeycombed 

 with wells of excellent quality. From Williamsburg, the 

 first to"wn east of us, six miles distant, to Pittsfield, twenty- 

 five miles west, the territory is the tail end of the Green 

 Mountains, tapering off and losing themselves at the south 

 in the northern edge of Connecticut, where it meets our 

 State in Berkshire County. From my lawn I have a broken 

 and most picturesque horizon distant from ten to fifty miles. 

 From early morn till nightfall, summer or winter, I never 

 tire of absorbing this vast landscape. From where I sit 

 in writing this I have but to look out of my window and 

 I see the Greylock range of mountains in the extreme 

 northwest part of the State, thirty miles away, with " Old 

 Saddle Back," the highest land in the State, as its crowning 

 feature, under whose shadow lies lovely Williamstown, with 

 its historic college. Were it not for my barn, looking 

 through another window, the famed hills of southern Berk- 

 shire would greet my eyes. From my front door I look 

 upon hills in Vermont, and a few steps along on my lawn en- 

 ables my unassisted eyes to salute grand old Monadnock 

 Mountain, sixty miles away in New Hampshire. Seated in 



