TAKING REINS IN HAND 



growing all that a man might need within his 

 own grounds, a proper farm education em- 

 braced a considerable knowledge of a score of 

 different crops and avocations. The tendency- 

 is now, however, to centralize attention upon 

 that line of cropping which is best suited to 

 the land; this limits the range of labor, while 

 the improved mechanical appliances jfill a thou- 

 sand wants, which were once only to be met 

 by a dexterous handicraft at home. None but 

 a few sharp-faced old gentlemen of a very 

 ancient school, think nowadays of making 

 their own ox yokes or their own cheese 

 presses ; or, if their crop be large, of pounding 

 out their grain with a flail. And it is notice- 

 able in this connection that the implements in 

 the use of which the native workers were most 

 unmatchable, are precisely the ones which in 

 practical farming are growing less and less 

 important every year,— to wit, the axe and 

 the scythe : the first being now confined mostly 

 to clearings of timber, and the second is fast 

 becoming merely a garden implement for the 

 dressing of lawns. 



I perceive, very clearly, from all this, that I 

 am not to be brought in contact with a race of 

 Arcadians. Meliboeus will not do the milking, 

 nor Tityrus,— though there shall be plenty of 



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