MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



snoozing under the beech trees. It is also 

 lamentably true that the uncouth and unkempt 

 Irish or Germans, whom it becomes necessary 

 to employ, place no pride or love in their call- 

 ing like the English farm laborers, or like that 

 gone-by stock of New England farm workers 

 at whom I have hinted. 



Your Irish friend may be a good reaper, he 

 may possibly be a respectable ploughman 

 (though it is quite doubtful) ; but in no event 

 will he cherish any engrossing attachment to 

 country labors; nor will he come to have any 

 pride in the successes that may grow out of 

 them. 



Every month he is ready to drift away to- 

 ward any employment which will bring in- 

 crease of pay. He is your factotum to-day, 

 and to-morrow may be shouldering a hod, or 

 scraping hides for a soap boiler. The German, 

 too, however accomplished a worker he may 

 become, falls straightway into the same Ameri- 

 can passion of unrest, and becomes presently 

 the dispenser of lager bier, or a forager **mit 

 Sigel." 



There is then no American class of farm 

 workers in the market — certainly not in the 

 Eastern markets. The native, if he possess 

 rural instincts, is engrossed, as I have said, 



88 



