152 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



a liberal scale in new settlements will know to be those of difficulty, the mansion 

 at Genesee became a model of well-ordered, generous, and yet unostentatious 

 hospitality. 



The loss of his wife, of his brother, and of a dauofhter who had just reached 

 the age of womanhood, and been fortunately raarriud, shed a gloom over some 

 of his later years ; but he still took pleasure in collecting a circle of select friends 

 at his residence during the season at which Geneseo was readily accessible. In- 

 telligent, well informed, and fond of intellectual converse, he possessed in a high 

 degree the happy talent of drawing out his guests, and bringing their several tal- 

 ents and acquirements into requisition for their mutual entertainment. The vis- 

 itors of his house, hence, never felt the pains of ennui ; and while he laid no re- 

 striction upon their engaging ia games of chance or skill, the customary resource 

 of vacant minds in country residences, it is said that no desire for amusements 

 of this description was felt by his occasional inmates for the last twenty years 

 of his life. 



The success which attended Mr. Wadsworth's career was due in a great de- 

 gree to his regularity and skill as a man of business. We have seen how act- 

 ively he was employed for many years in bringing his property into a productive 

 state. In his later years he, without noise or apparent effort, directed the culti- 

 vation of the large farm retained in his own hands, superintended the numerous 

 tracts let upon shares, and gave due attention to his interests in tlie leases for 

 long terms of years, while he at the same time fulfilled with punctilious exacti- 

 tude the duties of agent for several considerable estates. All this was effected 

 with so much ease and method, that to his visitors he had the air of being en- 

 tirely at leisure. 



Habits of this description gave him, during the winter and times unfavorable 

 for traveling, the command of many hours in each day. These were employed 

 by him in reading and literary correspondence. His favorite study was political 

 economy, but he did not fail to keep himself informed of the progress of all the 

 physical sciences. He, in fact, furnished a singular mstance of a person who had 

 closed his elementary education, and entered into a life of great activity, at a pe- 

 riod when the very names of chemistry, geology and mineralogy were yet un- 

 IcnoAvn in our colleges ; and had notwithstanding, and at a distance from all the 

 usual facilities, contrived to acquire as much of them as is considered necessary 

 as an accomplishment in our modern schemes of instruction. 



The interest he took in these pursuits was enhanced by the clear view which 

 he took of their power of being usefully applied to Agriculture ; and while, upon 

 his own lands, the necessity of renovating the soil appeared in a perspective too 

 remote to affect his descendants for several generations, he notwithstanding felt 

 a generous impulse to bring the aid of science to those less fortunately situated. 

 ^Selected tracts on scientific subjects in general, and others specially devoted to 

 the application of science to Agriculture, were for this purpose printed at his ex- 

 pense for gratuitous distribution. In many cases the fact of his intervention m 

 these publications remained unknown, except to himself and the editors. Other 

 articles of less extent he caused to be inserted at his expense, not only in agricul- 

 tural periodicals, but also in the newspapers circulating among the farmers of the 

 State. 



The utility of these efforts was evidently limited by the want of educatioii 

 among the persons for whose bentlit they were intended ; and a knowledge of 

 this fact led to the direction of his attention to the extension and improveraen' 



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