THE PROFITS OF FARMLN'G IN MASSACHUSETTS. 585- 



THE PROFITS OF FARMING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 



At Albany and Bos'on, during the sessions of the Legislature, agricultural 

 meetings are held (at Boston, we believe, in the chamber of the House of Repre- 

 sentatives) for the interchange of knoAvledge and the discussion of questions 

 bearing on the landed interest. 



A journal which should contain nothing but these discussions would l.e worth 

 more to the country than the proper journals of legislation, such as they are in 

 some States, and far more edil'ying than all those papers whicii are given up to 

 a blind support of this party or that, and to wholesale and indiscriminate abuse 

 of those who differ from them. How much better for members of Legislatures 

 to be thus communing with each other, on matters of the deepest interest to 

 themselves and their constituents, than to be lounging about from tavern to 

 tavern and from morn to noon, drinking and gaming, or engaged in idle, insig- 

 nificant jesting and ribaldry and frivolous conversation. In that excellent paper, 

 the " Massachusetts Ploughman," we find the following. Although it would 

 be impossible to find room for these discussions as they occur, in the numerous 

 clubs which we rejoice to see are being formed throughout the country, we give 

 the discussion in this case, as it relates to the great question into which all 

 others resolve themselves after all, to-wit : The Profits of Farming. In ex- 

 tending these profits and losses, we have often thought that many small items 

 are omitted which ought to be brought into the account on the credit side of the 

 farm. 



Many of these items of rural enjoyment arc, in fact, not to be had in the towns 

 for love or money. There you can't enjoy the ripe juicy fruit fresh as you pluck 

 it from the trees, and the fragrant strawberry as it grows upon the vine of your 

 own planting; nor with them the rich cream of the Alderney, the pure secre- 

 tion of the sweet-scented vernal grass — anthoxanthum odoratum. Money won't 

 buy you the fresh e^g not yet cold from the nest, that in the country you may 

 eat while the hen is yet cackling in triumph at her great achievement ; neither 

 can you be sure, in town, that even your milk has not been in fraudulent prox- 

 imity to the pump. In winter you are not warmed into good humor with all the 

 world by a large, bountiful, blazing loood fire ; nor can even Astor's countless 

 millions buy for him, in town, the pleasure of being woke by the matin soncs of 

 joyous birds from the dreamless and refreshing slumbers that wait on rural ex- 

 ercises. For what amount of " base lucre" would the man of sensibility ex- 

 change the feelings that gladden his heart while he admires tf e flowers that 

 ornament his breakfast table, and relishes and praises the well-made bread and 

 the nice butter and the rich cream cheeses, that are the pride of his wife's or 

 his daughters' management, and for which no such opportunity or reward is 

 offered to the ambition of city wives and daughters ? 



True, it may be said we can exist without these small itcn?s of refreshment 

 that go, too insensibly, to make up the sum of rural felicity ; but if life itself is 

 valued as it should be, for the opportunity it affords to be useful to our fellow 

 men, and for the rational pleasures it brings, surely all these items should go to 

 make up the account in favor of the country. 



(1155) 



