NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



253 



For the New England Farmer. 

 OUTBURST OF SPRING. 



BY HENRY F. FRENCH. 



prove?" and perhaps the foregoing piece of mo- 

 saic may suggest the same question, and so I will 

 explain its connexion with the preceding train of 

 rare oftime-The force and vigor of the forme* th . ou S ht - Notwithstanding our long and dreary 

 character developed in the Spring— Agriculture is cheerful— , winters > and that we have flowers and green leaves 

 "Laugh and be fat." j but four or five months of the year, the memory of 



Mv Dear Brown: — Somebody says that Spring our childhood and the anticipations of our future 

 in New England may be defined as a leap from are . ad orned with vernal beauty and fragrant with 

 Winter to Summer, and verily, the space between j spring flowers, and although our spring is like the 

 the sublime and the ridiculous is not shorter than outburst of a passion of joy or of love, sudden and 

 the disjunctive conjunction between good sleigh- transient in its manifestation, still it is marked by 



ing and apple-blossoms in NewIIampshire. Twelve 

 days ago I saw the hills fifty miles north of us cov- 

 ered with deep snows, the melting of which by 



the sun, without rain, his since raised the Merri- 

 mack twelve inches in a single day ; and now with 



us, the oak leaf is almost "as large as a mouse's 



ear," indicating that the corn-planting season is 



at hand. 

 Since the ground became pervious to spade and 



plowshare, I have wrought diligently both with 



my own personal, and my hired hands, setting 



fruit trees and a good example to my neighbors at 



the same time. Having added one hundred and 



sixty trees to my apple orchard, and an indefinite 



quantity of plums, cherries, peaches and ornamen- 

 tal trees and shrubs to the once wide waste of 



pine plain around my dwelling, I faithfully devote 



the first hour in which it is too rainy to work on 



the outside of the world, to an attempt to operate 



on the world within. I hope to transplant about 



three hundred pine trees this week, yet, and shall 



throw down the paper and the pen, and "take up 



the shovel and the hoe" at the first streak of light 



in the West, and therefore although I feel disposed 



to report myself in the columns of the Farmer, I 



have no idea of undertaking any great labor, like 



boring the Hoosack mountain, or our amiable read- 

 ers, with a patent drill, or any other article, at this 



busy season, when a farmer's time is all occupied 



in working by day, and sleeping by night, through 



the week, and resting and going to meeting (I like 



the old Puritan phrase) on Sunday. 



It is thought by the learned, that the only true 



measure of time we have, is by the variety and suc- 

 cession of our ideas ; that if all the chronometers 



were suddenly changed so as to run twice as 



fast as now, and the sun and moon and stars, and 



all creation beside, were accelerated in the same 



proportion, and events and thoughts and emotions 



were to occur with double rapidity, we should be 



utterly unconscious of any change, and should, 



to all intents and purposes, live as long as we 



now do, in half the time ! Distance across smooth 



water seems less than it is. We lie down to rest 



at night, and awake after hours of sound sleep, 



and the lapse of time is as if it had not been. 



Were the sleep to continue twenty years, like 



Rip Van Winkle's, we should be alike unconscious 



that a score had been added to our age, and the 



theory of those, who believe that the soul, after 



death, will rest unconscious till the final judgment 



of all,' although it is almost as abhorent to our feel- 

 ings as annihilation, is supported by the philo- 

 sophical argument, that a suspension of conscious- 

 ness and of all the mental faculties may as well be 



for ages, as for the length of a siesta, and that 



time is nothing, except as it is marked by thought 



or sensation. When a great mathematician was 



shown a beautiful group of statuary, he inquired 



with the greatest coolness, "what does it go to 



a thousand vivid impressions. It is full of life, of 

 energy and activity, of intense emotion and of 

 definite thought wrought out into determinate man- 

 ifest fact, and so the season by the true measure 

 is indeed a great part of our life. 



The drowning man sees the daguerreotype of his 

 whole life pass before him in an instant. The 

 company of his whole life acts rise up before him 

 like the ghosts of Richard's victims in his tent on 

 Bosworth field, pointing their dreadful fingers, and 

 crying with one voice, 



"Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow." 



The events of a lifetime are crowded into a mo- 

 ment, rendering intelligible the idea of a day when 

 for every word and act an account shall be ren- 

 dered. The farmer in New England has much of 

 the real force and vigor of his character developed 

 at this season. He must labor, body and mind, 

 sustained by faith in the promise, that seed time 

 and harvest shall not fail. He should labor, con- 

 scious that he is surrounded by wondrous work- 

 ings of Nature's hidden laws, at every step. He 

 should labor, striving ever to learn so much of 

 those laws as science has revealed, to do his part 

 with an earnest and manly heart, ever conscious 

 and thankful that the hand of Omnipotence is aid- 

 ing him in whatever surpasses human power. He 

 should labor, not only as for his daily bread, but 

 in sympathy with all around him, ever seeking, 

 as he sees the bud open into a blossom, and the 

 chrysalis become a butterfly, a higher and truer 

 life. Why should he alone remain stationary when 

 all else is advancing, while 



"Every clod feel3 a stir of might, 

 An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 



And grasping blindly above it/or light, 

 Climbs to a soul in grass andjlowers." 



You see, my dear Brown, that I am not in the 

 mood at this time to discourse didactically of corn 

 and composts, potatoes and pumpkins. There are 

 other things in agriculture, "than were ever 

 dreamed of in the philosophy" of many, and it is 

 of as much importance that the hearts of men 

 should be opened to receive the lessons of God's 

 teaching, as that the earth should be opened for 

 the seed of the sower. 



I knew a lady who had recently visited the 

 White Mountains, and was asked if she was not 

 very much impressed with the beauty and gran- 

 deur of the scenery. "The scenery," she replied, 

 "I never once thought of that !" Many men see 

 nothing in the fields and woods, but hay and fire- 

 wood. To them "the bird is but a flying animal, 

 and the flower but the covering of a clod." Well 

 has the poet said, 



"For a cap and bells our lives we pay, 



Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking; 



'Tis Heaven alone that is given away, 

 'Tis only God may be had for the asking; 



There is no price set on the lavish summer. 



And June may be had by the poorest comer " 



