DEVOTED TO AGRICLTIiTURE AND ITS KIHDBED ARTS AND SCIEIfCES. 



VOL. X. 



BOSTON, JANUARY, 1858. 



NO. 1, 



JOEL NOCRSE, Proprietok. 

 Office.. .13 Commercial St. 



SIMON BROWN, EDITOR. 



FRED'K HOI.BROOK, | Associate 

 HENRY F. FRENCH, ( Editors. 



JANUABT. 



Hear the sledges with the bells — 



Silver beUs ! 

 What a world of merriment their melody foretells ! 

 How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 



In the icy air of night ! 

 While the stars that orersprinkle 

 AU the heavens seem to twinkle 



With a crystalline delight } 

 Keeping time, time, time, 

 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 

 To the tlntinabulation that so musically 'weUa 

 From the bells, bells, bells, 



Bells, beUs, bells— 

 Fi'om the jingling and ffife tinkling of the bells." 



Edoas a. Poe. 



UDGE by this what 

 a wonderful talent 

 had poor PoE, of 

 so mingling sound 

 with sentiment as 

 to awaken a com- 

 mon chord in the 

 bosom of almost 

 any reader. Who 

 could read the above lines 

 with a July sun pouring 

 down upon him, without 

 thinking of January, and 

 the "world of merriment" 

 that accompanies its advent 

 —and here we are listening 

 to those same "silver bells," 

 with their "tinkle, tinkle, tin- 

 kle," as the joyous riders go 

 skimming over the frosty road, 

 to dance, perhaps, "the old year 

 out and the new year in !" 



That good old custom of "merrie England," 

 by which the meeting of the extremities of the 

 two years seemed to complete a magnetic circle, 

 and to cause, like the approach to each other of 

 the poles of the natural magnet, a wonderful 

 sparl-Jing, so that, from Christmas to well into 

 the New Year, "all went merry as a marriage bell," 



has come legitimately down to us, and is, in our 

 opinion, far less "honored in the breach than in 

 the observance." Let any one read with dry 

 eyes or without many a merry laugh, our own Ir- 

 ving's sketch of Christmas, and we will uncere- 

 moniously pronounce him an unfeeling churl — 

 but we do not believe there is a single reader of 

 the New England Faiiner who comes within our 

 category, and every one of them, we doubt not, 

 will agree with that elegant writer, when he says : 

 "Amidst the general call to happiness, the bustle 

 of the spirits and stir of the affections, which 

 prevail at this period, what bosom can remain in- 

 sensible ? It is, indeed, th^ season of regenera- 

 ted feeling — the season for kindling, not merely 

 the fii-e of hospitaHty in the hall, but the genial 

 flame of charity in the heart. 



"The scene of early love again rises green to 

 memory beyond the sterile waste of years ; and 

 the idea of home, fraught with the fragrance of 

 home-dwelling joys, reanimates the drooping spix^ 

 it, as the Arabian breeze wMl sometimes waft the 

 freshness of the distant fields to the w'eary pil- 

 grim of the desert." 



Dear reader, does not that iouch a tender spot 

 in your own bosom ? You cannot have travelled 

 the highway of human existence many years 

 without having passed scenes that you Ibye to 

 have, at least as often as once every year, rise 

 "green to memory," and in which you can again 

 revel with a reality almost sufficient to forget that 

 they are not of the present. 



Then keep up the good old custom of building 

 a bridge, of the rainbow hues of pleasure, which 

 shall span the imaginary ravine which divides the 

 merry Christmas of the days of old, from the 

 merry New Year of these times in which we live. 



Who shall paint the joys inside the thrifty 

 farmer's house on the first day of the new year? 

 No one forgets that day ; ere the sun is up, the 

 prattler from his tiny crib lisps out : "^Vith you 

 a happy new year, father" — "With you a happy. 



