348 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



Aug. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 LETTEB PROM MR. FRENCH. 



Steamship Ecropa, at Sea, \ 

 August 31, 1857. | 



My Deak Brown : — After four months' ab- 

 sence from home, once more I am upon the sea, 

 looking homeward, anxiously anxiously, with 

 some two hundred others, many of whom, like 

 myself, have been wanderers for a long season, 

 and are now hoping soon to meet the "old famil- 

 iar faces" of friends and kindred in America. If 

 one would learn to value the peace and comforts 

 of a New England home, let him leave it for a 

 single season. If one would remove from his 

 mind any lingering doubt he may entertain, that 

 our own is the best land which the sun in all his 

 oourse looks down upon, let him wander over the 

 best countries of Europe, and he will doubt no 

 longer. But I sat down, amid the rolling of the 

 ship, the Babel of tongues in conversation about 

 me, the playing with cards, of chess and back- 

 gammon, the crying of children and the rumbling 

 of the padde wheels, to endeavor to make some 

 use of the twelve days usually occupied in the 

 passage. 



The attempt to write under such circumstances, 

 is indeed an illustration of the pursuit of learn- 

 ing under difficulties, but the consciousness that 

 on my arrival home, other duties will fill my 

 time, has induced me to attempt to write into 

 publishable shape some of the notes of my travel 

 since I wrote you at Waterford in Ireland. 



At about noon on the 21st of August I took 

 the train at Waterford for Dublin, in a second 

 class car, in which were about two dozen men, 

 principally Scotch and Ii'ish, and a single mo- 

 ment was enough to convince me that the man- 

 ners and habits of England had not followed me 

 across the channel. The fashion in T^ngland is 

 for each passenger to get snugly into his own 

 corner, to draw his head as far as possible into 

 his shell, and to neither say, hear nor see any- 

 body nor anything on the passage, although I 

 have usually found that a little Yankee inquisi- 

 tiveness would soon draw John Bull out into 

 something like sociability. But here, every man 

 was wide awake, and ready for a part in any con- 

 versation that might be introduced. On my left 

 sat a Waterford ship -builder, a shrewd and Intel 

 ligent Scotchman, full of mischief and fun. 



On my right was a personage, who is worth 

 knowing, and who continued with me some days, 

 and is worth a brief description. His dress was 

 that of a Yorkshire farmer, which, as may be 

 seen, would attract some attention in a New Eng- 

 land village, though not uncommon in several 

 districts in England. He is a large, tall man of 

 sixty or more, of about two hundred pounds 

 weight, with a large head, a quiet, substantial ex- 



pression like a man of thought and determina- 

 tion, with a quizzical twinkle of his gray eye, 

 which made me doubt from the first, whether he 

 was not enjoying the jokes which others were 

 putting upon him full as much as they. He had 

 a strong accent, not exactly Irish or English, but 

 as he soon mentioned that he was from Leeds in 

 England, we all took him for a true Yorkshire- 

 man, a race whose dialect is as strongly marked 

 as any in England. Our Waterford man soon 

 commenced his attack on Yorkshire, which our 

 man of Leeds defended in a quiet, moderate way, 

 showing very little feeling, but pretending all 

 the time to fee an Englishman. "The Yorkshire 

 people," said the Waterford man, "are a hundred 

 years behind the South of Ireland, in civiliza- 

 tion ; really they are in a very degraded condi 

 tion ; you may take one hundred of them at ran- 

 dom," said he, "and you will find ninety of the 

 hundred cannot read or write. In short, sir, 

 they are very nearly cannibals." "Do you know," 

 said he to me, "sir, that the Yorkshire men al- 

 ways bite off' each other's noses when they get in- 

 to a fight ?" An English soldier who sat in a cor- 

 ner, undertook to take up the defence of York- 

 shire ; everybody else put in a word, and I really 

 thought we should soon be in a general fight. 

 We all expected to hear the Leeds man burst out 

 in great wrath upon the Scot, but he sat unmoved, 

 till everybody else had said his say, when he looked 

 up with a quiet smile and remarked, "Well, my 

 friends, if we are not very rich, surely we are all 

 very cheerful." This cool remark at once re- 

 stored good humor, but the Scot had got a new 

 idea. "You are not an Englishman," said he to 

 the man of Leeds, "you are an Ii-ishman by birth, 

 though you dress like a Yorkshireman." "I did 

 not say I was a Yorkshireman," quietly rejoined 

 the other ; "it was your own opinion you were act- 

 ing upon, and I'll not contradict ye if ye abuse 

 the English to your full content." 



I kept along with the Leeds man to Dublin, 

 and found him an intelligent and useful compan- 

 ion. He proved to be Mr. John Boyle, a man 

 well known in the agricultural world for his zeal 

 and knowledge about the culture of flax. I un- 

 derstood that he was hired by a Yorkshire Com- 

 pany to leave his home in Ireland and go to 

 Leeds to instruct the Yorkshire people in the flax 

 culture. He gave me a pamphlet entitled "An 

 Essay on the Growth and Management of Flax," 

 which may, at a convenient time, be well worth 

 publication in the Farmer. Before reaching 

 Dublin, Mr. Boyle and I had struck up quite 

 a pleasant acquaintance, and arranged to pass 

 the next day together in Dublin and vicinity, 

 with which he seemed quite familiar. 



We took an Irish jaunting car, in the after- 

 noon, and rode over the city, visited the Phoenix 



