1855. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



455 



tude creeps over him, and he is unable to study ; READING IN THE CARS. 



therefore, he is called inattentive, a dull scholar, -p, ., , , i r n u i *i, i • 



„ . 1- 1 1 ii • >.i 1, tj Railroads have wondertuliy chanared the business 



gets discouraged, and alter passing through the , , /-,• • 



three winter months, he goes to work, and before jancj ways of the world. Cities were once places of 

 winter commences again, he has forgot nearly all | residence, and merchants thought they must domi- 

 that he learned the preA-ious season. Continuing t ciliate within a moment's call of their ships and 

 thus from year to year, the boy becomes a man used j |,.^jj. , ^^^j^ counting-rooms, or trade would languish 

 to hard labor, but possessing httle iniormation, and 

 as is usualh' the case, lives and dies a common la- 



borer. 



Now, I will admit, that the pursuit of agriculture 

 is the most honorable and useful employment in 

 which a person can engage, and every nation which 

 has encouraged the cultivation of the soil, and the 

 employment of independent labor, has increased in 

 wealth and strength, while the use of ignorant and 

 slave labor is most pernicious in its efl'ects upon the 

 prosperity of a nation. Yet I think that the oj)por- 

 tunities M'hich agriculture aflbrds for the acquire- 

 ment of an education are rather of a negative order. 



South Hadley, July, 185i}. E. N. 



Remakks. — There are difficulties to be overcome 

 by the "farmer boy," in the pursuit of knowledge, 

 we confess, but that they are of a sterner character 

 than those the mechanic or merchant's boy must 

 contend with, is not clear. To a determined mind, 

 the common difficulties of life operate only as a 

 kind of spur, w hile the timid and doubting yield to 

 them, and thus lose the prize to which they aspired 

 Upward, and Onward, must be the words for young 

 men. Make circumstances yield to your strong 

 will, and bend or break the hindrances which ob- 

 struct your path. What man has done, you can 

 do. Never doubt. Keep a trusting, resolute heart 

 and go on jom* way — you will succeed. 



MANURE. 



NicOLAl, in his work entitled "Principles for the 

 Regulation of Estates," asserts that — 



One ox or cow yields ten wagon loads, (for two 

 horses,) of manure ; 



One young ox or cow, five loads ; 



One horse, fed or stabled, fifteen loads ; 



One horse, turned out to grass, seven and a half 

 loads ; 



One sheep, one load. 



He also olxserves that one-half the quantity of 

 manure obtained from the horned beasts, may be 

 derived from the pigs, poultry and farm-yard, pro- 

 vided that proper care be taken to keep the 

 former well provided with straw and other litter 

 capable of being resolved into manure. Twenty of 

 these loads he supjwses amply sufficient for an acre 

 — that is, of the cattle ; twenty-five loads of the 

 mixed manure obt;iined from the farin-j'ard, and 

 fifteen loads from the sheep-cote or yard. 



Karle estimates the quantity of manure furnislicd 

 by sixty-five cows, turned out to pasture all day, 

 and brought up at night to the cow-house, during 

 summer, sufficient to manure one hundred acres. 



Peaeeeu asserts that one cow, stable-fed, will 

 produce one hundred quintals of manure ; and an 

 ox, put up to fatten, eighty quintals. 



and die. But steam and iron roads have proved 

 that ships will sail and banks discount, if the mer- 

 chant sleeps in the country, away from the din of 

 rattling wheels, and the me])hitic vapors of gorged 

 gutters and sewers. But it is not the merchant 

 alone who has forsaken the city ; mechanics, artists 

 lawyers, clergymen and editors, not only find the 

 counti'y congenial, but less expensive than the city, 

 as a place of residence, including the cost of trans- 

 portation over the road twice or more each day. 



But to spend twenty minutes or an hour, morn- 

 ing and evening, in the cars, and to take a choice of 

 conversing amid the screams of the steam whistle, 

 and the clattering of the wheels, or to be left alone 

 to one's thoughts, presented a dilemma, the horns 

 of which were either of them too sharp for Yankee 

 impatience to hang upon. So the merchant pulled 

 out his "price current," and studied that, the Law- 

 yer his "brief," and clinched the points of that, the 

 clerg}'nian his "suggestions for every day in the 

 year," and the editor his "exchanges," and thus 

 made all the time count as so much devoted to busi- 

 ness. Now, the newsboy comes Avith the morning 

 and evening papers, and follows on ^vith "Harper," 

 "Putnam," and "The Lamplighter," as regularly as 

 the trips of the cars themselves. We are deter- 

 mined not to be left alone — it is pleasanter to read 

 than to think — so we hurry on, leaA-ing the "inward 

 digestion" for a "more convenient season," and the 

 mind to become lazy, laggish and unprofitable. 



Reading m the cars, however. Anil have another, 

 and most painful influence upon the physical system. 

 We had several times been cautioned against read- 

 ing in the cars, but a bag full of "exchanges" has 

 proved too strong a temptation to resist, and for 

 several years it has been our ])ractice to read from 

 two or three to twenty or thirty jiapcrs while pass- 

 ing over a distiince of twenty miles. But during 

 the spring and early part of summer we invariably 

 returned home with a painful sensation in and 

 about the eyes, though feehng nothing of it on talv- 

 ing the cars at Boston. This pain at length became 

 permanent, sometimes violent, and so great as to 

 prevent us from reading, and generally from Am- 

 ting, though the sight was not impaired. Upon 

 consultation with an oculist, he stated that the op- 

 tic nerve had become weakened by overbisking it, 

 and inquired if we were not in tlie habit of reading 

 in the cars ! Under an interdiction from reacUng 

 and writing, the eyes have rajjidly imj)rovcd, and 

 we can now read half an hour at a sitting, under 

 favorable circumstances. 



The most unpleasant and painful sensations of our 



