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NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Dec. 



liike bubbles on the wind, their spirits soar, 

 Sparkle and flash, then burst, and all is o er. 

 But Cheerfulttts joins not their drunken dance : 

 She's ever at the fount of Temperatce : 

 One always follows where the other leads, 

 Droops when she's absent, trembles when she bleeds. 

 One bears the water from the fountain's brink ; 

 The other stands and blesses those who drink. 



Happy were man, if he could but believe 

 The precepts wisdom gives him to retrieve 

 His long-lost blessings, ever since the curse 

 That fell on man, as told in Sacred verse. 

 He must return to nature, and refuse 

 Those sinful pleasures base Temptation strews ; 

 Prom wisdom's hands receive what she bestows, 

 And taste those joys his folly now foregoes. 

 Then would the days of Eden be restored, 

 With blessings early lost and long deplored. 



THE FARM AS A WORK OF ART. 



As a work of art, I know few things more pleas- 

 ing to the eye, or more capable of affording scope 

 and gratification to a taste for the beautiful, than a 

 well-situaied, well cultivated farm. The man of re- 

 finement will hang with never-wearied gaze on a 

 landscape by Claude or Salvator; the price of a 

 section of the most fertile land in the West would 

 not purchase a few square feet of the canvass on 

 which these great artists have depicted a rural 

 scene. But nature has forms and proportions be- 

 yond the painter's skill ; her divine pencil touches 

 the landscape with living lights and shadows, nev- 

 er mingled on his pallet. What is there on earth 

 which can more entirely charm the eye, or gratify 

 the taste, than a noble farm ? It stands upon a 

 southern slope, gradually rising with variegated as- 

 cent from the plain, sheltered from the northwest- 

 ern winds by woody heights, broken here and there 

 with moss-covered boulders, which impart variety 

 and strength to the outline. The native forest has 

 been cleared from the greater part of the farm, but 

 a suitable portion, carefully tended, remains in 

 wood for economical purposes, and to give a pic- 

 turesque effect to the landscape. The eye ranges 

 round three-fourths of the horizon over a fertile 

 expanse, bright with the cheerful waters of a rip- 

 pling stream, a generous river, or a gleaming lake, 

 — dotted with hamlets, each with its modest spire ; 

 and, if the farm lies in the vicinity of the coast, a 

 distant glimpse from the high grounds, of the 

 mysterious, everlasting sea, completes the prospect. 

 It is situated off the high road, but near enough to 

 the village to be easily accessible to the church, the 

 school-house, the post-office, the railroad, a socia- 

 ble neighbor, or a travelling friend. It consists in 

 due proportion of pasture and tillage, meadow and 

 woodland, field and garden. A substantial dwell- 

 ing, with everything for comfort and nothing for 

 ambition, — with the fitting appendages of stable, 

 and barn, and coi'n-barn, and other farm buildings, 

 not forgetting a spring-house with a living fountain 

 of water, — occupies, upon a gravelly knoll, a posi- 

 tion well chosen to command the whole estate. 



A few acres on the front, and on the sides of the 

 dwelling, set apart to gratify the eye with the 

 choicer forms of rural beauty, are adorned with a 

 stately avenue, with noble, solitary trees, with grace- 

 ful clumps, shady walks, a velvet lawn, a brook 

 murmuring over a pebbly bed, here and there a 

 grand rock, whose cool shadow at sunset streams 



across the field ; all displaying, in the real loveli- 

 ness of nature, the original of those landscapes of 

 which art in its perfection strives to give us the 

 counterfeit presentment. Animals of select breed, 

 such as Paul Potter, and Morland, and Landseer, 

 and Rosa Bonheur never painted, and roam the 

 pastures, or fill the hurdles and the stalls ; the 

 plow walks in rustic majesty across the plain, and 

 opens the genial bosom of the earth to the sun and 

 air ; nature's holy sacrament of seedtime is sol- 

 emnized beneath the vaulted cathedral sky ; silent 

 dews and gentle showers, and kindly sunshine, shed 

 their sweet influence on the teeming soil ; spring- 

 ing verdure clothes the plain ; golden wavelets, 

 driven by the west wind, run over the joyous whea* 

 field ; the tall maize flaunts in her crispy leaves and 

 nodding tassels; — while we labor and while we 

 rest, while we wake and while we sleep, God's 

 chemistry, which we cannot see, goes on beneath 

 the clods ; myriads and myriads of vital cells fer- 

 ment with elemental life ; germ and stalk, and leaf 

 and flower, and silk and tassel, and grain and fruit, 

 grow up from the common earth ; — the mowing 

 machine and the reaper — mute rivals of human in- 

 dustry — perform their gladsome task ; the well- 

 piled wagon brings home the ripened treasures ot 

 the year ; the bow of promise fulfilled spans the 

 foreground of the picture, and the gracious cove- 

 nant is redeemed, that while the earth remaineth, 

 summer and winter, and heat and cold, and day 

 and night, and seed-time and harvest, shall not 

 fail. — Edward Everett. 



For the New England Farmer. 



DRYING CORN, AND CORN CRIBS. 



Happening one day to be thinking — as is often 

 the case — the idea came into my mind while in a 

 corn chamber. Why net dry this corn in some way 

 to take up less room, and do away the necessity o. 

 spreading it over the floor of every shed chamber 

 and spare room in the house, as is often the case 

 in many portions of New England, and also pre- 

 vent the heating or sweating of the corn, requiring 

 it to be stirred or "raked over" every day, as many 

 farmers are in the habit of doing, till the corn is 

 dried off. 



Over every shed, corn-chamber or spare room 

 is a roof. Every roof is supported by rafters.-r- 

 Between all rafters are spaces. During much of 

 the season after the corn-husking time, the sun heats 

 the roof so that a powerful drying would be effect- 

 ed on all substances directly inside the boards. Of 

 course, then, if we can put our corn up against the 

 inside of these roofs, and confine it there without 

 too much labor, we shall gain the heating of the 

 corn by the sun upon the outside of the roof. My 

 plan for doing so is this. Run a pole or joist 

 lengthwise the roof, and as near the ratters as to 

 give the corn sufficient depth, say 18 inches from 

 the boards, or perhaps more, and as near the top 

 as you wish to pour in corn either from the floor 

 or standing on a box or ladder. Confine this pole 

 by stays nailed from the rafters, or by strong wires 

 running through the rafters. Place a second near 

 the foot of the rafters or on the floor and one in 

 the middle, if necessary, to support the corn. Up- 

 on these poles let slats of board be laid — not nailed 

 — so near each other that the corn will not fall 

 through. The bottom end resting on the floor or 



