®i)c iTarmcr's ittontljhj tetter. 



27 



of the three previous years combined. Nothing 

 of ini| ortance has been dune in this article since 

 the month of October; Bales hemp in a small 

 w.-iv 19 millers and distiller*, at prices ranging 

 from 25 to 40c per bushel. We lave good rea- 

 son to believe that corn, .-is well as other articles 

 ui' breadstuffs, will not benr so high a price as 

 they did last year, and corn especially labors un- 

 der difficulties vv liieh others do not. '1'be ex- 

 treme high prices of last year, lias induced farm- 

 ers io enter largely into iis cultivation. Large 

 tracts of prairie land in Missouri, Iowa and Illi- 

 nois, which have previously been uncultivated, 

 and whole fields of winter-killed wheal have 

 been ploughed, and planted in corn, so that the 

 crop of this season will far exceed that of any 

 previous one. The foreign demand will, no 

 doubt, be only moderate, and prices must rule 

 low. As yet scarcely anything lias been done by 

 shippers. A lot of from 7 to 8000 bushels sold a 

 few days since, deliverable at a point below, at 

 22c, the purchaser to furnish sacks.— ,SV. Louis 

 Union. 



The Mississippi valley, although capable of 

 yielding a supply of Indian corn sufficient to feed 

 the whole commercial world, need not of neces- 

 sity come into ruinous competition with corn- 

 growers even in New England. Surely we can 

 afford the greater expense of tillage and prepara- 

 tion, when the price of corn at our doors is three 

 and four limes as much as at the West. We 

 have every inducement to re-double our exertions 

 to raise not only all the grains for bread, but es- 

 pecially the vegetable growth, including the va- 

 rious roots, where we have a sure market near 

 us. The increased abundance growing out of 

 new cultivation at the West, indirectly encoura- 

 ges the agricultural production here. With the 

 proceeds of western agriculture sent abroad, are 

 the people of the Mississippi valley enabled to 

 take and consume, and pay for the manufactures 

 o! Xew England, whose operatives are fed from 

 the farms near their own doors: so that si shaie 

 of the money which goes to the West for her 

 agriculture, rinds its way in the end, to the 

 pockets of tie farmers of New England, as pay 

 for their surplus. 



An Eminent Literary and Political Writer, 

 whose Biography has not yet been written. 



To most of the actors upon the stage, the men 

 and the events of forty years ago, look back as 

 through n long vista: those who have passed 

 down in its whole length without scathe, may be 

 I as ancient, if not all honorable. More 

 fresh than the events of yesterday or of the laS( 

 year, are yet the impressions imprinted on the 

 voting experience of youthful adolescent e. 



The position seven years in the office of the 

 only village newspaper printed in old Hillsbo- 

 rough, at the principal shire town in the county, 

 made the editor of the Visitor acquainted with as 

 many of the farmer population of that county as 

 any other person in the county ; and a stihse juent 

 residence of more than twenty years as editor of 

 another newspaper at the capital of the State, 

 near the borders of the same county, continued 

 there and made new acquaintance in other coun- 

 ties With most of the men living the better part 

 of their lives upon the soil which they had made 

 free by lighting the battles of the revolution. 

 Never was there a more estimable and excellent 

 population than New Hampshire has presented 

 in the time of our active life — no part of the 

 world has exhibited men of more intelligence, 

 purer or more high-minded patriots. As time 

 recedes towards our own "scar and yellovv leal," 

 more grateful to us is the memory, more highly 

 do we prize the value of the men who lived for 

 their country in the "times that tried men's 

 souls." 



Of the professional men — clergymen, lawyers 

 and physicians — who lived forty years ago in 

 Hillsborough, few only now remain : the most of 

 all their faces are familiar yet to our memory — 

 not better could we mark in the mind's eye the 

 faces of John Stark, Moses Kelloy, Francis 

 Blood, Philip Putnam, Benjamin Pierce and 

 Robert Alcock, than we can those of Ebenezer 

 Chainpney, Thomas W. Thompson, J. K. Smith, 

 James Wilson the elder, Barucli Chase, John 

 Harris and David Everett, men of the bar in 

 Hillsborough, all now numbered with the dead. 

 William Gordon the elder, had died a few 

 months before Amherst opened to our youthful 

 acquaintance a new world in the Granite State ; 

 and to supply his place in a law business then done 

 in that country village, more extensive than any 

 town in the county can now boast, David Everett 

 came into Amherst in the winter of 1803: along 

 with him, as a student, then just graduated, came 

 Lemuel Shaw, the present Chief Justice of the 

 supreme court of Massachusetts. Mr. Everett 

 never bad other family than a wife, and she the 

 sister and relative of that family in New Ipswich, 

 three of whom have each accummulated from 

 small beginnings, probably more than his million 

 of dollars. Mrs. E, lias remained a widow thirty- 

 eight years since the death of her husband, and 

 still resides in her native town. 



Mr. Everett graduated at Dartmouth College, 

 having fitted by the preparatory studies after he 

 was twenty-one years of age. While a student 

 he wrote for the newspapers: he was the accep- 

 table and popular correspondent of the celebrated 

 Joseph Dennie, while the latter conducted the 

 Farmer's Museum, at Walpole, N. II. A volume 

 of his contributions was afterwards re-published 

 under the title of "Common Sense in Dishabille." 

 Mr. Everett came into Amherst with the wife to 

 whom be hail been married several years : she 

 was then a lady always plain in dress, with fea- 

 tures of face not handsome, indicating a reliance 

 on the inward mind rather than upon a gaudy 

 outside attraction. As for Mr. E. himself, about 

 six feet tall, homely of face and awkward in 

 limb and gait, he made his w ay in decided strides 

 to and from his office and business with his right 

 side and shoulder foremost. The rather homely 

 couple made amends in the beauty of the ser- 

 vant-girl who accompanied them —whose attrac- 

 tions over the master and mistress at the village 

 church, were even more bewitching to the young 

 men of twenty-one than to the hoy of fourteen. 

 The living human figure with the face and form 

 divine, more enchanting to the life of love limn 

 even the carved Venus de Medici of Canova, was 

 soon caught in the bands of wedlock by the son 

 of one of the more polished and belter educated 

 families of the village aristocracy, which, more 

 than any other town of the State saving the town 

 of the residence of the royal governors, here 

 marked the lines between the patrician and ple- 

 beian extraction : that beauty soon laded us the 

 flower that, is born and cut down in a day, and 

 found tut early grave. 



A scholar late in life, Mr. Everett often mis- 

 spell bis words and mis-printed or omitted points 

 to bis sentences. He wrote much for our paper.the 

 Farmer's Cabinet, which in a democratic county 

 was intended to preserve a neutral position as 

 between the two political parlies. .Mr. Everett 

 as well as Mr. Ciishing, the master and publish- 

 er, were both federalists of that time. The ob- 

 ject of Mr. Everett as a writer on politics, seem- 

 ed to be to correct the faults anil excesses on both 

 sides, He published a long series of numbers with 



the title of" The Eagle." With the bird courlmnl, 

 he discoursed plain, ever-day advice — wlant he 

 sailed along the air with no uneasy Happing of 

 wings or sudden changes from slow to rapid 

 Sight ; but rampant the noble bird mounted in 

 high air, plunged with whetted beak into the po- 

 litical errors and defalcations which he held up 

 as a mark for 



'• Scorn to [mint his slow, unmoving ti tiger at." 



David Everett was a poet who might boast not a 

 slight touch of a Promethean fire of iambic 

 verse not less than the inspiration of genius 

 which throws a charm or a dagger into plain 

 prose. On occasion of the total eclipse of the 

 sun in the summer of 180(i, he wrote an ode for 

 the Cabinet, commencing with the following 

 verse : 



" Why veil'd.O Sun- 

 Where tied thy light, 

 Thy day absorbed 

 In gloom of night ? 

 lias thy Crefitor quenched thy fires, 

 Or dost thou mourn while he expiree ? 



\a heathen sage, 

 Thy worshipped sun, 

 Nor moon nnr stars 

 That round him run. 

 Nor science, lucid as their spheres, 

 Can solve Ihydouhts or calm thy fears. 



We cannot remember to repeat the whole of 

 this poem. In the town of Milford (the town in 

 which the Hutchinson singers were nil since 

 born) there lived a man of great musical talent, 

 by the name of Herrick : he not only discoursed 

 upon all sorts of instruments and in high vocal 

 strains martial music, including patriotic march- 

 es for every chieftain, but music for either sacred 

 or profane song. Derrick's music set to Ever- 

 ett's poem of the " Veiled Sun," sung and played 

 in full choir with viol, violin, flute, hautboy, 

 clarionet and bassoon, forty-two years ago, is vet 

 sounding in our ears ; and this reminds us that 

 old Hugh Moore, hardly excelled by Paginini 

 himself for line touches upon the violin, still 

 [days the viol at Amherst with no diminished 

 gusto at the age of more than eighty years. 

 Poor Merrick's vocal [lowers were stopped by 

 drowning in the Souhegan river, at the height of 

 a breaking up spring freshet. The bridge at 

 Milford village was carried away: attempting to 

 pass the river in a boat, he was precipitated by 

 the current over the falls and his body carried 

 down several miles, remaining several davs be- 

 fore it was discovered. 



In 1805, Mr. Everett furnished us, as the 

 youngest printer's hoy limping round the village 

 as paper carrier, with a new-year's poetical ad- 

 dress : it uas long and full of the fire of the man 

 of true poelic genius. Read at this late day, 

 when we have writers of poetry refined bv all 

 the discipline of severe European criticism, tem- 

 peied by the polish of accumulated American 

 and English taste, wo are free to say that Mr 

 Everett's new-year'.- address would be regarded 

 as poetry. Hut it presented the carrier-boy as 

 speaking in the first person singular. The Ri v. 

 Jeremiah Barnard was the minister of the par- 

 ish: like all or most of the regular ministers of 

 thai day, he was fitted through a college educa- 

 tion. He was an excellent farmer — better at the 

 plough than in the pulpit; hut he was, as may 

 be supposed, no very good judge of poetry. A 

 day or two alter Mr. Everett's address had been 

 carried about town and been the subject of con- 

 versation, Mr. Barnard came into the printing 

 office with a well dressed gentleman stranger, 

 and pointing al our composition case, shamed the 

 lily-livered face of the boy of sixteen years, by 

 the proposition : "this is the young ntnn who is 



