14 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Jan. 



citizens. Yet, looking at the outside of our com- 

 munity, there would seem never to have existed 

 so fickle, so changeable, so whimsical a people. 

 This is especially true, of their occupations. Look 

 where you will, in city or country, a Yankee is al- 



Men study years to gain a knowledge by Avhich to 

 weave a fabric which shall cover human naked- 

 ness, and .slielter their bodies from tlic heat and 

 cold. Yet "behold the lilies, how they grow" — 

 "even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed 



like one of these," and yet the art of the husband-| ways progressing. He is always seeking a change 

 man brings him in close contact with the hidden! for the better. Wq \\t\.s x\o conservatism. To-day 

 processes of nature, which give the lily and tlicj he is a laborer in the field, holding tlie plow, or 

 violet their color and their fragrance. Every| mowing. The next time we meet him, perhaps 

 bursting s,^f>d and every springing Ijlade of grass, he is a clerk in a store, or a conductor on a rail- 

 evcry opotdng bud and every perfumed flower and 



ripened fruit, is carried step by step to perfection, 

 by principles as eternal as those which govern the 

 courses of tlie sun and the stars. Every process 

 of vegetation depends, for its results, on laws fixed 

 and immutable as the sv\relling of the ocean's tide 

 or tiie motions of the revolving earth ; and with 

 these principles and laws, the husbandman who 



road — then perliaps the editor of a western news- 

 paper, and nest a member of Congress. 



Taking this hasty glance at the American citi- 

 zen, one would take him for a sort of icandering 

 Jew — a person possessed with the very spirit of 

 unrest. But this, as I have said, is not, after all, 

 so much an e-ssential element of liis character, as 

 the result of his peculiar position in the woidd. 



easts ills seed into the ground is constantly at! The American is born, where the people of the Ce 

 work. And shall he alone, of all, who would at-! lestial Empire imagine /Ary are, in the middle of the 



world. But he is fenced in by no Chinese wall, 

 by n J State or municipal embargo upon his move- 

 ments. He is not born the heir of a title, and of 

 vast entailed estates, upon which he must, of 

 course, spend his life, bound to maintain the digni- 

 ty of a long line of illustrious ancestors, and to help 

 the queen keep her other and more humble sub- 

 jects in their proper places. He is not fettered by 

 legal enactments, which require him to submit to 

 a seven years' apprenticeship, before he can exer- 

 cise any mechanical art, nor is he born a serf upon 

 the soil of a lord, doomed to grow up in an igno- 

 rance which binds him to a position of dependence 

 and servitude more firmly than chains and fetters. 

 On the contrary, he finds himself, at early man- 

 hood, witliout property, without rank or title, 

 without wealtliy friends to aid him, dependent on 

 liis own strong arm, and In-ave heart for his for- 

 tune. He is intelligent, educated, and thoroughly 

 imbued with the spirit of liljerty and equality, 

 which he has drawn from his mc^ther's breast — 

 lias cauglit from his father's lips — has breathed in 

 the air which has been Avafted from Bunker Hill 

 and Lexington and Concord. He is bound to no 

 soil, but to that of his country, and his country is 

 bounded on the east and on the vrest by the ocean. 

 He knows wliat is passing everywhere. The 

 press pours out her stories of tlie fertility and in- 

 exhaustible productiveness of the West, and of the 

 wealth gained almost in a day from the mines of 

 California. Steamers and railways can bear him, 

 sooner than a single crop can be gathered from his 

 native soil, to the teeming valleys of the western 

 rivers, or the gold-bearing shores of the Pacific, 

 lie meets daily in the streets friends who report 

 to him tales of suddenly acquired wealth — truth 

 stranger than fiction — stranger than the eastern 

 tales of genii, and the wonderful lamp of AUad- 

 din. 



What wonder, that to a young and hopeful 

 licart, thus invited by prospects of wealth more 

 dazzling than fi\iry tales have pictured, as he sat 

 (m his mother's knee in childhood, thus lured by 

 Syrens, singing of easily acquired ric}ies,of a brief 

 period of excitement and danger followed by a life 

 of ease and leisure — what wonder that he be- 

 comes dissatisfied with the slow degrees by which 

 iiis fijrtune must be patiently wrought out in his 

 native State, that he esteems the cultivation of the 

 soil of New England a hard lot, and desires to try 

 his fortune nearer the setting. sun. 



tain to us'iful ends by well adapted means — shall 

 he n/on'^, in this great laboratory of nature, work 

 blindfolded? It is true that many of her curious 

 combinations of form and color, many of her mys- 

 terious workings in all her various departments, 

 are now, and will ever be, beyond the power of 

 human learning to fathom ; but that is a poor rea- 

 son why we should neglect carefully to observe 

 her systematic course, and as far as may be, turn 

 it to practical account. 



KNOWLEDGE IS TOViTKR. 



Let the farmer realize that to him, as to others, 

 knowledge is power; that tlie time has come when 

 the same discipline, and system, and adaptation 

 of uieans to desired ends, is as necessary to Ins 

 business as to that of the mechanic, the merchant 

 and the lawyer, and agriculture will at once rise 

 from'tlie position of a mere manual labor, to the 

 dignity of a noble science. 



When we undertake to fiiUow out the inquiry, 

 ivhy agriculture, in New England, has been, to 

 such an extent, neglected — trht/ so little of sys- 

 tematic attention has been l)estowed upon it, we 

 shall, perhaps, lie surprised to oliserve how many 

 of the reasons result I'rom the peculiar character 

 of our political institutions, from the almost un- 

 bounded liberty of action secured to us as citizens 

 of a republic. 



Tliis sentiment of an old poet has been often 

 quoted with approbation : 



'■For forms of goveintnciit let fools contest. 

 Thill which is l)est i.diiiiiiistercci is best." 



There is certainly but very little poetry in the 

 lines, and I think less of truth than poetry. In 

 deed, it is interesting to observe, as we trace the 

 diiferences, even lietween the laws of the liberal 

 government of England and those of this country, 

 how every principle of our Constitution influences 

 every act and thouglit even, of our citizens, who 

 are unconscious, perliaps, of the distinctions. Up- 

 on tliis topic I sliall Jiave occasion presently to re 

 mark further. 



THE YANKEE PROGRESSIVE, r.UT NOT ST.\CLE. 



As a prominent obstacle to systematic husband- 

 ry may be mentioned, the want of stnhilily in the 

 habits of our pmp/c. I say a want of stability in 

 the habits of our people, for instability is certainly 

 not a trait of New Enghuid character, but on the 

 contrary steady pi.n'severanee witli grc'it- energy 

 and activity, are the marked characteristics of our 



