368 



WHAT SHALL OUR BOYS STUDY? 



to reward his herculean labors in clearing the land. 

 True, he did not, like the prairie farmer, require the 

 aid of a railroad to take his great surplus to market, 

 but his wants were few, and if thev were not at all 

 times gratified, with so much the greater zest did he 

 and his wife and their little ones enjoy the few good 

 and simple things they had within their reach. 



But the pioneers of AVestern New York had few 

 of those refined instincts which induce the old and 

 acclimated residents of the soil to beautify and cher- 

 ish their domain; hence it was their general practice 

 to sell out what they called their betterments to a 

 more moneyed and thriving class of emigrating farm- 

 ers, and to wind their way farther west to make new 

 clearings. But, as an e;vception to the general rule, 

 now and then one pioneer would remain to domesti- 

 cate and improve his first location, raising a large 

 family of industrious thriving children ? Again, as 

 another e.xception, there is now and then one who 

 remained to improve only in the inverse ratio; he 

 clings to his old log house and slovenly improvements 

 with the tenacity of that obstinate shiftlessness which 

 derides all progress, as Diooenes did the presence of 

 him who obstructed the rays of his sun. But the 

 day has arrived when the grave has swallowed up the 

 last but one in this locality of this latter class of pio- 

 neers. His cabin was once a fair sample of a primi- 

 tive log house, in a heavy dense forest; but now the 

 woods are gone, burned, destroyed, or finally appro- 

 priated, until not enough is left to give a picturesque 

 grouping to the scene. The house now bears the 

 marks of that general delapidation which age and 

 neglect never fail to bring with them. The old alder- 

 bound fences of decayed broken rails, with row and 

 then a hole, in which an old stump has been rolled, 

 as if to notify the cattle not to come in. One field 

 had very small shocks of corn, and very ta'l sturdy 

 weeds; another field of corn and potatoes was over- 

 run entirely by a dense growth of dark brown rag- 

 wort; in fact weeds were the crop, corn and potatoes 

 the exception. But there is nature's science in all 

 this cultivation, because these weeds, being left in the 

 field, become an organic amendment to the soil, 

 which a more skinning process would not give ? 

 Here also the artist might delight in the faithful and 

 true grouping and ensemble of the picture, for every- 

 thing is in strict keeping the one with the other; the 

 leaning log walls and undulating roof of the old house, 

 the decayed fences, dilapidated shaky little barn, the 

 weedy crops, and the rough cradle holed meadow 

 and pasture fields, overgrown with patches of harl 

 and alder, with now and then an enormous tall and 



graceful elm, whose size alone saved it from the un- 

 sparing woodman's axe. 



But although an artist might well delight to sketch 

 such a picture as this, as it gives relief to the more 

 showy conceptions, and the more civilized conven- 

 tionalisms of his art, yet on the other band even 

 Downing might turn away in di.sgust from the bad 

 display of the more ambitious utilitarian architecture 

 and paint, which so generally characterizes the best 

 modern farm houses in the laud. How often do we 

 see the large sided house of sepulchral white stand- 

 ing denuded and unrelieved from the rays of the noon- 

 day sun by a single tree, or vine, or flowering shrub! 

 Not a single tenant of the original sylva is left by 

 the road side, to give evidence of the former identity 

 of its now long departed family; the door yard grown 

 up with that rank vegetation with which nature is 

 wont to protect and invigorate her own neglected 

 soil; here is the ever blooming Mayweed, the thrifty 

 long-rooted dock, with now and then a straggling 

 tuft of medicinal plants — tansy, catnip, &c.; but no 

 border of even half tended flowers now greets there 

 the eye; no shrubbeiy, not even a solitary lilac, or a 

 bush of roses, is there by way of apology for those 

 shade trees, so indispensable to ameliorate the un- 

 couth outline of an elaborate and expensive, but very 

 incongruous common-place farm dwelling. 



W.4.TirRL00, N. Y., Nov. 3, 1855. 



WHAT SHALL OTJR BOYS STUDY? 



This is a question frequently asked and replied to 

 with as little concern or consideration, as though it 

 would not have any more bearing or influence upon 

 the future lives and callings of the beings refeired to, 

 than the flowing and ebbing tides, or the changes of 

 the moon. Tlie opinion has prevailed to a very great 

 extent, that as " our boys" are to be farmers, it is not 

 necessary to give them a liberal education, " but we 

 vpish them to read so as to be understood, to write a 

 legible hand, and to have a passing knowledge of the 

 five principal rules of arithmetic." This was con- 

 sidered an adequate mental education for all agricul- 

 tural purposes, while geography, chemistry, philoso- 

 phy, and astronomy, with all the other branches, were 

 condemed as being entirely unnecessary and foreign 

 to the calling. We say such opinions have prevailed, 

 but rejoice to be able to say that they are fast giv- 

 ing way to more enlightened views. And when we 

 realize that such has been the case, why need we won- 

 der that the science of agriculture is so far behind 

 the age, or that so little taste has been displayed in 



