DECLINE OF NEW ENGLAND AGRICULTURE. 17 



a prairie sea, with hardly a tree or a stone for fencing, against 

 our churches, school-houses and stone walls ; not mud and lime 

 water, against our pure and limpid springs and fountains, gush- 

 ing from a thousand hills. 



With nothing but the kindest feelings toward the great West, 

 a Massachusetts farmer, in emigrating there, in this short life 

 sacrifices too much altogether — the home he loves — the exquisite 

 feeling that thrills every noble heart, of sleeping with his fathers. 

 The reflection that, comparatively, the tears of strangers only 

 can water his grave ; certainly not those bound to him earliest^ 

 by the heart's best affections, in life's happy morning. Never 

 did I see this feeling so strongly developed as in my recent visit 

 to California. The eyes of those who went from us would fill 

 in a moment when I told them of home, sweet home. When 

 once addressing a Dutch farming population on the Tunnel 

 Railroad, between North Adams and Troy, N. Y., urging upon 

 them the duty of subscribing to the stock, both for the saving 

 in the transportation of produce as well as prospective value of 

 the stock when the tunnel was done, I perceived, after an hour's 

 effort upon dollars and cents, in looking round upon my audi- 

 ence, that for all practical purposes I might as well have been 

 talking to an iceberg. " Bury me with my kindred is God's 

 inspiration," I exclaimed. Every phlegmatic Teuton or son of 

 a Teuton raised his head and opened his sleepy eyes. " Where 

 are your children ? Aye, and your children's children ? Why 

 not give them the means and facilities of staying at home ? 

 What are you doing with this part of God's own vineyard but 

 diminishing every day in population, as appears by your own 

 census ? You are going to the wall with your homes old and 

 dusty. In scripture parlance, you seldom marry or are given 

 in marriage. Have you forgotten to read the book of Genesis ? 

 Do you wish to hear of the death of a beloved son, daughter, 

 sister or brother, long after they have been consigned to native 

 earth, always in some distant State ; or to keep them on your 

 farms till you or they arrive at that shadowy valley where the 

 soul's yearning is for its loved ones, on its transit to eternity, 

 to close the eye upon Heaven's light ? " There was too much of 

 the " Auld Lang Syne" of the immortal Burns in this. The 

 subscription was forthcoming. 



If then we love our own homes and kindred, why should we 



