100 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



complete failure ; butshow us the farmer who lias pursued through 

 life one steady course with intelligence and industry, and we will 

 show you one whose efforts have been crowned with great success. 



In the second place, the progressive farmer is the good man- 

 ager. All men are naturally inclined to get into the ruts, to do 

 as their fathers did, to take life easily and jog along this year 

 pretty much as they did last, and we are sorry to add this is par- 

 ticularly true in an agricultural community ; such a course 

 never leads to excellence. The world moves, and if we would 

 keep up with it, we must move. The fogy who rejects improved 

 machinery and improved modes of culture, mows with a scythe, 

 and denies the virtues of compost, must expect to see himself dis- 

 tanced by his neighbors, who are awake to the progress of the 

 times. The farmer who wastes his corn on porcupine hogs and 

 his hay on raw-boned cattle, may blame Providence because he 

 does not succeed as well as his neighbor who feeds Sufifolks and 

 Durhams, but the trouble with laggards is in themselves, not in 

 Providence. We have met with those who really thought the 

 world moves in a circle, that history repeats itself, that a Beurrd 

 d'Anjou pear is no better fruit than graced the tables of our 

 grandfathers, and that a Durham ox has no more symmetry of 

 form than the ox which the old Egyptians worshipped. To all 

 such we can only say, " Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him- 

 alone." In a well managed farm we want to see the land, the 

 stock, the implements, the products and the buildings improving 

 from year to year. The farmer of high aspirations can never be 

 content to move on a dead level. His energies are not satisfied 

 unless he is pushing up an ascending grade. 



Again, we say that good farm management demands some 

 taste as well as energy and skill. Taste is that faculty that dis- 

 covers beauty, order, proportion, symmetry and fitness in things, 

 and finds scope for its exercise on the farm, just as well as in the 

 milliner's shop or dry goods store. We know there are some 

 farmers who discard all idea of beauty and make utility the 

 great end of life. Such place their cabbage patch in the front 

 yard, and their pig-pen in close contiguity to the kitchen door, 

 cannot afford their wives a plot of land for flowers, and think 

 shade-trees cumberers of the ground, build a story and a half 

 house, and locate the barn so as to obstruct the best prospect, 

 pile refuse lumber by the side of the road, and old sleds and 



