262 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



[Correspondence of "Advertiser."] 



It is recorded of the Rev. Mather Byles, that he saw one day a 

 chaise, containing the town clerk and a selectman of Boston, stuck, 

 before his house in School Street, in a quagmire which he had long 

 tried to induce the town to mend. He pulled off his hat and cried 

 to them that he was heartily glad at last to see the authorities 

 " stirring in the matter." The writer is as glad as the reverend 

 doctor was, to see so good an authority as the " Advertiser " stir- 

 ring in the matter of our roads, though by no means in so muddy 

 a style as the worthies referred to. A month or more ago you pub- 

 lished extracts from the report of the committee appointed by the 

 town of Newton, recommending the employment of " a road engi- 

 neer, to have supervision of the roads in connection with the select- 

 men, and to survey the town with reference to laying out new 

 streets." This report was adopted by the town. A number of 

 your readers in our beautiful suburban towns wish that you could 

 find space to publish the whole report, or that the selectmen of 

 Newton would circulate it as a tract throughout the environs of 

 Boston, where our excellent authorities are contented to believe 

 that roads, which are well nigh impassable during seven months of 

 the year, are good roads, because they are in fair order through the 

 summer months. 



It would seem that in such rich towns as those which surround 

 Boston, the public had a right to demand as durable, solid and 

 smooth highways as lead into any city in the world. But we are 

 told that they have worse roads in Little Pedlington, or the frosts 

 in New England are so severe, or there are horse railway tracks in 

 our streets, or we have such heavy travel over our roads, that we 

 ought to be proud of the roads instead of grumbling at them. So 

 the " seelic-men " continue to dump big rocks and loam, turf and 

 brickbats into the streets; and if the town owns a " stone-cracker," 

 the sharp fragments are strewn along the ways, to be beaten down 

 by hoof and wheel, as if a layer of gi'avel and a roller existed only 

 in the heated dreams of condemned highwaymen. Next, the 

 autumn rains, the winter frosts and the spring winds do their work, 

 and the expressmen, and the farmers, and the doctors, and the 

 teamsters, and the milkmen, try to do theirs, over the torrent-beds 

 and springholes we fondly call our " streets," ruining their wagons, 

 killing their horses, and endangering their souls by consequent 

 profanity. 



It is not those who drive for pleasure who are concerned in this 

 matter; it is the crowd of hard-working men we have just named. 

 Such men, if they could read the report referred to, would see that 



