COMMON SENSE IN FARMING. 29 



TASTE AND COMMON SENSE IN FARMING. 



From an Address before the Middlesex South Agricultural Society, Sept. 22, 1858. 



BY EMORY WASHBURN. 



Every man seems to carry around with him a kind of moral 

 thermometer, in the guise which he chooses to wear, by which 

 other men instinctively settle the rank and place in the scale 

 of humanity to whicli he should be assigned. In one man we 

 detect at once the snug and careful husbandman. No matter 

 if his garb is coarse, it is sviitablc and orderly, and in his per- 

 son always clean and wholesome ; he bears himself as if he had 

 something in himself worth taking care of. In another, we see 

 la man out at the elbows, slovenly in his habits, lounging in his 

 gait, and repulsive in his address. It is not a diiference in 

 wealth, or education, or family, that makes the contrast, but 

 something deeper and more essential. 



Grant, if you please, that a man may be a good citizen and a 

 kind neighbor and yet live with everything in a muss around 

 him. But who ever went by such a man's door, without setting 

 him down, if he did not know him, as a coarse and vulgar man, 

 or a lazy and shiftless one ? 



On the other hand, no matter how humble may be its roof, 

 or plain and unadorned its exterior, if one sees neatness and 

 order around a farmer's dwelling, with a clean green yard in 

 front, and it may be, a tree of his own planting in one corner, 

 and a rose or a lilac in another, he goes to it in the assurance 

 of meeting a civil welcome, and if he needs a kindness, that it 

 will be cheerfully bestowed. And when was a civil man 

 ever disappointed in asking a favor at tlie door of such a farm 

 house ? 



If a man wants to see his own influence, and to know some- 

 thing of the power which every man unconsciously exercises, 



