140 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



new plane, — out of their bustles, and land them in gingham 

 aprons ; — ask your wives if we can ! The old social zest that 

 lay in a pleasant coarseness will not come back ; but we can 

 lay the basis of a new and riper social zest, in making the 

 homestead, or its equipments, level with the education of 

 the day. 



I could have wished, had time allowed, to say something of 

 the surroundings of a farm homestead, and how proper dis- 

 position of shade and shrubbery and walks may be made to 

 contribute to that cheery, comely air, which educates the 

 young, and which contents the old. But in these matters, no 

 more than in the fittings of an interior, would I urge an over- 

 finical nicety. I would not urge flowers, because such and 

 such colors are "of the style," nor paths trimmed and rolled 

 with soldier-like precision, nor turf shorn to the eighth of an 

 inch ; but I should say trees where you want shade or 

 shelter ; shrubbery where you want a screen ; flowers where 

 they are a positive delight to you or your friends, and where 

 you may cut them at will ; walks for a positive convenience, 

 — always dry, if not geometrically true, and always leading 

 where you want to go, and not foolishly trailing, under the 

 hands of town gardeners, where you never want to go. 



Again, that portion of the high-road which is the former's 

 own should be looked to with care. The roadside is his ; 

 rights of travel over it do in no wise take away his propri- 

 etorship. To the eye of the world, it gives the first and 

 main test of his neatness and order ; if he abuses it, he 

 abuses himself, — a sort of self-abuse that I think our legisla- 

 tures should compel him to forego. There are townships in 

 New England which carry a barbarian look, by reason purely 

 of the uncomely stones and offal dumped upon either side of 

 the high-roads. It is needless to say that strangers are dis- 

 gusted, and the marketable value of adjoining lands sensibly 

 depreciated. Yet there are money-getting farmers, credited, 

 I dare say justly, with a coarse kind of "horse-sense," who 

 clear the fields, and, year after year, thus barbarize the high- 

 ways. In villages, they would not dare it ; but in remote places, 

 nobody sees, nobody cares, having grown up in such savagery. 

 Now, I think every farmer should treat his homestead and its 

 surroundings as if the world were to see it. I think every 



