4 



White Birch that are covering so many hillsides of old New England are first- 

 coufliuK to the Scrub Pines that Kioy the requiem over the Virginia tobacco field. 

 They cover lands not worn ciut, raaybe, but substanfially tiung away. To a 

 New York or Pennsylvania farmer, the third generation perhaps on the family 

 Hoint\stead, the present condition of a large part of Massachusetts is a standing 

 puzzle — a perpi'tual surprise — and all the rnore incomprehensible because the 

 StaJt^ has Kuch laige portif)ns \mder such splendid cultivation. For I take it the 

 «>k^e^^t farming and perhaps the richest farm lands in the union are found about 

 Northampton, in the Connecticut and also in some of the towns of the Housa- 

 tonic valley. Such a puzzle was it to a New York friend, my companion in a 

 earring*- ride, "What is the matter ?" he would ask, "Why is not this land un- 

 der cultivation? Price?" No, you may buy it almost at your own figure. 

 Is there any quality of soil that d<»e8 not apoear upon the surface ? The very 

 next field cuts two tons of hay to the acre, and you may see the heavy sward 

 under the hardback. Health? It is the healthiest region in the world. 

 Market ? It has New York on the right hand and Boston on the left. Soci- 

 ety ? Why, you are in New England ! Morals and education ? Why, you 

 are in Massachusetts, where such things are devised. It was a conundrum, and 

 he gave it up. We need not wonder, for taking together price, products, Soci- 

 ety, markets, health, location, it may be affirmed that it can compete with any 

 region in the ivorld in opportunities for that legitimate culture of the soil 

 which brings what is now most needed, a living, — maybe cash, — surely char- 

 acter and capital in real estate. 



The Virginia pine, the Connecticut white birch, or the Massachusetts hard- 

 hack, alike stand for two of the three stages of agriculture, if the use of that 

 noble word in these stages be not premature. First, the settler uses, and uses 

 up the vegetable mold which Nature bestows as a free gift for a start, — a kind 

 of gift breakfast, for says DeQuincey, "a man may earn his dinner but break- 

 fast must be a gift." A man without his breakfast is a poor spiritless 

 creature, and in no condition to earn one. But this first gift is soon 

 consumed. An old history of Berkshire County says that the first set- 

 tlers feared that they would have no building material, so deeply were 

 the stones covered by the richness of forest mold. It was not, probably, 

 a literal fact but it stood for a very important one. Farming at this stage is a 

 kind of careless, easy appropriation of Nature's offerings, a simple picking up 

 of gifts thrown down, with as little skill or science required as of the pigs un- 

 der the beech trees, when the forest itself shakes down for them its ripened mast. 

 Then comes the second stage ; from this free giving comes wastefulness, then 

 leanness of soil, then emigration and desertion, then sedges and broom, white 

 birch and hard -hack ; and the land is ready for its third degree. And this is 

 the point where anything like true farming begins ; the period where economy, 

 labor, and science all take hold and pull together ; where, for the first, great 

 yields are invariably and universally produced ; when the farmer accepts the facts 

 of his calling, and, without excluding comforts, adapts to it, if need be, his style, 

 living, — in short, his expenses. This third stage, we say, a point which ma- 

 lure civilization always reaches, where necessity compels the only Arming that 



