(^uisite tint to the veining of the cabbage and beet leaf, that ehameB the set of 

 the Tyrian purple in Caesar's robe — it is only when the suckers of plant life 

 have digested the scum of the cess pool, and the flowers' lungs have drawn in 

 the mephitic exhalations, that we may say with the song of Solomon, "Awake 

 oh North wind, and come thou South and blow upon my garden until the spices 

 thereof may flow out !" 



I hope 1 am not expected to set forth many specific methods. ' 'Drive a 

 nail where it will go," is a proverb of our race older than our nation. Farm- 

 ing as a business is peculiarly, perhaps painfully, practical, especially about the 

 summer solstice, and he who essays to show by theory how to make it more 

 practical still, must expect to face a criticism that has in it more common sense 

 than charity. Woe to him if he make one weak statement though 

 sound on the ninety and nine ! He sins once and is judged for 

 all. The Calvinistic Catechism would not condemn him quicker and 

 not half so hopelessly. A young Scotch Dominie was once settled 

 over an old Scotch parish; he had an honest hankering for teaching 

 his flock agriculture as well as theology. An old Mentor of a sexton 

 who had no fears for his parson's orthodoxy, but felt that he was "shaky" in 

 that rarer science, "How-to-get-along-with-people," gave him the advice that 

 Douglass Jerrold in the London Punch gave to young people about to marry : 

 "Don't," "For," said he, "they'll see ye ken naething about farming, and they'll 

 get to think ye dinna ken anything." And the question how shall your speak- 

 er escape the imputation, always in reserve for the theorist, is serious beyond 

 personal reasons. Will it help his case with those he most desires to reach, to 

 state that he was one of three who in the last harvest cradled down 18 acres of 

 grain in two days ? Not that he considers those days worth telling of for purely 

 personal reasons. Oh, no! "I think not of them," said Macbeth, when Banquo 

 reminded him of the royal promise of the three weird sisters, though the truth 

 was be had been thinking of little else. There is something wonderful in the 

 faith of writers and speakers on Agriculture in their ability to make converts 

 to farming, especially of the young men in the fresh flash of early ambition, 

 by depicting the beauties and profits of Farm Life. There is, indeed, no more 

 unpromising subject for gush and bosh than a farmer's boy. The actualities 

 of life have sharpened his mental perceptions and taught hira Self Reliance. 

 "There is an animal," says Charles Reade, "of no great merit, but with the eye 

 of a hawk to detect affectation ; it is called a boy. " But this much at least may 

 we claim for farm life : If the long week days of Summer call for terrible toil, 

 the labor even of a slave, if Spring and Fall are as busy, barring the heat, 

 winter affords the best form of leisure, for leisure is not emptiness. And nights 

 and Sabbaths in the country, if fences are good and debts are paid, are nearer 

 rest than anything else with which God ever blessed this weary earth. 



I assume that very little American farming has reached this third stage. 

 New Jersey Garden ('ulture is the nearest approach. The degree I mean where 

 waste can no longer be afforded, where a settled occupancy and crowded pop- 

 ulation compel earth and man to do their best. I believe it will be the mission 

 of New England in "New England Farming restored" to devek>p and propa- 



