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made butter and cheese ; and they raised up sons and daugh- 

 ters all the while. Verily, as Mr. Alexander Everett once 

 wrote, there should an order go forth for a Solemn Bee to as- 

 semble in every State in New England with a view to ascer- 

 tain and preserve the oral traditions of the customs of our 

 ancestors, of the farmers of the early days of our State. 



There were cities in those days, and the line of demarca- 

 tion between town and country life was sharply drawn. Mr. 

 Boutwell, at the dinner at the last New England Agricultural 

 Fair at Lowell, spoke of the time as past when a man from 

 the country would be known and distinguished from the in- 

 habitants of the city the moment he set his feet in State 

 street. And here is seen our connection with the great Past. 

 It -was so in ancient Greece. As Athens grew in wealth, the 

 richer part, indeed, of the country population were more and 

 more attracted to it ; and Isocrates, writing almost four hun- 

 dred years before Christ, can already contrast his own time 

 with the days when "the houses and establishments in the 

 country were handsomer than those within the walls, and 

 when many of the citizens did not even come to town for the 

 festivals. " But there remained a frugal farmer class, strongly 

 conservative of the old simplicity, totally strange to the life 

 of the city, and rarely, in some cases never, visiting it. In 

 the Greek Comic Dramas the temptations which beset the 

 rustic on his visits to Athens are forcibly described. A far- 

 mer sends his son to sell wood and barley ; the young man 

 sees a philosopher at the Academy, and to his father's dis- 

 may comes back a Cynic. Another, having been sent to buy 

 earthen ware, is betrayed into a ruinous carouse ; a third, 

 after disposing of his figs and nuts goes to the theatre, and is 

 thrown into ecstacies of wonder and terror by a conjuror. 

 The rareness of such visits is also marked. In one letter a 

 young Attic farmer requests a neighbor to be his guide in a 

 first visit to Athens ; he longs to see what this thing may be 

 which they call "town" — we call it the elephant. In another 

 a son implores his mother to " come and see the splendors of 

 the town before her dying day ;" for though distant but a few 

 hours' journey she has never seen them. Another writer tells 



