61 



experience of the best farmers recommends that, if a heifer comes in 

 at two years old, she should not be allowed to have another calf, un- 

 der at least eighteen months from this time. 



The establishment of this farmer is substantial and independent. 

 As far as the common comforts of life are concerned, little more 

 seems to be desired. Good air, good water, plenty of bread, plen- 

 ty of fuel, plain and substantial clothing made by the hands of his 

 own family, and the product in a great measure of their own flocks 

 and fields; an estate which he can call his own with truth, because it 

 has been purchased not by fraudulent speculation upon other peo- 

 ple's earnings, but by the healthful toil of his own muscles and the 

 sweat of his own brow ; luxuriant pastures filled with those benefi- 

 cent animals, who are nourished by his kindness, and settle their 

 bills in the most honorable manner every night and morning ; and a 

 clean dairy room of ample dimensions and exismplary neatness, with 

 its numerous shelves, loaded with the richest produce, and speaking as 

 well for the in-door as the out-door management ; these features com- 

 bined in this picture, present one of those beautiful examples of rural 

 independence, and the bountiful rewards, with which a kind Provi- 

 dence is pleased to crown industry, frugality, and good management, 

 with which I am happy to say the County of Berkshire is every 

 where sprinkled over, even on its high mountain summits, as well 

 as on its fertile alluvions, and in its peaceful and secluded vallies. 

 The independent proprietor of this establishment is now sixty-six 

 years old. At the age of nineteen he was not the owner of a dollar. 

 He now adtnits himself worth thirty thousand dollars ; and all this, 

 with the exception of less than fifteen hundred dollars, is the produce 

 of his own farming industry, as he has never been engaged in any 

 speculation whatever. A higher good than all this is found, in the 

 fact which he added with an honest pride and an enviable pleasure, 

 that he had brought up eight children in habits of honest industry ; 

 and not one of them had ever disgraced his parents. 



The standard of dollars and cents is a very imperfect standard, by 

 which to measure the prosperity of such a man. It is a prosperity 

 which money cannot purchase, and money cannot measure. It is a 

 prosperity flowing from deeper, purer, and more enduring sources ; 

 from a competency for the evening of life, earned by honest labor; 

 a mind unembarrassed by the fear of want, and the vexatious ca- 



