PREFATORY. 



No one of our readers will be half so curious to know 

 what this book contains as the author himself. For it is 

 more than twelve years since these pieces were begun, and 

 it is more than ten years since we have looked at them. 

 The publishers have taken the trouble to dig them out from 

 what we supposed to be their lasting burial-place, in the 

 columns of the Western Farmer and Gardener, and they 

 have gone through the press without our own revision. 



It is now twenty years since we settled at Indianapolis, the 

 capital of Indiana, a place then of four, and now of twenty- 

 five thousand inhabitants. At that time, and for years 

 afterward, there was not, within our knowledge, any other 

 than political newspapers in the State — ^no educational 

 journals, no agricultural or family papers. The Indiana 

 Journal at length proposed to introduce an agricultural 

 department, the matter of which should every month 

 be printed, in magazine form, under the title, Indiana 

 Farmer and Gardener, which was afterward changed to 

 the more comprehensive title, Western Farmer and Gardener. 



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