array of industry unless it can be made subservient to the comfort and improve- 

 ment of the people ? And their highest comfort and greatest improvement 

 must be found in the home. Shall we be content, then, to take the choicest 

 parts of this State — diversified by hills and streams — and disfigure them, making 

 them absolutely hideous, as is sometimes done by the carelessness and the 

 thoughtlessness of men ? 



On two pieces of land just alike, two men with the same amount of labor 

 will reach very different results. One will have nothing to attract and delight, — 

 every natural beauty of the place will be marred, — while on the other everything 

 will be pleasant and attractive. A little thought iu constructing the house, even 

 if it is a very small and cheap one, placing it iu the best position — a little 

 thought in sparing trees or in planting others — a little thought in burning old 

 rubbish, or in placing it out of sight, — in a word, thought and taste to guide 

 the hand, will give elegance and comfort without a single hour's additional 

 labor. This care and labor that simply tend to beautify, are too often despised 

 by farmers. They have no time, they say, for such fancy work. But there is 

 no work performed on the farm which pays better. The farm that has a taste- 

 ful, home- like, house — adorned with fruit and shade trees, that cost but little 

 more than the planting — such a farm at a forced sale, will bring fifty per cent, 

 more than the same farm bare of trees, with a box for a house, and with every 

 mark of neglect around it. It is not a question of labor or of expense, but a 

 question of rightly applying labor to enhance the value of our own property, 

 and of all that adjoins us. The careless, slovenly farmer not only diminishes 

 the value of his own estate, but he diminishes the selling price of every farm in 

 his neighborhood. I lately heard a gentleman who has passed through southern 

 Berkshire speak in raptures of the increasing beauty of this portion of the 

 county. All the property in the county is worth more for the report that has 

 gone abroad of the spirit of improvement among the people. 



But some of the papers are saying that the number of our homes is to diminish — 

 that the hill towns of New England are to be deserted, and that great estates in 

 the West are to absorb the small ones, and the lordly owner is yet to have his 

 laborers around him as the southern planter once had his slaves, or as the great 

 manufacturer has his operatives. Such men have studied to poor advantage the 

 political economy of farming, or the effects of our institutions. The farms 

 in this country average fifty acres less than they did twenty years ago, and I 

 venture to predict that twenty years from now the average number of acres in 

 each farm will be much less than it is to-day. Large farms are profitable only 

 while you can rob the land. When the time comes that you must pay back to 

 your lands, these small farms become more profitable in proportion than large 

 ones. The larger a manufactory, the more profitably the work can be done, as 

 a general thing ; but not so with farming when the land has to be kept good. 

 Just in proportion as you are compelled to transport, fertilizers, and as laborers 

 are compelled to go farther to their work, do the profits of farming decrease. 

 But, besides this, the whole tendency of this age is for every man who works on 

 land to have land of his own. We have no law for entailing lands, and the 



