stream that runs the neighboring mill. Large and convenient 

 out-buildings, supplied with useful tools, hardware, lumber, feed, 

 fuel and ice, and barns well filled with bents of hay, bins of grain, 

 and stalls of blooded stock, make an estate attractive to the view, 

 and worthy the highest ambition of man. 



Then there is another attraction which I may describe as the 

 domestic aspect of the farm. Of all the poetical conceptions of 

 domestic bliss, family affection, or human friendship, which will 

 stand admired while the world stands, the "Elegy'' of Gray, 

 and the " Cotter" of Burns, take the first rank, and in both the 

 plowman is the ideal, and the plowman's wife, like the sailor's, 

 "his star shall be," and not alone his star, but as the mother of 

 his children she shall be his equal in opinion and pleasure, in en- 

 titlement and decision, as she is in intuitive power and reasonable 

 judgment. Then as one after another the merry hearted children 

 come and mature, the old homestead becomes the scene of many 

 a sportive game, and the abode of ^^outh's most innocent pleas- 

 ures. The jolly maple sugar party in the spring. The romps of 

 merry haymakers in the summer. The glee of the jack o' lantern 

 in thecal! , and the mirth of the big sleigh ride in the winter; these, 

 with the fishing, the hunting and the husking bee, combine to 

 make the farm a place of happy memories ' ' when the other days 

 shall come." And so they come and go, one to the farm, one to 

 the mart of trade, and another — well, she's a daisy queen by 

 nature, and a royal one by virtue, but to a neighbor's lad she 

 looks the loveliest " When coming through the r3^e." Then I 

 am attracted to the farm by its profitableness, and profitableness 

 is a mighty lever in the hands of a sensible man, and the farm is 

 the place for his fulcrum. I know there is a cry raised now and 

 then about "the poor farmers." Now I understand a poor 

 farmer as an individual, but I never knew farmers, as a class, 

 to be poor. Theirs is the substance of the whole earth. A 

 man living on a place of forty acres, twent}^ of which is low 

 bush blueberries, and the rest suitably divided between white 

 birch and golden rod, and whose live stock consists of a lame, 

 blind horse, a kicking cow, a hen with a frozen comb, and a 

 rooster without a tail, is no farmer. Say he lives on a place, 

 so do I; but mine is a parsonage. Whereas, the man and the 

 place I am describing is altogether different. He wakes up 

 with the energies of the spring, and turns his stubble into 

 a fruitful field. His orchard blooms in pearly blushes, and his 

 flocks increase with tender lambs; his herds are fat and flour- 

 ishing, and his hives o\'erflow with honey. He drives a handsome 

 span of " Black Hawk's " pride, at a " top gallant's " speed; his 

 ponds are covered with ducks and geese ; while above the roost 

 and the loft filled with fowl and pigeon, sits the king of his birds 

 on the butternut bough, awaiting the nation's festival. From 

 the rude old farm house of his fathers, with rock-ribbed meadows, 

 ;he has raised a mansion of loveliness, amid fields of beauty. 



Another aspect presents the farm as a place of usefulness. 



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