DEVOTED TO AGBICTJLTTTBE AND ITS KINDRED ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



VOL. XIV. 



BOSTON, FEBRUARY, 1862. , 



NO. 2. 



NOURSE, EATOX & TOLMAN, Proprietors. 

 Office. . . .100 Washinoton Street. 



SIMON BROWN Editor. 



HENRY F. FRENCH, Associate Editor. 



CALENDAR FOR FEBRUARY, 



N some ancient 

 calendars, Feb- 

 ruary occurred 

 last in the order 

 of the Months. 

 Being, as it al- 

 ways is, frac- 

 tional at best, 

 and somewhat 

 rregular as to 

 its number of 

 day, but, omni- 

 bus Ike, always 

 having room for 

 "one more," in 

 case the alma- 

 nac makers hap- 

 pen to have an 

 extra day on 

 hand, it might seem that the rear was the most ap- 

 propriate place for this month. Why it was changed 

 from the bottom of the column to its present 

 rank of second in the order of precedence, we have 

 forgotten, if Ave ever kneAV. One reason, howev- 

 er, is suggested for the adoption of the present ar- 

 rangement. As it now stands, the shortest month 

 comes in the coldest and most stormy portion of 

 the whole year. As Ave stamp our feet, and slap 

 our hands in the biting cold of a February morn- 

 ing, it is encouraging to think, and we often tell 

 the boys to remember, that February hath only 

 twenty-eight days, and Avill soon be gone ! 



The Month, then, upon Avhich Ave noAV enter, 

 being a short and a cold one, Avhat shall Ave do 

 Avith its fcAV brief days, and long, cold nights ? 



Time, it has been said, is money ; and even the 

 poets talk of its golden sands. But time is money 

 to those only Avho resolutely turn it to a good ac- 

 count. To the bear which dens up in the fall, and 

 sleeps unconsciously all Avinter, or to those ants 

 60 often found in logs of wood at this season, stiff 



and motionless, time is not money. Nor Avill time 

 be money to us if Ave pass the winter as these crea- 

 tures do. And there is danger that we may spend 

 this season even more unprofitably ; for, unlike 

 these hibernating animals, Ave cannot doze all Avin- 

 ter, and then wake up in the Spring as bright as 

 ever. Progress is the laAV of our being ; and pro- 

 gress, either forAvard or backward, we are making 

 constantly. 



This season of the year, — "the dead of winder," 

 as it is sometimes called, — Avhen frost and snow 

 have possession of our fields, and Ave find ourselves 

 able to do but little directly toAvards the improA-e- 

 ment of the soil, is a most fitting opportunity for 

 the prosecution of that other branch of our busi- 

 ness, the improvement of the mind. The very el- 

 ements now so fiercely Avarring without, conspire 

 to f'rive thought home, so that these long evenings 

 have been aptly termed the seed-time of the labor- 

 ing man's intellectual harvest. A seed-time and 

 a harvest, Avhich, unlike those of his fields, inter- 

 mingle the one Avith the other, and in Avhich men 

 not only reap what they sow, but «s they soav — 

 the grain ripe for the sickle springing up while the 

 seed is being planted ; scions from the tree of 

 knoAvledge grafted into the mind bearing-fruit even 

 before the stock and the branch are firmly united. 



It is not because Ave fear that our readers are 

 insensible to the importance of mental culture that 

 we make these remarks. They all knoAV that 

 knoAvledge is power. There is not one Avho does 

 not desire that Avisdom should be first on the list 

 of his accumulations. But, by our own experience, 

 Ave know that after a day's exertion of the bodily 

 poAvers, it requires the impulse of a strong Avill to 

 keep the mental faculties busy Avhile the hands 

 rest. It is to encourage the putting forth of this 

 poAver of the Avill — this deteiTnination to know, 

 Avhich is sometimes strong enough to overcome 

 the fatigue of the body — that we now allude to the 

 subject. We believe that the force of the supposed 

 antagonism between the labor of the hands and 



