94 



NEAV ENGLAND FARMEE. 



Feb. 



anterior portion of the right lung was also dis- 

 eased, and of the same character. 



As Dr. Ellis had expressed a desire to see the 

 lungs of an animal in the acute stage, I brought 

 them to Boston and delivered them to him ; oth- 

 ers, doubtless, had an opportunity to see them. 

 E. F. Thater, 



Veterinary Surgeon, Ko. 15, United States Hotel. 

 Boston, Jan. 14, 1862. 



IRELAND AS SHE IS. 



Ireland is not learned in a day. The English- 

 man who fancies that he has gi'asped the social 

 characteristics and pohtical necessities of the coun- 

 try Avhen he has made himself master of "Harry 

 LoiTcquer," "Castle Rack-rent," and "O'Keefe's 

 Farces," and digested the matter of fifty "Lenten 

 Pastorals" and "Tenant-right Resolutions," will be 

 surprised at the magnitude and the solidity of the 

 interests, and at the gravity and subtilety of the 

 character, which on a closer contemplation comes 

 forth, like the great headlands of our seacoast, 

 into stern and massive relief. He finds that the 

 caricatures of a dead and buried generation are 

 not portraits of existing men and manners, and 

 that the clamors of the country are not its Avants. 

 He fails to discover anywhere the tipsy and inso- 

 lent gentry horsewhipping a rack-rented tenantry, 

 and pistoling one another at eight paces from muz- 

 zle to muzzle — who figured in his dream of Ireland. 



He sees little or nothing of the "squalid ape- 

 hood," the blundering, the drunkenness, the fatu- 

 ous good-nature, and indiscriminate battery and 

 assault, without pretext or purpose, which are de- 

 scribed as the amiable peculiarities of a peasantry 

 who will barter their last ailicles of clotliing for a 

 bottle of whiskey to treat you with, and then, with 

 a good-humored "hurroo," break your head with- 

 out rhyme or reason, and finally give you their 

 heart's dearest afiections in exchange for a good 

 joke or an indifferent pennyworth of tobacco. The 

 whole of this monstrous mirage vanishes the mo- 

 ment he sets his foot upon the soil of Ireland. He 

 beholds, instead, a gentry as intelligent, hard- 

 working, enterprising, thrif'ty, and, in the highest 

 sense respectable, as any in the empire ; and a 

 peasantry as industrious and temperate, receiving 

 a fair day's wages for a fair day's work. 



He will sec a tenantry possessed of improving 

 farms, at reasonable rents, and of sufficient dimen- 

 sions ; and, above all, a vast and energetic Prot- 

 estant population, self-reliant and prosperous, and 

 altogether unlike his ideal of an Orange commu- 

 nity. He will find his notions of the relations of 

 parties, the social facts of the country, and the 

 wants and abuses of its domestic system, exten- 

 sively modified, and still more extensively demol- 

 ished. And if he possess (a facvdty more uncom- 

 mon than is supposed) the power of sim])le per- 

 ception and energy to thinli and conclude for him- 

 self, he will discard nearly all he has previously 

 conceived, and commence, ab initio, the study of 

 the grave and complicated question. — Dublin 

 University Magazine. 



The road ambition travels is too narrow for 

 friendship, too crooked for love, too rugged for 

 honesty, and too dark for science. 



HIGHWAY ROBBEKT. 



This is a crime often perpetrated in New Eng- 

 land by men of respectability and wealth. The 

 plan of operation is somewhat as follows : A man 

 owning land bordering upon the highway, desires 

 to re-set his fence, or re-lay his wall. Immediate- 

 ly he begins to mark out the bounds and limits of 

 the proposed change. Eight men out of every 

 ten, instead of building the new fence where the 

 old one stands, encroach upon the road from six 

 inches to two feet. Such encroachments we have 

 ■\ritnessed scores of times. The usual excuse for 

 thus robbing the highway, is the laudable desne 

 to have "the line straight." The eye for the beau- 

 tiful must be gratified, prohahhj. But if in "ma- 

 king the line straight," the location of the fence or 

 wall must be changed, why does it always happen 

 that the change is never made at the expense of 

 private property ? Why do men never straighten 

 bounds by cutting off narrow strips of land from 

 their own possessions ? Why must the highway 

 be robbed to gratify a private whim ? 



The fact in the case is just here. Owners of 

 land are as avaricious as owners of merchandise ; 

 and they adopt this mean way of getting a foot or 

 two of soil Avithout paying for it. The plain terms 

 for such deeds are meanness and robbery. We 

 never see a fence crowded into the road in this 

 Avay, Avithout saying, a mean man has done it. 



Then again it often happens that the rights and 

 convenience of the travelling public are infringed 

 and imposed upon by these higliAvay robberies. 

 The Avidth of the road is seriously diminished, ille- 

 gally, and by men Avho would be greatly incensed, 

 should they be openly accused of dishonesty. AVe 

 call to mind a bit of road, perhaps two furlongs in 

 extent, Avhere the land on both sides is OAvned by 

 one man. AVithin tAA'enty-five years, the fences on 

 either side have shoAvn a gradually increasing at- 

 traction for one another, and if they approximate 

 during the next quarter of a century as rapidly as 

 they have approximated during the last, they Avill 

 at the end of that period be united. The road Avill 

 be sAA-alloAved up by the greedy meanness of the 

 OAvner in question. 



Then, too, Ave have often noticed that roadside 

 fences require new modelling oftener than any 

 others. The reason for this is not apparent. Un- 

 doubtedly it is to be found in the peculiarities of 

 the case — some especial reason for each especial 

 removal. 



A few years ago, one of the tOAvns in this Com- 

 mouAvealth chose an agent at a public meeting, 

 Avhose duty it Avas to have all the fences in the 

 toAA'n, on either side of the higliAvays, moved back 

 to the place assigned them by laAV ; or Avhat 

 amounted to the same thing, this agent Avas direct- 

 ed to make the highAvays a legal Avidth. He en- 

 tered ujion his duties ; Avhen behold it AA'as found 

 that a large majority of the land-OAvners in toAvn, 

 must take doAvn their fences and Avails, bordering 

 on the road, and move them back, in some instan- 

 ces, a number of feet ! Here Avas an unlooked-for 

 discovery, and the agent Avas compelled, by the 

 same public sentiment that gave him his office, to 

 abandon the duties of that office. A similar ex- 

 periment, undertaken in almost any farming com- 

 munity, Avould produce similar results. Every 

 town ought to appoint such an agent, and then 

 sustain him in the faithful discharge of the Avork 

 assigned him. 



