1862. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



427 



ed than that devoted to tliis woi-k, although a too 

 common practice will scarcely verify our state- 

 ment. Too little capital, either of labor or money, 

 invested in this primary part of farm management, 

 embarrasses all the succeeding operations of the 

 farmer, and -causes a great amount of labor to be 

 performed that brings no productive results. It 

 is as though the manufacturer should erect his 

 mill, and supply the necessary material of cotton 

 and wool, but provide no power to propel his ma- 

 chinery. 



THE IDEA OF THE SPINNIWQ-JENNY, 



Suddenly he (James Hargreaves) dropped on 

 his knees and rolled on the stone floor at full 

 length. He lay with his face toward the floor, and 

 made lines and circles with the end of a burned 

 stick. He rose, and went to the fire to burn his 

 stick. He took hold of his bristly hair with one 

 band and rubbed his forehead and nose with the 

 other and the blackened stick. Then he sat upon 

 a chair, and placed his head between his hands, 

 elbows on his knees, and gazed intently on the 

 floor. Then he sprang to his feet, and replied to 

 some feeble question of his wife, (who had not 

 risen since the day she gave birth to a little .stran- 

 ger,) by a loud a.s.surance that he had it ; and, 

 taking her in his sturdy arms, in the blankets, the 

 baby in her arms, he lifted her out, and held her 

 over the black drawings on the floor. These he 

 explained, and she joined a small, hopeful, happy 

 laugh with his high-toned assurance, that she 

 should never again toil at the spinning-wheel — 

 that he should never again "play," and have his 

 loom standing for want of weft. She asked some 

 questions, which he answered, after seating her in 

 the arm-chair, by laying her spinning-wheel on its 

 back, the horizontal spindle standing vertically, 

 while he made the wheel revolve, and drew a ro- 

 ving of cotton from the spindle, into an attenuated 

 thread. "Our fortune is made, when that is made," 

 he said, speaking of his drawings on the floor. 

 "What will you call it.-^" asked his wife. "Call 

 it ? What an we call it after thysen, Jenny ? 

 They called thee 'Spinning Jenny,' afore I had 

 thee, because thou beat every lass in Stanehill 

 Moor at the wheel. What if we call it 'Spinning 

 Jenny ?' " 



The DR.A.FT and the Farmers. — The Chicago 

 Times thinks the order for di'afting comes very 

 opportunely, so far as the farmers are concerned. 

 By the time operations will have fairly commenced 

 under it, the harvests will have been generally se- 

 cured, and farmers will have an interval of a cou- 

 ple of months before it will be necessary to sow 

 the fall wheat. If they are economical in time and 

 means there need be but little if any diminution 

 in the amount of land sown. Calculating the time 

 for the 300,000 men called for nine months to be- 

 gin on the first of September, they will be entitled 

 to discharge on the first of May, which will enable 

 them to return home in time to assist in jnitting 

 in the spring crops. It would seem as if this had 

 been considered in making the call, as under it we 

 may hope there will be no material lessening of 

 the agricultural products of the country in either 

 the present or coming year. 



THE BEAUTY OF THE GRASS. 



It seems as if nothing could be said under this 

 head, because, in truth, there is so much to say. 

 To get a good idea of the beauty of the grass, en- 

 deavor, in imagination, to form a picture of a world 

 without it. It is precisely to the scenery of na- 

 ture, what the Bible is to literature. Do you re- 

 member that idea of Froude's, that the Bible had 

 been obliterated, and every other book had there- 

 at lost its value, and literature was at an end ? 

 Take away this green ground color on which 

 Dame Nature works her embroidery patterns, and 

 where would be the picturesque scarlet poppies or 

 white daisies, or the gray of chalk cliff's, or the 

 golden bloom of a wilderness of buttercups ? Its 

 chief service to beauty is as the garment of the 

 earth. It watches night and day at all seasons of 

 the year, "in all places that the eye of heaven vis- 

 its," for spots on which to pitch new tents, to make 

 the desert less hideous, fill up the ground work of 

 the grandest pictures, and give the promise of 

 plenty on the flowery meadows where it lifts its 

 silvery and purple ])anicles breast high, and mocks 

 the sea in its rolling waves of sparkling green- 

 ness. It is beautiful when it mixes with oupine 

 and turritis on ruined bastion or gray garden 

 wall ; beautiful when it sprinkles the brown thatch 

 with tufts that find sufficient nourishment where 

 green mosses have been before ; beautiful when it 

 clothes the harsh upland, and gives nourishment 

 to a thousand snow-white fleeces ; still more beau- 

 tiful when it makes a little islet in a bright blue 

 mountain lake, "a fortunate purple isle," with its 

 ruddy spikes of short-lived flowers ; and precious 

 as well as beautiful when it comes close beside us, 

 in company with the sparrow and robin, as a 

 threshold visitant, to soften the footfall of care, 

 and give a daily welcome to the world of green- 

 ness. 



"If a friend my grass-grown threshold find, 

 O, how my lonely cot resounds with glee." 



Is it only for its velvet softness, and the round 

 pillowy knoll it heaves up in the vistas of the 

 greenwood, that the weary and the dreamer find it 

 so sweet a place of rest P Or is it because the 

 wild bee flits around its silvery panicles, and blows 

 his bugle as he goes with a bounding heart to 

 gather sweets ; that the hare and rabbit burrow 

 beneath its smooth sward ; that the dear lark cow- 

 ers amid its sprays, and cherishes the children of 

 its bosom under its brown, matted roots ; that the 

 daisy, the cowslip, the daff"odil, the orchises — the 

 fairies of the flower-world — the bird's foot trefoil 

 — the golden-fingered beauty of the meadoAvs, the 

 little yellow and the large strawberry trefoil, are 

 all sheltered and cherished by it ; and that one of 

 its simple children, the Anthoxantum odoratum, 

 or sweet-scented vernal grass, scents the air for 

 miles with the sweetest perfume ever breathed by 

 man? 



Ax Ox OR Cow that is accustomed to throw- 

 ing fences, may be prevented doing so by taking 

 a large wire and bending it in the shape of a bow ; 

 then bend the points in the shape of a fish-hook ; 

 tie two strings to the wire, place the hooks in the 

 nostrils lightly, and tie one string to the point of 

 each horn. This will prevent the most unruly ox 

 or cow from throwinsx fences. 



