22 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Jan. 



and try our luck upon the striped fellows." 



There was not much idleness in the field with 

 such a prospect before us. "When the whole 

 garden is free of weeds, we will fill the chaise and 

 the wagons, and go, girls and all, to Pickwackit 

 Plains and gather .blueberries, and take our guns 

 and see whether we cannot shoot some wild pi- 

 geons." The memory of some of these huckle- 

 berry parties are among the pleasantest reminis- 

 cences of my life. Strawberries, raspberries and 

 blackberries grew in abundance nearer home, and 

 the gathering them was often a pleasant interlude 

 of an hour or two after a busy day. As summer 

 and autumn waned, and the nuts grew ripe, we 

 went up the river to Mitchell's Mill, to gather 

 chestnuts from some trees which few people knew 

 the existence of, or we got leave from the owner 

 of the woods to pick up shagburks in the hickory 

 forests of Harrasicket ; or we filled our baskets 

 with the hazelnuts on the banks of the river Mou- 

 sum. My father's practice had carried him to al- 

 most every house within six miles, and, as he had 

 his eyes open, he knew all the good places. 



The reason of my-dwelling upon these pleasant 

 scenes is, that although I have devoted my life to 

 education, and, in order to teach well, have sought 

 in all ways to get the best education I could, I 

 have always considered the part of my education 

 which I got on my father's farm, in his garden, 

 and in the woods and on the streams and sea- 

 coasts, to which our holidays carried us, far the 

 most valuable. 



My father was an excellent classical scholar, 

 and had also paid some attention to the trees and 

 flowers, and to the birds and fishes and other an- 

 imals. He had a copy of Turton's Linneus in his 

 library, and was fond of pointing out the descrip- 

 tions of the various animals we met with, and 

 showing us how we should distinguish them. The 

 river Mousutn flowed by his garden, and he did 

 not consider it time lost to point out the habits of 

 the pickerel and other fishes that swam in it, and 

 of the minks and muskquashes that fed uponlts 

 shells and had their holes in its banks, or to point 

 out the curious remains of a beaver dam, which 

 were still visible half a mile down the stream, at 

 the mouth of a little brook. It was natural that, 

 under such influences, I should imbibe a taste for 

 natural history, — a taste which has been an un- 

 failing and delightful source of amusement, of 

 health and of improvement, all my life. 



When the work of the farm and of the garden 

 was finished, and not till then, we went to school. 

 We thus regarded the school as a privilege, as a 

 most agreeable change and refreshment. We were 

 not idle. We took hold of our studies with ear- 

 nestness and pleasure, and with success. It seemed 

 strange to us that our cousins and the other boys 

 who had been at school all summer, should dis- 

 like it so much and be so idle. To us it was de- 

 lightful, and we gave ourselves entirely to it. 

 And, what then seemed strange and unaccounta- 

 ble, we, with our half-year's schooling, were al- 

 ways amongst the best scholars. Many years af- 

 terwards, I read in an old Greek book upon agri- 

 culture, "The Works and the Days of Hesiod," 

 an adage or proverb, which says, "The half is more 

 than the whole." To me it seemed, even then, 

 that my half-year's schooling was better than the 

 whole year's of the other boys ; — I have no doubt 

 of it now. We send boys to school a great deal 



too much. They get wearied of it and disgusted, 

 and so hate it. They cannot take hold of their 

 studies as they would if they considered it the 

 greatest of all privileges to be allowed to go to 

 school. Besides, in doing this, we forget that 

 school opens to the learner a few poor books of 

 man's making, and shuts out the infinite volume 

 of God's works, every page rich with the facts 

 and pictures and principles of the history of His 

 beautiful creation. 



Years after, when I conversed with my father 

 as one of the most delightful companions I had or 

 have ever met, I asked him why it was that, in- 

 tending me, as he did, for one of the learned pro- 

 fessions, he thus took me away from school, and 

 kept me, half of every year, except one, till I en- 

 tered college, at work in his garden or on his farm. 

 "My son," answered the kind old man, "I wanted 

 you to be a scholar ; but I cared much more about 

 your being a man. I valued manliness much more 

 highly than scholarship. Are you less manly than 

 if you had spent the whole of every year of your 

 boyhood in school ? Is your knowledge of things, 

 or realities less ? Are you less of a scholar ?" 



G. B. E. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 MY JOURNAL FOR THE SEASON OP 1863. 



Messrs. Editors : — As ever)' subject relating 

 to the production of various species of vegetation 

 has been fully discussed for a long time past, I 

 concur with one your correspondents, that farmers, 

 on a large or small scale, would do more good by 

 reporting our success, by various experiments, in 

 raising our crops in a matter of fact way, than we 

 can by enlightening the world by our theories. 



We (my son and self) commenced farming by 

 sowing grass seed and winter wheat in the autumn 

 of 1862, and corn, potatoes, Hungarian grass, 

 and other vegetable productions, in the spring of 

 186^, after an uncommonly mild weather. To be- 

 gin, we sowed our garden seeds the 11th of May, 

 Therm. 88°, and after coming up as usual, they were 

 mostly destroyed by a hoard of little nocturnal 

 depredators, which left us but a small crop. On 

 the 16th, planted corn on old, tough pasture 

 land, lately plowed deep, dunged in the hill with 

 muck compost, the seed having been soaked forty- 

 eight hours in saltpetre water, the corn came up 

 well, and was "let alone" mostly by the hated 

 worms, which I think do not relish saltpetre. The 

 corn was slightly cultivated and hoed twice, but 

 the incessant rains and high winds were unfavora- 

 ble to a large crop, What was harvested was of 

 excellent quality ; the seed was of the Brown or 

 King Philip variety. The Hungarian grass comes 

 next in course. The seed was sowed the 21st of 

 May on old, worn out, sandy soil, where corn and 

 potatoes had been grown two seasons previously. 

 The ground was manured- with mud and animal 

 excrements composted, and plowed in superficial- 

 ly ; the seed vegetated well, and the crop at har- 

 vesting was estimated at three tons to the acre, af- 

 ter curing, which was done with great difficulty 

 this season by reason of almost incessant rains. 

 By the way, experience being the best teacher, we 

 delayed mowing it, hoping for better weather till 

 it got far advanced in forming seed, which was 

 done on the 25th day of August. The compara- 

 tive value of the grass, and that mowed last year 



