1864. 



NEW ENGLAND FAKMER. 



235 



HAVE PATIENCE "WITH THE BOYS. 



Labor is scarce and produce is likely to be ex- 

 travagantly high this season. While farmers will 

 be obliged to economize in the amount of hired 

 help, they will be anxious to raise all they can. 

 There is, therefore, danger of undue anxiety of 

 mind and over-exertion of body. This year, if 

 never before, let patience have her perfect work. 

 Have patience with the new machine. If at first 

 it does not meet your expectations, if it is harder 

 to manage than you anticipated, and fails to do all 

 you hoped, have patience ; "practice makes per- 

 fect." 



Especially is this old saw true in respect to 

 the boys, for whom we would ask a large share of 

 patience — patience not only with the poor man- 

 ner in which they accomplish their tasks, but pa- 

 tience, and a great deal of it, with their inability 

 to do all you would like to have them do, now 

 that the work presses so hardly in all directions. 

 Just take that boy's hand in your own ; feel of his 

 arm, his shoulder, chest and ribs — wonderfully, 

 fearfully, slightly made — is it strange that he ac- 

 complishes so little ? that he so soon tires, and 

 complains of the "hard row" that has fallen to his 

 lot ? Will fretting or scolding harden his bones, 

 toughen his sinews, increase his endurance, or 

 make him love the hard work of the farm ? 



Farmers are generally careful about putting 

 their colts to hard work before they get their 

 growth. It is well they should be. Many a fine 

 animal has been injured and its value greatly de- 

 creased by being used too much before its system 

 was sufficiently developed and matured. 



That parents intend to be much more careful 

 with their boys than with their horses we have no 

 doubt. But the boys are so much longer in "the 

 green tree," their bones harden so much slower 

 than those of domestic animals, that there may be 

 danger in the present scarcity of farm help, of 

 laying out more work than ought to be performed 

 by the available working force of the farm, and, 

 consequently, danger of "putting up" the boys 

 too hard ; not purposely, not willingly, but from 

 an apparent or supposed necessity. 



But the body is not all. There is danger of 

 discouraging their minds as well as dwarfing their 

 bodies ; of breaking their spirits as well as their 

 backs ; of distorting their fancy as well as their 

 frames. In fact, everybody knows that "all work 

 and no play makes Jack a dull boy" — dull of mind 

 as well as of foot. 



What, then, shall be done ? With Cowper, we 

 boast, 



"I would not have a slave to till my ground," 

 nor would we have our sons so overworked as to 

 become as stiff and stupid, as dull and clownish 

 as the ignorant peasantry of Europe. The histo- 

 ry of New England, and, in fact, of all the other 



free States, has demonstrated that there is a hap- 

 py medium between these alternatives 5 that the 

 day-laboring farmer may improve the mind as 

 well as the soil ; that he may think as well as 

 work. The great mission of the present age and 

 of the present generation is by many supposed to 

 be the abolition of slavery, and the demonstra- 

 tion of the true dignity of labor. But do not the 

 models and drawings of our national Patent Office 

 show that at the bottom of all these efforts lies the 

 idea of substituting machinery for slavery — of 

 doing by ingenious combinations of wood and 

 iron, put in motion by steam and horse power, 

 just that kind of drudgery which from time imme- 

 morial has been performed by slaves. The big 

 water-wheel revolving in the dark basement of 

 the factory ; the hissing boiler, which, like the 

 Southern slave, is cautiously "lodged" in an out- 

 side "cabin ;" the patient ox and the noble horse 

 are henceforth to be our "hewers of wood and 

 drawers of water." And our sons, — they are to 

 be overseers ,• taskmasters, — not of human sinews 

 "bought and sold ;" not of down-trodden, abused 

 man, thank Heaven, but of the inanimate, soul- 

 less machine. 



The question, then, is not simply whether any 

 given tool or machine will save money. We 

 should consider whether it will save hard work, — 



A few years since we passed two farms in early 

 hay-time. On the first farm a man and a boy 

 were mowing in a lot near the road. We passed 

 along leisurely. The man was far ahead of the 

 boy, who was slowly and awkwardly hacking his 

 way along. After "mowing out" and whetting 

 his own scythe, the man walked back somewhat 

 impatiently, to the boy. "Why don't you put the 

 heel down ?" — "Stand up to your grass." — "There I 

 right into the ground again !" — "Seems so you 

 never would learn." "Well, it's all loose here, 

 and bent out there," replied the boy, as we went 

 out of hearing of what else he had to say, and out 

 of sight of the old black implement in his hand. 

 On the next farm a man and two boys were mow- 

 ing — the shortest and probably the youngest was 

 on the lead. Their scythes and their hats looked 

 new. We heard nothing of their conversation, 

 but everything indicated that they were starting 

 right — that their tools were good, the iron sharp, 

 and the. boys full of courage and ambition. 



This courage and this ambition should be kept 

 alive, if possible, during this season. They are 

 worth more than good tools cost ; more than pret- 

 ty frequent holidays cost ; more than kindness, 

 more than pleasant words cost. We see it stated 

 that a farmer in Illinois kept up the courage of 

 his boys by giving two of them, — one ten, the 

 other twelve years of age — twelve dollars, telling 

 them playfully, to "go and buy out" a neighbor 



