TAKING REINS IN HAND. 65 



and money, that fine farming is not a profession to 

 grow rich by. And yet, our doubtful friends of the 

 homespun will enjoy the neighborhood of such a 

 farmer, and profit by it ; they love to sell him " likely 

 young colts ; " they eagerly furnish him with butter 

 (at the town price), and possibly with eggs ; his own 

 fowls being mostly fancy ones, bred for premiums, 

 and indisposed to lay largely ; in short, they like to 

 tap his superfluities in a hundred ways. They admire 

 Mr. Tallweed, particularly upon Fair days, when he 

 appears in the dignity of manager for some special 

 interest ; and remark, among themselves, that " the 

 Squire makes a thunderin' better committee-man, 

 than he does farmer." And when they read of him 

 in their agricultural journal if they take one as a 

 progressive, and successful agriculturist, they laugh a 

 little in their sleeves in a quiet way, and conceive, I 

 am afraid, the same unfortunate distrust of the farm 

 journal, which we all entertain of the political ones. 



Yet the Squire is as innocent of all deception, and 

 of all ill intent in the matter, as he is of thrift in his 

 farming. "Whoever brings to so practical a business 

 the ambition to astonish by the enormity of his 

 crops, at whatever cost, is unwittingly doing discredit 

 to those laws of economy, which alone justify and 

 commend the craft to a thoroughly earnest worker. 



Having brought no ambition of this sort to my 



