74 M? FARM. 



his care is he may get his full wage, and a good 

 jollification ' nixt St. Parthrick's day. ' 



This is only iny way of introducing the labor 

 question, which, in every aspect, is a serious one to 

 a party entering upon the management of country 

 property. If such party is anticipating the employ- 

 ment of one of Sir Thomas Overbury's milk-maydes, 

 or of the pretty damsel who sang Marlowe's song to 

 Izaak Walton, let him disabuse his mind. In place 

 of it all, he will sniff boots that remind of a damp 

 cattle yard, and listen to sharp brogue that will be a 

 souvenir of Donnybrook Fair. In briefest possible 

 terms, the inferior but necessary labor of a farm 

 must be performed now, in the majority of cases, by 

 the most inefficient of Americans, or by the rawest 

 and most uncouth of Irish or Germans. 



There lived some twenty or thirty years ago in 

 New England, a race of men, American born, and 

 who, having gone through a two winters' course of 

 district school ciphering and reading, with cropped 

 tow heads, became the most indefatigable and inge- 

 nious of farm workers. Their hoeing was a sleight of 

 hand ; they could make an ox yoke, or an axe helve 

 on rainy days ; by adroit manipulation, they could re- 

 lieve a choking cow, or as deftly, hive a swarm of bees. 

 Their furrows indeed were not of the straightest, but 

 their control of a long team of oxen was a miracle 



