206 MY FARM. 



a quick scent for all offal, which may be had for the 

 cartage, and which goes to pig food, or the fermen- 

 tation of compost. 



I think J have hinted at a character which those 

 will recognize, who know the neighborhood of large 

 New England towns : a prompt talker not bashful, 

 full of life selectman, perhaps ; great in corner 

 groceries, ' forehanded,' indefatigable, trenchant, 

 with an eye always to windward. 



If I were to sketch another type of a New Eng- 

 land farmer, who is, in a small way, successful, it 

 would be a sharp-nosed man, thin, wiry, with a blue- 

 ness about the complexion, that has come from 

 unlimited buffetings of northwesters ; one who has 

 been ' moderator ' at town meetings, in his day, and 

 upon school committees over and over ; one who has 

 sharpened his tongue by occasional talk at ' society ' 

 meeting to say nothing of domestic practice. 



I think of him as living in a two-story, white 

 house, with green blinds, (abutting closely upon the 

 road,) and whose front rooms he knows only by half- 

 yearly summations to a minister's tea-drinking, or 

 the severer ordeal of the sewing circle. His hands 

 are stiff and bony ; all the callosities of axe and 

 scythe and hoe, have blended into one horny texture, 

 the whole of the epidermis ; yet his eye has a keen 

 shrewd flash in it, from the depths of sixty years ; 



