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VOL. VII. 



SPRINGFIELD, JANUARY 1862. 



NO. 1. 



January. 



"We take up our pen to write of tlie new 

 year and its duties. We return our thanks 

 to Him, who wheels this orb in iis mysteri- 

 ous course and continues us in health, to 

 enjoy its various seasons, and to perform the 

 tasks that have become our patrimony. To 

 us the changes of the seasons are all full of 

 interest, whether binding the wheat beneath 

 the ardent gaze of the August sun, or 

 wielding the axe under the frosty zone of 

 regal winter. 



To us, the culture of the soil is a labor 

 of love, from the turning of the furrow, 

 the springing of the tiny plant, through 

 all its stages to the ingathering of its ma- 

 tured products. For long years we were 

 pent up in the counting room, or following 

 the pointiug of the compass in tracing the 

 boundaries of thousands of homesteads. 

 These were arduous duties, a otontinual 

 grinding down of the vigor of body, and 

 wearing out the enjoyment of the mind ; 

 sines and co-sines, tangents, arcs and ses- 

 cants, weary and grow stale; ledgers and 

 day books pall upon the mind, but in rural 

 pursuits there is a never-ending variety, 

 and a mind that has a love for the beautiful 

 and would enjoy the good things of life, can 

 find it on the farm, in the garden and the 

 orchard ^ore surely than in the workshops 

 or the busy marts of trade, where the weak 

 are trampled into the dust or ground to 

 pieces beueath the moving columns who 

 grasp after fortunes made suddenly, 

 which, like the apples of the Dead Sea, are 

 full of bitter ashes. 



The work shops must be filled, trade 



must be fostered, but let us assure our young 

 readers, who see no pleasure in farming, and 

 wish to make a change, that they should 

 make no hasty choice. If one has a taste 

 for the arts, for mechanics, or for trade, let 

 him follow it, for that which accords with 

 his taste is in general best for him, but if 

 he inter these departments simply to have 

 an easier or more pleasant task, he will 

 find when too late that he is mistaken. 



The miser who gloats over his gold, the 

 politician who sacrifices honor, the trades- 

 man who trusts to chance, and the farmer 

 who has no love of the beautiful are alike 

 objects of pity. ;'-■-; 



It is true that a large number of our farm- 

 ers have few comforts, and their families le*?* 

 pleasure, but this is their own fault. With 

 a teeming soil like ours there is no excuse 

 not to have at this season of the year an 

 abundant supply of vegetables, if not of 

 fruits, with everything snug for the winter. 

 Certainly, that farmer can have little en- 

 joyment when his horses are exposed to cur- 

 rents of cold air through a defective s able, 

 whose cows are huddled together under the 

 lea of a friendly fence, or whose swine squeal 

 out their dissatisfaction at lyi.:g on the fror 

 zen ground. 



The pleasure of farming does not eonsisi 

 in a large number of acres half cultivated, 

 nor in a house standing out in the sun and 

 wind, without the surrounding of tree or 

 flowers, but in the beautifying of the homo- 

 stead, and the comforts and fonvenienc«f 

 that should adorn it. With a pleasant home 

 boys will not have such a longing desire to 

 go into other pursuits, or the daughters wish 



