The Locust. 



been pulled up, and there it lay, posts and rails and pale?. 

 I asked the Judge how long the posts had been in the 

 ground. He said eight- and-twenty years. Each post had 

 been a little tree, just chopped down, sawed off to the 

 proper length, and squared, and each containing about 

 half afoot of timber. They were all as sound as they had 

 been the first day that they were cut down ; and even the 

 little sharp edges left by the axe-chops, at the part where 

 the square part met with the un-squared part : even the 

 little axe-chops were sound. The Americans use what 

 they call stakes, to hold on the top-rail of what they call a 

 worm- fence. These are generally made of little limbs of 

 trees, about eight feet long, and about the bigness of a 

 hop-pole. I saw many of these at Judge Mitchell's on 

 that day, which he assured me had been standing as stakes 

 for upwards of thirty years. I hinted to the men of Kent 

 that I would teach them how to make everlasting hop- 

 poles ; and this is a duty that I particularly owe to my 

 native town of Farnham, so famous for hops. 



333. On the 25th of October of the same year, 1819, 1 x^sls 

 in company with Doctor Peter Townsend, at Mr. Judge 

 Lawrence's, at Bayside, in the township of Flushing, 

 Long Island. I was talking to them about this Locust- 

 tree project; and here I cannot refrain from making an 

 observation which I have more than once made in my 

 Year's Residence ; namely, that, say what they will of the 

 selfishness of Jonathan, I say that he is the most truly 

 liberal of all mankind. At home, he never grudges his 

 neighbour his good fortune; he is always made happy by 

 his neighbour's success and prosperity : and, as to foreign 

 nations, he is always anxious that they should possess all the 

 products, all the inventions, all the improvements that he 

 himself enjoys. In conformity with this most amiable dis- 



