128 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[April, 
hadn't put the goads to him. lie was five years 
shingling his house, and he wouldn't have finish- 
ed it then, if a driving storm hadn't brought 
things to a crisis. The shingles were getting 
rotten, and patching did not stop the leaks. All 
the tubs and tin pans in the house had to be 
brought up into the garret every time it rained. 
The pans would overflow, and the water would 
go down through the plastering'- on to the car- 
pets, over the chairs, into the bed-rooms, on to 
the beds, into Aunt Polly's wardrobe, and on to 
her clothes, spoiling everything. The two days' 
rain made such a storm within, that Jake bad to 
leave every thing else, and shingle. Matters 
have gone on much better in-doors than upon 
the farm, for Aunt Polly has some old-fashioned 
notions about her sphere, and don't follow Jake 
into the field. 
I wrote you some years ago, that Jake Prink 
had brought water into his barn-yard by a lead 
pipe, and this was considered pretty good evi- 
dence that your paper was doinga good work, and 
making the farming world move. All the neigh- 
bors opened their eyes in astonishment, doubting 
if the age of miracles was really past. But he 
hasn't finished the job yet. He did not put an}' 
pipe into the trough to carry off the surplus 
water into the drain, and so it runs off over the 
top of the yard, making mud always, and in the 
winter ice, on which his half-fed cattle gel many 
bard falls. Every time his cows lose a calf from 
this cause, or the slink fever, as he calls it, he 
determines to finish up this little job; but it is 
still waiting upon next week. The cure of the 
horse-pond made a sore place in Jake for several 
years, and he determined to drain a swamp back 
of his house, the same year I made my improve- 
ment. He actually dug the main drain, and 
debated a whole year whether he would use 
stone or tile. The tile carried the day, and were 
bought. They still lie piled up under Jake's 
shed, and he has been laying them down next 
week every fall since. It is well tile don't rot. 
If women's rights keeps on enlarging as the}' 
have done the last few years, I expect to see 
Aunt Polly under that shed, broomstick in hand, 
seeing that that job is put through. It will never 
get done by any other motive power. Slack as 
Jake is in regard to all business matters, there is 
one thing I have never known him to put off until 
next week. I don't want to slander my neighbors, 
orsay any tiling agin Hbokertown; but we have 
one grogshop on the street, and Jake goes there 
as regular as sundown for his whiskey and to- 
bacco. If he could only get the habit of putting 
off going there until next week, Jake Prink 
might be a very different man. 
Now, Mr. Editor, I don't want you to think 
that I have any spite agin Jake Prink, or that he 
is a sinner above all others. I think there are 
spots in Jake's character, that, with a little rub- 
bing up, would make good looking-glasses for 
some of your readers to see their faces in. Par- 
son Spooner says pretty often that mankind are 
divided into two classes. I agree with him so 
far. The first class are those who are smart to- 
day, and do up things square. The second class 
are those who are smart next week. These may 
not be so numerous as Mr. Spooner's first 
class, but there is more of them round than I 
like to meet. The "White Oaks is full of such 
people. There hasn't been an improvement up 
there in twenty years, not even in a coal cart. 
Every man's horse has a bobtail, because his 
father's had. „I believe they tie up their broken 
harnesses with the same tow strings that their 
fathers used. I know they have the same old 
hats and pants stuffed in their broken windows. 
It has never been quite convenient to brin? 
home a few panes of glass and a little putty to- 
day. I can tell where one of this great class of 
people lives, as quick as a geologist could tell a 
fossil. When I see a farmer's carts, wagons, 
and tools, scattered all about his premises, I put 
number two agin him. He has been putting up 
a building to shelter these things for ten years, 
and has not done it yet. He is smart next week. 
When I find a man's barn-yard without muck 
or absorbents, I write him down number two. 
When I see the farmer's cattle with the bones 
sticking out, and the hair growing the wrong 
way, I say number two. When I see his fields 
covered with Canada thistles or wild carrot, I 
say number two. When I find his barn-roof 
leaking, and his stable-doors off the hinges, I say 
the smart man next week lives here. I am 
afraid if I marked all the sinners of this class, I 
should get out of chalk. These things are very 
bad — almost as bad as an issue of the Agricul- 
turist not up to time. I wish they were as rare. 
Hookertown, Conn., i Yours to Command, 
March 15, 1S69. | Timothy Bunker, Esq. 
The Butter Market— Good and Bad Butter. 
Butter is a more universal farm product than 
any other that can be named, except milk and 
grass; and of both these it is the culmination. 
Any one going through the country, sitting at the 
farmers' tables, and eating their butter, finds it, 
as a rule, excellent, well flavored, tolerably well 
worked, rarely a little too salt, seldom cheesy, 
and almost never in the least rancid, except 
possibly in the spring before the cows come in. 
Ask the farmers if their wives and daughters 
make good butter, and they will almost univer- 
sally express their candid belief that their butter 
is of extraordinary excellence, — not good simply. 
What a different state of things the market 
discloses ! Here we have the butter of these 
same wives and daughters selling at wholesale 
for 25 cents a pound, 30, 40 cents, and a little of it 
at 50 cents, and even 60 cents a pound. Pifty-fi ve- 
cent butter, at the present state of the market, 
is classed as " prime." It is packed in tubs, has 
good color, good flavor, is well worked, well 
packed, and will keep. Taking this as a stand- 
ard, (and it is the lowest standard a good dairy 
woman should be satisfied with, and not a very 
accurate standard cither), what proportion of 
all the butter that comes to the New York 
market will reach it? how much is superior to it ? 
and what will fall below? We estimate that it 
will include about the tenth part of all that 
comes from the close of one butter-making sea- 
son to the commencement of a new one, and 
that not the fiftieth part of what remains will 
go above it. Butter superior to this is the prod- 
uct of a very few well-known dairies, which 
can almost always be depended upon, and 
dealers handle it with entire confidence. Butter 
worth over 55 cts. by the package has, of course, 
a fine color. When the trier is thrust into it, 
a drop of very slightly milky brine flows out 
around it, and as it is withdrawn, the air sucks 
back with a gentle tz-x-p. The trier is slightly 
bedewed with brine ; the butter is waxy, firm, 
even in color and texture throughout, and has 
that indescribable fragrance which the dealers 
expressively call " rosy." It reminds one of white 
clover pastures in June and July, of every thing 
that is agreeable about a cow ; and one thinks of 
the tidy dairy women, of the clean, cool, stone- 
floored spring-houses and dairies, and the odors 
of purity that pervade them. There are different 
grades of excellence even in this butter, and 
those who can discriminate have the first chance. 
Ver*- few commission merchants, though in 
constant practice, can select the very best tubs 
from such " dairies," and when a consignment 
comes in, which they think is fully up to their 
own highest standard, they send to one of the 
few professional butter tasters, who buy for 
some of the first hotels and restaurants, that he 
may come, inspect the lot, and take what he 
wants. The past season was peculiarly unfavor- 
able for the production of Ibis kind of butter, 
and out of large lots of " extra," the taster some- 
times finds only two or three tubs that will suit 
his fastidious patrons, and for these he pays 
roundly- — several cents above the market price. 
We might fill the whole paper with descrip- 
tions of butter worth less than the standard we 
have named. It is all either noticeably lacking 
in good qualities, or it exhibits positive bad ones. 
Some is beautiful to look upon, waxy and golden, 
but has lost the rosy odor of the fields, and gain- 
ed something from the smoke of the kitchen, 
from milk spilt upon the floor of the dairy, from 
the damp mould of cellar timbers, or from the 
hog-pens near by — something, 'which may simply 
act as a neutralize! - , while no bitterness or posi- 
tively bad flavor can be detected. Other butter, 
from the same causes, i3 bitter, or smoky, or sim- 
ply stale in flavor, and yet well worked, and ap- 
pearing well. Then there is a huge class of butter 
which lacks good flavor, and has more or less of 
bad, wiiich is made at the creamaries or butter 
factories. These establishments aim to employ 
the very best dairy folks, and to spare no pains 
in their processes to secure the best possible ra- 
sult. They fail, as a rule, from the fact that no 
means for rapid and perfect cooling of the milk 
as fast as it is drawn has as yet been generally 
introduced. The warm milk remains an hour or 
two in hot weather, shut up in close cans, which 
is enough to give it bad, foreign odors, which 
will be not only preserved, but concentrated, in 
the butter. We commend to those interested in 
the creamaries the article on milk-coolers in the 
Agricultural Annual for 1869, adding that the 
inventor of the one most approved has pro- 
duced another one much less expensive, though 
not so rapid in its operation. 
Quite a large class of below-par butter is that 
which is overworked. Butter may be as surely 
spoiled by overworking as by not working 
enough. Such butter is often tallowy in cold, 
and greasy in warm, weather. The trier goes 
into the firkin with a dead feeling, and comes 
out as it would out of a cheese; no "tz-f-p" as 
the air sucks in; no dewy brine, or little; 
no fragrance of the pastures or sweet breath of 
kine; and yet it is not bad butter. The color 
is dull, however; it will grow pale on the out- 
side, and this pallor will gradually work in, as 
soon as warm weather comes, and probably be- 
fore, and it will gain a spermy or tallowy flavor, 
and begin to indicate rancidity. There is 
much less danger of butter being overworked 
than underworked. However, without dis- 
cussing tho general subject of butter mak- 
ing, we may not close without charging the 
butter makers among our readers not to be 
tempted to work their butter too warm; not to 
mash and grind with the ladle against the sides 
of the bowl, for this crushes the globules and 
makes greasy butter ; not to salt, and work, 
and wash two or three times over, until the but- 
ter is as dry as a bone, and not moisture enough 
is left to dissolve the salt. All the water left in 
the butter should be a strong brine. If more salt 
be added, it will not be dissolved ; if less be pres- 
ent, it shows either too much water, or it will 
be obvious to the taste that the butter is not salt 
enough. Hence overworked butter is either not 
salt enough, or the salt makes it harsh and drv. 
