GREENWOOD CEMETERY. 
373 
If the stomach is stimulated too high, by eat- 
ing and drinking, it flags as much below when 
empty, and causes pain in both extremes. If 
you eat but little, the stomach is at ease and 
quiet. I drink water only ; and do not use to- 
bacco, nor any intoxicating liquors, nor any 
good things provided by nature in her benifi- 
cence, for the support of men, that the produc- 
tive energies of the soil should be permitted to 
lie dormant so long. Asa proof that the country 
is not a new one, there may be seen along the 
road that leads past the "old mill," about a mile 
narcotics. I do noteattofeel jmy fullness, but ( this side of Greenwood, a house, built in the 
year 1699, of bricks brought from Holland. 
In our opinion, there is nowhere within the 
sound of the city bells so pleasant a ride as 
to Greenwood Cemetery ; and our advice, not 
only to citizens, but to our country friends, 
whenever they have a leisure day in New York, 
is, for a few hours to leave the busy Babel and 
visit this delightful resting place of the dead. 
It may inspire them on returning to their own 
homes and visiting the old burying ground of 
their native village, with its dilapidated walls, 
broken gates, and bare graves, to determine 
that improvement shall be undertaken, at least, 
if not completed equal to the romantic spot of 
which we have been writing 1 . 
merely to check the hollow feeling. If those 
who had suffered as I did, read this, and are 
willing to practise self-denial in eating, they 
may profit by it as I have done. The stom- 
ach should not be idle nor loaded, but uniform 
meals are the safest course. If necessary, eat 
two or three crackers between meals, till the 
habit of eating half meals is established. This 
is condemned by many — the error is in eating 
too large a lunch, and not by eating little. If 
you tell your friend that he eats too much, he is 
offended. 
More persons die by eating and drinking too 
much, than from any other cause. Many would 
live on a hundred years, by this regimen, as 
the antediluvians did, who only ate vegetables. 
Children should be taught to eat as little as 
they will be satisfied with, and plain food will 
accomplish this best. If you are troubled with 
belching, it is a proof that you have eaten too 
much for the stomach to digest properly. If 
the food is properly digested, the wind will pass 
down. Thus it is a good test. 
I write this on the importunity of friends, who 
think others may profit by it. When I was a 
boy, there were no meat markets but in large 
cities, and every one provided salt beef and 
pork for the summer. They ate pork and po- 
tatoes one day, and potatoes and pork the next. 
Then they ate to live; now they live to eat, 
and must have delicacies from the four quarters 
of the globe for a meal. 
David Tomlinson. 
Schenectady, Nov., 1850. 
GREENWOOD CEMETERY. 
If any of our readers feel disposed to inquire 
what this has to do in the pages of a paper de- 
voted to agriculture, we answer, go and see 
what improvement of the soil may do to beau- 
tify a very rough spot; and even in an agricul- 
tural point of view and for purposes of cultiva- 
tion, how infinitely more valuable this place 
now is than it was half a dozen years ago, when 
its diversified surface of hill and dale was all 
covered with bushes and briers, save a little 
patch here and there of grass, just enough to 
dignify the place with the name of " pasture," 
while its real value as such or any other agri- 
cultural purpose, has not been enough perhaps 
in the past fifty years, to pay three per cent, in- 
terest upon its valuation. 
And yet this is within four miles of the city 
of New York ; and immediately adjoining are oth- 
er lands still lying in the same unimproved and 
valuless condition. If it were in a forest coun- 
try where the lands are still held by govern- 
ment at their nominal price of ten shillings an 
acre, it would not be at all surprising; but here, 
where land, properly cultivated, produces such 
a rich return, it seems to be a wasting of the 
RUSSIAN SUPERSTITION ABOUT POTATOES. 
When potatoes were introduced into Russia, 
towards the end of the last century, the people 
conceived a great dislike to them and called 
them the " Devil's fruit," on account of some 
foolish tales that had been told of this now al- 
most indispensable edible. One of the stories, 
was, that they were created on purpose for the 
Devil when he complained on being turned out 
of the garden, that he had no fruit. He was 
told to dig for it which he did, and found pota- 
toes. Hence the common people of Russia, 
who are very superstitious, would neither 
plant nor eat them at first. 
There is a curious and somewhat similar tale, 
in Scotland, about the introduction of potatoes 
into that country at a period long before that 
assigned in history for their introduction by 
Sir Walter Raleigh. 
The legend is that one Michael Scott, who 
was called the Wizard of the North, entered into 
a compact with the Devil to rent a farm in part- 
nership. The Devil was to furnish money and 
the wizard do the labor, giving him alternate 
crops. That is, the first year, he was to have all 
that grew below the surface and the next year 
all that grew above, and the wizard the other 
part. Thinking to outwit the Devil, he planted 
all his land in wheat the first year and all in 
potatoes the next, so the Devil got nothing but 
stubble and vines. But he beat the wizard at 
last, for the severe system of croping exhaust- 
ed the land, so the wizard could neither raise 
wheat nor potatoes, and he was obliged to grow 
more honest to his land as well as to his landlord. 
It would be well for some farmers at the pres- 
ent day, who follow the same dishonest course, 
in the cultivation of rented land, as well as 
their own, to take the hint, or they may find 
themselves in a fair way of being ruined. 
Some of the first cultivators of potatoes 
picked and eat the balls, and conceived a vio- 
lent dislike to the new kind of fruit, and at once 
said potatoes were good for nothing. Opinions 
have very much changed since then. R. 
