26 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
WASHINGTON AS A FAHMEH. 
The following extracts from “Irving’s Life of Washing- 
ton,” showing his love for country life, and his habits as 
a farmer, will interest our readers, if they love their farms 
as he did his. 
In his letter from Mount Vernon, he writes : 
“I am now, I believe, fixed in this seat, and I hope to 
find more happiness in retirement than lever experienced 
in the wide and bustling world.” 
This was a deliberate purpose with him — the result of 
enduring inclinations. Throughout the whole course of 
his career, agricultural life appears to have been his beau 
ideal of existence, which haunted his thoughts, even 
amid the stern duties of the field, and to which he recurred 
with unflagging interest whenever enabled to indulge his 
natural bias. Mount Vernon was his harbor of repose 
where he repeatedly furled his sail, and fancied himself 
anchored for life. No impulse of ambition tempted him 
thence; nothing but the call of his country, and his de- 
votion to the public good. The place was endeared to 
him by the remembrance of his brother, and of the happy 
days he had passed here with that brother in the days of 
his boyhood ; but it was a delightful place in itself, and 
well calculated to inspire the rural feeling. 
The mansion was beautifully situated on a swelling 
height, crowned with wood, and commanding a beauti- 
ful view up and down the Potomac. The grounds imme- 
diately about it were laid out somewhat in the English 
taste. The estate was apportioned into separate farms, de- 
voted to different kinds of culture. Much however, was 
still covered with wild woods and indented with inlets ; 
haunts of deer and lurking-places of foxes, “No estate 
in United America,” observes he in one of his letters, “is 
more pleasantly situated. In a high and healthy country, 
in a latitude between the extremes of heat and cold ; on 
one of the finest rivers in the world — a river well stocked 
with various kinds of fish at all seasons of the year, and in 
the spring with shad, herring, bass, carp, sturgeon, etc., in 
great abundance. The borders of the estate are washed 
by more than ten miles of tide- water; the whole shore, in 
fact, is one entire fishery.” 
Washington carried into his rural afifairs the same 
method, activity and circumspection that had distinguish- 
ed him in military life. He kept his own accounts, post- 
ed up his books, and balanced them with mercantile ex- 
actness. The products of his estate, also, became so noted 
for the faithfulness, as to quality and quantity, with which 
they were put up, that it is said any barrel of flour that 
bore the brand of George Washington, Mount Vernon, 
was exempt from the customary inspection in the West 
India ports. 
He was an early riser — often before day-break in the 
winter, when the nights were long. On such occasions 
he lit his own fire, and wrote and read by candle-light. 
He breakfasted at seven in summer, and at eight in winter. 
Two small cups of tea and three small cakes of Indian 
meal, (called hoe-cakes,) formed his frugal repast. Im- 
mediately after breakfast he mounted his horse, and visit- 
ed those parts of his estate where any work was going on, 
seeing to everything with his own eyes, and often aiding 
with his own hand. Dinner was served at two. He ate 
heartily, but was no epicure, nor critical about his food. 
His beverage was smail-beer or cider, and two glasses of 
old Madeira. He took tea, of v;hich he was very fond, 
early in the evening, and retired for the night about nine 
o’clock. 
We find him working for a part of two days with%eter, 
his smith, to make a plow on a new invention. This, 
after two or three failures, he accom,plished. Then, with 
dess than his usual judgment, he put his two chariot horses 
to the plow, and ran a risk ofspoiling them in giving his 
new invention a trial over ground thickly swarded. Anon, 
during a thunder storm a frightened negro alarmsthe house, 
with word that the mill is giving way, upon which there 
is a general turn out of all the forces, with Washington at 
their head, wheeling and shoveling gravel, during a pelt- 
ing rain, to stop the rushing water. — Mt. Vernon Record. 
EIGHT IN STABEES. 
Stables should be so constructed, by the insertion of 
windows in various parts of thebuilding, that they should 
be “light as day.” A “dark” stable is only a suitable 
“black hole” — prison house for such a vicious specimen - 
of the equine race as the notorious “Cruiser;” it is also 
the very worst location for any kind of animal. Sir A. 
Nylie (who was long at the head of the medical staff in 
the Russian army) states that the cases o*^ disease on the 
dark side of an extensive barrack at St. Petersburg, have 
been uniformly, for many years, in the proportion of three 
to one, to those on the side exposed to a strong and uni- 
form light. Humboldt has also remarked that, among 
bipeds, the residents of South America, who wear very 
little clothing — thus allowing the cutaneous, as wellas the 
orbital surfaces, to receive a free ray ot light, enjoyed im- 
munnity from various diseases which prevaile extensive- 
ly among the inhabitants of dark rooms and underground 
locations, and so excellent an authority as Linnaeus con- 
tends that the constant exposure to solar light, is one of 
the causes which render a summer journey through high 
northern latitudes so peculiarly healthful and invigorating. 
Dr. Edwards has also remarked that persons who live ia 
caves or cellars, or in very dark or narrow streets, are apt 
to produce deformed children ; and that men who work 
in mines are liable to disease and deformity. 
Light, therefore, is a condition of vital activity, and in 
view only of preserving the sight of a horse, it is abso- 
lutely necessary that while he be the habitat of the stable, 
his optics shall have free access to the sun’s rays. 
If a horse was in the same condition as a polype, with 
no organ of vision, who shuns light, a dark stable might 
prove to be his earthly paradise, but as the horse has 
special organ of vision, evidently susceptible to the influ- 
ence of light and the integrity of his organism, or a part 
of the same, depending entirely on the admission of light, 
it is absolutely necessary that stables should be be con- 
structed accordingly. — Am. Vet. Jour. 
TO PREVENT SOWS FROM KIEEING THSIR 
Young. 
About two years ago we first mentioned what we have 
since seen tried and proved entirely effectual as a pre- 
ventive against the killing of pigs by the mother — an un- 
natural, though by no means unusual proceeding on the 
part of some so ws. The matter was again brought to our 
mind by a communication from E. G. Buxton, of Yar- 
mouth, who says there has been ah unusual loss of pigs 
in his neighborhood within a few weeks past, and recom- 
mends, as the easiest and surest preventive, to give the 
sow^ about half a pint of good rum or gin, which soon 
produces intoxication, and the drunken mother, unlike 
some human mothers, becomes endrely harmless towards 
her young, and will even accommodate her position to the 
best advantage of her pigs, and on her recovery from her 
“bender,” she becomes so much civilized in her dispo- 
sition as to eradicate all signs of savageness towards her 
young, and she will manifest all the motherly care that is 
due to her “pledges of affection.” We also know of this 
remedy being tried by a neighbor of ours but a few days 
since, and proving entirely effectual, not only overcoming 
the disposition of the sow to kill the pigs, but making her 
as careful of them as could be desired . — Maine Farmer. 
