SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
283 
credible is the amount positively wasted and thrown away 
in kitchens whose owners suppose themselves too poor to 
buy shovel and tongsto handle fire with, and whose cook- 
ing apparatus and table furniture would be dear at the 
price of a single barrel of corn. It i3 a mistake to believe 
that poor people are generally the best economists. In 
nine cases out of ten, so far as our observations have ex- 
tended, both North and South, it is the want of economy 
that keeps young and healthy families poor in this country, 
however I$w their circumstances when they start in life 
Doing every thing at a disadvantage, and never studying 
the ways and means of improvement with which a good 
providence has blessed them equally with the rest of 
mankind, they toil, and fret, and grumble through an un- 
happy existence, and die after propagating another gene- 
ration to follow in the footsteps of their parents. 
No one, we believe, has patented a Thinking Machine; 
but a popular invention of the kind might be very useful. 
Wise thinking ever precedes wise action; and it is the 
dearth of the former that impairs the home economy of the 
masses, in all nations. When biting frost and gnawing 
hunger moves the natural instincts within us, man essays 
to think fora purpose. It is the pressure of immediate 
necessity that reforms the conduct of the million, where 
reform is most needed, if reformed at all. Nothing short 
of this fact, amounting to a general law, will satisfactorily 
account for the universal improvidence of civilized, Chris- 
tian communities. Man’s natural improvidence is the 
grand obstacle to his progress in domestic economy. He 
is slow to see this iinprovidence, to make it the subject of 
serious thought, and, therefore, he remains, from age to age, 
the same poorly housed, poorly clad; and poorly fed ani- 
mal that he was in the days of Aerah.am. How’ to reach 
a higher standard of comfort without an increase. of labor, 
is the problem to be solved. One of its phases may be 
^hus plainly and truthfully stat.ed ; 
This article is written in the house of a tenant farmer in 
the District of Columbia ; and both he and bis wile are 
native Americans. 
Their economy permits several chickens toroost^on the* 
head-board over the bed on which they sleep, ev<ery night; 
the excuse being that foxes catch their chickens if not 
brought into their sle^eping room. Domestic guano is a 
valuable article ; but its deposit, by dung-hiil fovyls, on 
or in one’s bed, is carry household econora.y to a length 
that but few will folldw.‘ 
The reckless breaking of door hinges and windows, 
wagons, carts, harness, plows, harrows, cultivators, axes, 
shovel, spades, hoes, and blhor tools -and implements of 
tillage and husbandry, provokes a lecture on bad econo 
my. Habits of negligence and wastefulness in this matter 
cause the loss of millions every year. No other spirit a|:i 
pears so industrious as that of destruction, both in doors 
and out, especially if the owner of thb premises is much of 
his timeout of the country. 
An absent man may find it dl^cult, if not impossible to 
enforce rules of good economy ; but one who is able to 
stay on his farm the year rounH, is happily exempt from 
all the evils of absenteeism. He has but to study rural 
economy in all its bearings on his interest and duty 
master the science, and govern his estate according to its 
best precepts. The perfection of domestic economy, 
whether in town or country, is to be substantially rich, 
comfortable, and independent, with whatever means one 
may possess. One may be nominally well to-do in ths* 
w'orld, yet if largely in debt, it may spoil his system o?k‘ 
economy in escaping sacrifices and make- shifts for a time^ 
and lead him into evil practices, in spite of his better judg- 
ment. Families living in cities, who go to market and 
purchase at the highest retail prices, almost every meal 
they eat, aptly illustrate one feature of poor domesii* 
economy. They are the victims of popular pride, begot' 
ten by Poverty on the harlot Fashion. Pride, poverty and 
fashion are patent elements of discord in the domestic 
circle, as every reader will bear witness. They affect 
American agriculture in a thousand ways to the equal in- 
jury of the soil and those who own and cultivate it. The 
man who is the slave of pride, of fashion, or of poverty* 
endures a degree of bondage more galling and exacting 
than any other. He really has not time left at his disposal 
for study and wise thinking. Hence, his inability to sever 
the chains that bind his limbs, and to shake off the incu- 
bus that sits ever on his breast when he lies down to sleep 
and forget his troubles. The inner man must be educated 
in greater freedom from the tyranny of fashion, which is 
the living embodiment of the ignorance of the past, befor© 
our domestic habits can be easily reformed. 
In seasons of plenty, like the present, vegetable and. 
animal food in the greatest abundance should be well cured 
and stored away to meet future wants. Dried meats, po- 
tatoes, beets, pumpkins, peaches and other fruits may be 
kept for years. 
In 100 pounds of Irish potatoes, as dug frorp the earth, 
t.here are about 75 pounds of 'water. In sweet potatoes* 
and in esculent roots, and most fruits, the per centage of 
water is still larger. The best lean meat taken from ti» 
ox, a sheep, or a hog, is nearly three- fourths water ; and 
how one can bes^t remove the excess of water from the 
'curd’s obtained or obtainal>fe ffqrfi rnilk, f/otn l.mtUir, 
vegetables, fruits, dereals and ificaUi, to preserve them, in- 
volves nrany interesting questions in rural economy. 
Curdsdurve long been pressed into .solid cheese to jVesefve 
them fiir future use ; and in sabplying the English and 
French armie^ at the s^eige pf Sevastopolnvith much need- 
ed vegetables, ,,the hydraulic press^is sucgc^ully employ- 
ed. Cooking, drying and pressing are im'portant arte im 
domestic ecoVfomy. The nutritive projlfcrties df lOl) lbs. of 
turnips may, by simply slicing and drying them, be coa- 
den.sed into lO lbs. Cabbages may be? consolidated "from 
five to one. Garden vegetables and fruits arc no loiiget 
to be regarded as peculiarly perishable 'commoditie*. 
Horticulture is to supply its great,, staples for e^pqit, lik» 
those of cotton, tobacco, rice, corn and wheat. Tiw 
science of feeding rnankirfd is in its inlancy, tind, ther&- 
fore, likely to grov.-and improve as human wants stimm- 
late the inventive genius and researches ol’ the age, Puv© 
solidified milk is now curried round the globe for dai^ 
use of the common sailor, dissolved in distilled water. He 
may have fresh peaches, too, with hisrailK Uie yearrouad* 
aa he circumnavigates the round world, I*. 
