AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
FOR THE 
Farm, Grarden, and I I ousehold. 
.“AeUICULTURE IS THE I108T HEALTHFUL, MOST USEFUL, A NO MOST NOISLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAS.”-W«»,mks, 
O&ANG-E JUDD COMPANY, ) ESTABLISHED IN 1842. (TERMS: *1.50 per Annum in Advance, post-free; • 
Publishers and Proprietors, 24:5 Broadway. f German Edition issued at the same rates as in English* ' Four Copies $5* Single Number, 15 Cents* 
VOLUME XXXIX. -No. 5. NEW YORK, MAY, 1880. 
NEW SERIES—No. 400. 
THE NOON-DAY HOUR ON THE FARM. — Drawn by II. E. Robinson .—Engraved for the American Agriculturist. 
The human system taken in all its parts is a very 
wonderful self-governing, and at the same time, de¬ 
pendent machine. In order to keep this machine 
in good running order—and we are using the term 
machine in the highest sense—it must have food 
and rest. All experiments that have been tried to 
test the results of the absence of food upon the 
animal system, have ended, if carried to their full¬ 
est extent, in the same manner with that so often 
quoted experiment in horse keeping, in which, as 
related by the owner: “Just as I had got him so 
he would get along on one straw a day, he died.” 
The system will assert its demands for food in the 
severe pangs of hunger, and the lack of rest will 
make itself known in involuntary sleep. Out of 
these necessities of the case, there'has grown 
the common-sense custom of “ taking a nooning” 
■of an hour or so in the middle of the day, in which 
the system is replenished with food, and the nerves 
Copyright, 1880, by Orange Jtjdd Com 
and muscles refreshed by a period of inactivity. 
A Spanish-American town is in mid-day hours as 
quiet as one in New England on the Sabbath. 
One from the North in visiting such countries is 
apt to look upon the people as indolent, but he 
soon falls in with the custom, and finds that the 
siesta, as the noon-day nap is called, and which is 
taken by the richest and poorest alike, is not a 
manifestation of laziness, a mere habit, but a 
wise compliance with the demands of the climate. 
In the above engraving of an after-dinner scene 
upon the farm in early summer, or in “hoeing 
time,” as we sometimes say, the artist has at¬ 
tempted to show the manner in which different 
members of the family pass the noon-day hour. 
The hired man is spending his time in the compan¬ 
ionship of his pipe, while his thoughts may be 
wandering in a foreign land from which he came 
not many months ago. The boys—and by the way, 
s'y. Entered at the Post Office at New 
who enjoy a long nooning more than they—are 
stretched upon the grass, one with a book, while 
the other is having a good time with old “ Rover ” 
—the joy of the young farmer’s heart, and the best 
sheep dog in the neighborhood. The scene at the 
well is—well 1—the old, old story ?—we will let well 
enough alone. The head of the family finds his 
rest in the newspaper, and is refreshed with the 
knowledge of the doings of the great and active 
world beyond the boundaries of his farm. In the 
half hour dividing the labors of the morning from 
that of the afternoon, he acquires a fund of in¬ 
formation that keeps him abreast with the world, 
and alive to the importance of his own calling. A 
little time thus taken from the toils of the day re¬ 
freshes and strengthens the man, and makes the 
whole life fuller, and, therefore, nobler and better. 
The Noon-day Hour should not be a time of thought¬ 
less inactivity, but a period of intelligent recreation. 
York, N. Y., as Second Class Matter. 
