122 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
lloja* Comer. 
• For the American Agriculturist. 
IS POULTRY PROFITABLE 1 
A boy’s ANSWER. 
Perhaps you will be a little surprised to hear 
from a boy of 15 years, concerning poultry, but 
nevertheless, I will give you an account in rais¬ 
ing poultry. On the 1st March, 1853, my 
father had 51 hens and 5 roosters, of the Black 
Poland breed, mixed with the common breed. 
He had also 5 ducks. I present you with the 
account of the hens and ducks for one year, 
from 1st March, 1853: 
POULTRY YARD. DR. 
To 28 pair fowls at 5s. per pair, $17 50 
“ 2$ “ ducks at 6s. “ 1 88 
“ 54$ bushels corn, from 55 to 80 
cts. per bushel, 32 20 
“ 3 bushels oats, at 3s. per bushel, 1 12 
“ 60 lbs. bran, at 1 ct. per lb., 60 
“ Wheat screenings, 1 35 
“ 36f doz. eggs set, at 14 cts. a doz. 5 14 
Expenses, $59 79 
POULTRY YARD. CR. 
SOLD. 
By 321$ doz. hen eggs, from 14 to 
20 cts. per doz., $48 24 
“ 16$ doz. duck eggs, at 14 els. 
per doz., 2 20 
SOLD, Sc USED. 
“ 17 pair chickens, at 4s. per pair, 8 50 
“ 364 “ fowls, at 5s. “ 22 81 
“ 1 “ “ at 6s. “ 75 
“ 2 “ “ at 8s. “ 2 00 
“ 29$ pair ducks, at 6s. per pair, 22 13 
“ Wintering turkeys and guineas, 3 00 
STOCK ON HAND. 
“ 34$ pair fowls, at 5s. per pair, 21 56 
“ 3$ “ ducks, 6s. “ 2 62 
$133 89 
Deduct expenses, 59 79 
Which leaves in clear gain, $74 10 
By the above it seems that each hen laid 76 
eggs, and gained $1 32. Now to the question, 
“ Is poultry profitable ?” I answer yes, and I 
challenge competition. 
Can you send me some seed of the Acorn and 
Boston Marrow squash, and a few China seeds. 
If so, please direct them to A. Fleming, Somer¬ 
ville, N. J. John Fleming. 
Branchburg, Somerset Co., JV. J., .Spril 21, 1854. 
HOW TO COMMENCE BUSINESS. 
Well, boys, we doubt not you would all like 
to rise high in the world, and become good farm¬ 
ers, merchants, &c. Here is a good motto for 
you .—Begin at the lowest round on the ladder 
and iceep climbing ,—and here is a story which 
will illustrate just what we want to say. One I 
of the wealthiest merchants of New-York city 
tells ushow he commenced business. He says: 
I entered a store and asked if a clerk was not 
wanted. “ No,” in a rough tone, was the 
answer—all being too busy to bother with me— 
when I reflected that if they did not want a 
clerk they might want a laborer, but I was 
dressed too fine for that. I went to my lodg¬ 
ings, put on a rough garb, and the next day 
went into the same store and demanded if they 
did not want a porter, and again “no sir,” was 
the response—when I exclaimed in despair 
almost, “ not a laborer ? Sir I will work at any 
wages. Wages is not my object, I must have 
employ, and I want to be useful in business.” 
These last remarks attracted their attention, and 
in the end I was hired as a laborer in the base¬ 
ment and sub-cellar, at a very low pay, scarcely 
enough to keep bod}- and soul together. In the 
basement and sub-cellar I soon attracted the at¬ 
tention of the counting-house and chief clerk. 
I saved enough for my employers, in little 
things wasted, to pay my wages ten times over, 
and they soon found it out. I did not let any 
body about commit petty larcenies without re¬ 
monstrance and threats of exposure, and real 
exposure if remonstrances would not do. I did 
not ask for any ten hour law. If I was wanted 
at 3 A. M. I was there, and cheerfully there, or 
if I was kept till 2 A. M. I never growled, but 
told every body to go home “and I will see 
every thing right.” I loaded off at daybreak 
packages for the morning boats, or carried them 
myself. In short, I soon became indispensable 
to my employers, and I rose—and rose—and 
rose, till I became head of the house, with 
money enough, as you see, to give me any 
luxury or any position a mercantile man may 
desire for himself and children, in this great 
city. 
A Noble Boy.— “Why did jmu not pocket 
some of those pears ?” said one boy to another; 
“ nobody was there to see.” “ Yes there was— 
I was there to see myself, and I don’t ever mean 
to see myself do a mean thing!” 
Written for the American Agriculturist. 
A FEW SOBER THOUGHTS. 
'BY MINNIE MYRTLE. 
It is often the case, that the energies of an 
individual or a nation are supposed not to exist, 
when they are merely slumbering for want of oc¬ 
casion to call them forth. And we are to apt in 
the present day, to think our forefathers and 
foremothers alone possessed the virtues of hero¬ 
ism, heightened by refinement and superior cul¬ 
tivation ; when the only difference between them 
and our own fathers and mothers is, that the 
characteristics of the former were made con¬ 
spicuous by circumstances, and have been re¬ 
corded, while those of the latter shine in a very 
limited sphere, and appear not upon the page 
of history, though not less worthy of such 
honor. We doubt not there are multitudes at 
the present day who would be as eminent for 
self-denial in any great public emergency, as 
were our great grandmothers, and whose home 
virtues would be thought as wortl^ of imita¬ 
tion were they only made known. In those 
days—“the times that tried men’s souls”—the 
more toil, the more self-denial and sacrifice any 
man or woman endured or practised, the more 
he or she was honored, so that there was some 
recompense for suffering, as well as some in¬ 
citement to labor. 
Ambition is a very unwomanly trait; but it 
is impossible, nevertheless, for any human being 
to toil without motive, to be resigned to neglect, 
obscurity, and suffering, when conscious of de¬ 
serving esteem and preferment. Every person 
likes to be appreciated, however humble the 
sphere in which he moves. 
Not long since, I heard an old gentleman 
speak of the impressions which struck him on 
returning to his native village after an absence 
of forty years. He arrived at the old home¬ 
stead on Saturday evening, and first saw the 
playmates of his boyhood in the village church. 
He took his seat where he could see the people 
as they entered, and for the first time in his life 
noticed the superior physical advantages of 
aged men compared with aged women. Those 
who had been boys with him, though now well 
stricken in years, he easily recognized. They 
were gray, perhaps, and furrowed, but were still 
erect, and had no appearance of being careworn 
or gnawed by disappointment. But of all the 
blithe, merry girls whom he had known in 
childhood, scarcely one could he see among the 
groups which were seated around him. The 
women were old, and bent, and haggard. He 
looked around in amazement and also in sad¬ 
ness, and wondered why years had so indelibly 
stamped their impress on the one sex, and trip¬ 
ped so lightly over the brows of the other. 
Those who had been among the fairest and gay¬ 
est in their youth, had not only grown old, but 
seemed to have lost all elasticity of spirit—to 
look unhappy as well as careworn—disappointed 
and wretched as well as dim. He pondered 
long upon the causes which could produce such 
a change and work such effects, but to him 
there was no solution. I could have told him 
that it was very simple. 
They were unhappy. Toil alone never kills 
the spirit—never eats up the heart. They had 
toiled without recompense. Life to them had 
no genuine brightness. They had traveled all 
the weary pathway without the sunshine of 
love—the appreciation which alone can sustain 
through weariness and watching. 
They had married with all the bright hopes 
of girlhood—with the expectation of sympathy, 
and the vision so beautiful to women, of trust 
and dependence, and found themselves looked 
upon as mere housekeepers; somebody to take 
care of children and provide for the daily wants 
of a family. The idea is altogether too preva¬ 
lent that sentiment is weak and foolish, some¬ 
thing which sensible people should not indulge 
in—that love is for lovers, but not for husbands 
and wives. 
Many times have I heard children when they 
were grown up, speak of the way their parents 
lived, and the gloom which was spread over all 
their own childish years by the want of unan¬ 
imity and kind feeling between those who 
should have set an example of loving one ano¬ 
ther. Nothing can ever compensate a woman 
for this want of affection. 
I have often heard a woman censured for be¬ 
coming soured and morose, by those who only 
looked in now and then, when I knew that 
there were daily and hourly falling upon her 
heart, cold, bitter words, which she alone heard, 
and which were enough to chill the warmest 
life blood in the veins. 
Children do not speak of their parents faults. 
God and nature teach them that this is sin; and 
parents seem to think because children cannot 
and do not reprove them, that they do not 
think and feel. But there is no cause from 
which children suffer more, than from the alien¬ 
ation and dissensions of their parents. “ Better 
is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled 
ox with contention,” is not too sentimental a 
doctrine for the Bible to teach on almost every 
page; but though the Bible is considered author¬ 
ity on almost all other points, on this it is 
deemed, practically, if not theoretically, a little 
too old fashioned. 
It is the duty of parents to make for their 
children a cheerful and happy home. “To 
make a gloomy one is almost as wicked as to 
make an irreligious one,” says a distinguished 
minister of the gospel. 
