AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Designed to improve all Classes interested in Soil Culture. 
AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, THE MOST USEFUL, AND THE MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN —Washing™h 
ORANGE JUDD, A. M., ) ratnrai ID! MOT® IW t $1.00 peb annum, in advance. 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. ) ©S) A iHlxS t« } SINGLE NUMBERS 1*0 CENTS. 
VOL. XVII.—No. 5.] NEW-YORK, MAY, 1858. [Wew series—No. 136. 
[^“IJusiness Office at No. 189 IVater-st. 
gfTor Contents, Terms, drc.see pajre ICO. 
[copy right secured.] 
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1858, 
by OmsoE Judd, hi the Clerk's Office of the District 
Court vf the United Slates for the Southern District of 
New-York. 
Special Note to Editors. 
The above Copy-Right is only taken out as a security 
against certain literary poachers, who constantly draw 
upon the pages of this Journal, (mainly original,) without 
giving a shadow of credit. 
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any and all desirable articles, and no use or advantage 
wji[ be taken of the Copy-Right, wherever each article 
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culturist. ORANGE JUDD, Proprietor. 
May Day- 
“ The waving verdure rolls along the plain, 
And the w ide forest weaves 
To welcome back 11 s playful mates again 
A canopy of leaves ; 
And from its darkening shadow floats 
A gush of trembling notes. 
Fairer and brighter spreads the reign of May; 
The tresses of ihe woods, 
Wnh the light dallying ol the west-wind play; 
And the full brimming floods, 
As gladly to their goal they run, 
Hail the returning sun.” Percival. 
A thousand mingled associations cluster about 
the month of May. Poets of olden time sung of 
it as the “ Flowery month of May,” the joyous pre¬ 
cursor of the “ Merry month of June.” On May- 
day—in common parlance, the first day of the 
month—the youngsters of both sexes, in Old and 
“ Merry ” England, gathered about their May-pole 
as an annual holiday, with jovial feats of strength, 
and exercise, and dancing, and rude play—often¬ 
times ending in fisticuffs, broken heads and 
bloody noses, among the swains in particular— 
which the poets in their halcyon lays have taken 
care not to chronicle. The girls gathered, and 
wove and braided wieaths and garlands of parti¬ 
colored flowers, with which they decorated their 
own sun-tanned brows, and flaxen hair, and the 
lads cut down boughs from the forests and hedges, 
stood them up in rows, or ambuscades, from behind 
which they played their coarse, practical jokes upon 
each other, either by individuals or parties, or made 
love by couples, as the fit or humor of the occasion 
invited. It was a rough and honest happiness 
for the time, in which the hinds and sweethearts 
of those days disported themselves—in most 
places long since in disuse, and in the few se¬ 
questered nooks yet left, continually going out of 
fashion. 
It is a weeping month of the skies, too, in 
England. Gentle rains and sudden falling show¬ 
ers green up their early spring cropo of barley, 
and oats, and beans, while the Autumn-sown 
wheat and the grassy meadows have already shot 
up their rank herbage into a gloriously promising 
harvest for the later Summer. The cows are low. 
ing in the pastures; the foals are capering 
around the fields, and cutting heiniotisly threaten¬ 
ing capers around their soberly grazing dams; 
while the young lambs on a thousand hills frolic 
in all the fulness of their innocent spirits, or lie 
clustered together by tens and twenties on the 
sunny knolls of the landscape. 
It is not so in America. We have no May-day 
sports. Paas, Pinxter, Easter, and April fool’s 
day are all passed, and May ushers in a month 
of sober toil, and workday reality. Our farm 
crops are already in, or rapidly going into t-he 
ground. Far away South, such work is fully 
done. Our middle States have got their seeds 
pretty much deposited—many of them up and 
growing; while far away North, the laborious ox, 
and sweating horse are in the midst and heat of 
plowing for receiving the seed, or busily drawing 
the harrow to csver it in. Double-trouble, toil- 
and-bubble are the order of the day, from Pr.ssa- 
maquoddy to the peak-end of Florida; from the 
Red River of the North to the farthest shores o( 
the Rio Grande—one everlasting, busy, toiling 
multitude of man and beast—freeman, slave and 
brute. Such is our working agricultural world 
through the month of seeding, culture, and hope¬ 
fulness for the coming yearly h-nrvest. We scarce 
give ourselves time to turn aside and watch the 
tiny, trembling flowers, as they throw out their 
soft, light, downy heads from under the leaves of 
the forest, or the grasses of the field, beautiful and 
fresh as they are, and vainly striving to win our 
attention. Melting showers and heavy rains are 
more welcome by far to the husbandman, and oc¬ 
cupy his absorbed attention. 
There are those, however, pursuing a vocation, 
like that o-f the first Adam, “ to keep the garden 
and to dress it,” who are quite otherwise engaged. 
They toil, and spade, and rake, and dig among a 
thousand brilliant woods, and plants, and flowers, 
which, though “ they neither toil nor spin,” yield 
myriads of delicious hues and odors and gratifica¬ 
tions to our senses, in ministering to our culti¬ 
vated tastes, filling out, equally with the more 
substantial productions of the earth, their delight¬ 
ful mission to us, in making up the great sum of 
Providential blessings with which we are sur¬ 
rounded. These may be termed the fine arts, and 
the poetry of the rural world, which, as the re¬ 
sult of a part of our toil, minister only to the re¬ 
finements of our leisure, and solace us with their 
almost overwhelming beauty and luxury, to 
compensate for the aching energy of our endea¬ 
vors. Useful thus they are, rightly considered, 
equally with the absolute necessaries of the ruder 
field culture, to fill up the sum of our enjoyment, 
and so should they freely receive their share of 
our attention. 
There are many poor delving mortals, how¬ 
ever, who have little part or lot in this de¬ 
lightful out-door world—the dwellers in the great, 
crowded commercial city, or in the hubbub of the 
hammering, bustling town. The song of the caged 
canary, robin, or mocking bird, has greeted them 
through the sunny mornings, as they glinted from 
their imprisonment through the wires before an 
open window. The pots of geraniums, narcissus, 
and exotic roses have smiled upon them from their 
stands in the market places as they hurriedly 
passed—the only harbinger of Spring, except the 
bright glow of a fervid sun, as it melted, and al¬ 
most fainted them on the heated sidewalk ; while 
May-day opens upon them the elaiter, bang, and 
rush of loaded drays, and troubled faces guiding 
and following them along the thoroughfares, as 
the dreaded one of all others—moving-day, in the 
city. Great times for the babies and children; 
toilsome and troublous, jolly and blithesome for 
the heedless servants, scullions and under-strap¬ 
pers ; but woeful, anxious and deprecatory for 
masters and heads of families, who have all 
the risk, and none of the pleasures of “moving.” 
And we—thank fortune that we are not, but_ 
have been of them. Issuing from our sunny 
nook among the hills, where the broad shimmer¬ 
ing of the distant water greets our first morning 
sight, among the songs of wild birds, and dewy 
grass, under the shriek of t! e locomotive whis¬ 
tle, surrounded by anxious and hopeful faces, on 
the same daily errand of life existence as our¬ 
selves, we hurry on to our toilsome, yet agreeable 
labor, and for the time, busy ourselves in our 
dingy apartment, among piles of papers, letters, 
and other written and printed missives, to enter¬ 
tain you, dear reader, in the best way we can, 
with the mental pabulum which is to cheer and 
kelp on your own possibly more useful endeavors. 
City toil is our necessity; a country home is 
our mitigation ; together they are our life. To 
the one we are obliged to resort as the Emporium, 
or gathering place from which we draw the 
streams of what little knowledge of every kind 
we impart to the farthest ends of our broad and 
teeming country ; to the other we retire as our 
resling place, to restore our jaded energies, and 
gather strength for renewed exertion in your be¬ 
half. Could we have our own will, and want, 
the farm should embrace us altogether, and the 
city should only hold us long enough to get its in¬ 
dispensable supplies for our necessities, and we 
would “ whistle o’er the furrowed land ” as our 
da-ily pastime and pleasure. Our fields and our 
orchards, our woods and our meadows, our kine 
and our flocks, the cackle of our poultry yards, 
and the delights of our garden should altogether 
absorb us in our daily out-door vocation; while 
the domestic comforts and pleasures within should 
yield that calm and quiet satisfaction which the 
clamor, and avarice of the contending world of 
society, and business can neither give nor take 
away_But we are homolizing. We started 
with May-day. If you, gentle reader, have sym¬ 
pathized with ourown feelings, as we have hur¬ 
ried through this somewhat inconsequent talk, 
and have caught an idea to which your own feel¬ 
ings have responded, we shall be happy. If not, 
set it down that your editor, on this occasion at 
least, has been only dreaming in a way, at time?., 
peculiar to himself—perhaps. 
