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 —' WASHINGTON 
OIEAMCJE A. M., 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. 
II »«. 
$1.00 FES ANNUM, IN ADVANCE. 
SINGLE NUMBERS J O CENTS- 
NEW-YORK, SEPTEMBER, 1858. [NEW series-No. ho. 
YOL. XVII.—No. 9 ] 
(^“Office at 180 Water*st.j (Near Fulton-st.) 
OgpFor Contents, Terms, &c. see pasrc 288, 
[copy right secured.] 
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1858, 
by Orange Judd, in the Clerk’s Office of the District 
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American Agriculturist in CSwman. 
The AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST is published in 
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September. 
She never tattles, or plays the coquette, 
Nor gossips with the idle village set, 
Sleeps soundly when her daily task is done, 
And wakes before her window greets the sun. 
Holty . 
The ideal of a country girl, which the poet here 
gives, lets us into a very important secret of 
farm life. For it must be confessed, that with all 
the charms with which it is actually invested, and 
with those superadded, which the imagination 
throws around it, country life is not attractive to 
the great mass of those who cultivate the earth. 
While there are those who enter into the spirit 
of their calling, and find it the most beautiful and 
enjoyable life, the large majority find it a painful 
endurance, are discontented, and watch for the 
first opportunity to escape from the toils and as¬ 
sociations of the farm. You may demonstrate to 
them that the soil is the safest investment for 
their money, that its cultivation is the most health¬ 
ful and honorable employment, that its pecuniary 
returns are the most safe and satisfactory, they 
are still discontented, and sigh for a change. 
it has been well said that “ the cultivation of 
the farm is the natural employment of man. It is 
upon the farm that virtue should thrive the best, 
that the body and the mind should be developed 
the most healthfully, that temptations should be 
the weakest, that social intercourse should be the 
simplest and sweetest, that beauty should thrill 
the soul with the finest raptures, and that life 
should be tranquilest in its flow, longest in its 
period, and happiest in its passage and its issues. 
This is the general and the first ideal of the farm¬ 
er’s life based upon the nature of the farmer’s 
calling, and a universally recognized human want.” 
Yet farm life presents no such beautiful aspect to 
multitudes who are engaged in it. It is repul¬ 
sive, and all over our country the cream of the 
agricultural population rises annually, and disap¬ 
pears forever from the farm. The sifting process 
has been going on for the last half century, and 
all the new life and vigor infused into agricultur¬ 
al pursuits, by societies and clubs, by public dis¬ 
cussions and by the monthly and weekly papers, 
have hardly arrested the emigration. There are 
many towns, in the older States that have 
gained nothing in wealth or population for the 
last forty years. They are simply prolific seed 
beds for the supply of other callings. 
The poet gives us a clue to one of the causes 
of this depopulation of the farming districts. He 
presents us not with his own, but with the farm¬ 
er’s ideal of a prospective wife and mother. She 
must have no love for gossip, which means that 
she shall rarely visit her neighbors. She must 
not be coquettish, that is. she must ignore attrac¬ 
tive dress, and all those womanly arts by which 
she shines in society. She must go to bed with 
the hens, sleep soundly, and be up with the lark, 
to attend to her daily tasks. Labor is glorified, 
as the chief end of man and woman upon the 
farm. 
Any one intimately acquainted with the habits, 
and style of living among the cultivators of the 
soil knows, that there is more truth than poetry 
in this representation, and it is to this feature of 
farm life, in part, that so many are repelled from 
it. In many a rural district, the great man is not 
at all distinguished for his intellectual endow¬ 
ments, or for his moral qualities. He is simply 
your man of muscle, and his heroic achievements 
are feats of physical strength—huge trees felled 
by the axun the shortest possible time, heavy 
stones lifted to their place in the wall, and acres 
of thick grass mowed in the quickest time upon 
record. The standard of excellence is brute 
muscle, and could a man be endowed with ihe 
strength of a horse he would become a demi-god, 
and receive the homage of the multitude, without 
any other change. 
Now our humanity revolts at this glorification 
of muscle over mind and heart. A farmer is 
made for something better than to tax his mus¬ 
cles with perpetual toil, and his manhood is not to 
be measured by the number of pounds he can lift, 
or the skill with which he can wield an ax or a 
scythe. His wife is not to fill her place, and glo¬ 
rify her womanhood, only by her household in¬ 
dustries. She has a higher value than to darn 
stockings, and make butter and cheese. All these 
industries in the house, and upon the farm, are 
but the instrument of the true life they should 
lead Farm life with all the beauties and glories 
that encircle it is no better than chimney sweep¬ 
ing with its soot and sweat, if it do not rise above 
its work. Man rebels against toil and drudgery 
simply for their own sake. He will work hard and 
glory in it, for a noble end. 
It is because so much is made of muscle, and 
so little of mind, that multitudes of the young of 
both sexes quit the farm in early life. They get 
some notion of life outside of the farm, not only 
from school books, and visits to the market town, 
but from the weekly journal of politics or relig¬ 
ion that they read. Distance lends enchantment 
to the view, and as soon as they escape parental 
authority, they are off where labor has some higher 
reward than the feeding of the person, and the 
filling of the purse. 
There is, too, upon the farm, a great neglect of 
all ornament. As a rule every thing is managed 
solely with reference to utility. No appeal is 
made to that sense of the beautiful which is a 
part of our being, and which God addresses every¬ 
where in the works of his hand. No attention is 
paid to ornament, even where it can be had with¬ 
out cost. The house often has a barn look, and 
is only distinguished from the dormitory of the 
cattle, by a little more protection from the weath¬ 
er. Like the barn, it is often unpainted, though 
there is economy as well as beauty in the oil and 
lead. It is often without shutters or curtains to 
the windows, without carpets to the floors, or pa¬ 
per to the walls. There is no appeal made to the 
taste, from cellar to garret. It is the simplest 
provision possible, made for an eating and sleep¬ 
ing animal. The great room of the house is the 
kitchen, and here, too often, the cooking, the eat¬ 
ing, and the whole social intercourse of the fami¬ 
ly takes place. There is no opportunity for the 
household to forget their toils, and abandon them¬ 
selves to the enjoyments which their higher na¬ 
tures crave. A room to live in, to enjoy the so¬ 
ciety of wife and children, to receive friends and 
entertain them, to read, write and worship in, 
where one can feel that he is something more 
than an animal, and has other duties than physi¬ 
cal toil, is a room yet to be added to many a farm 
house. There is as little taste shown upon the 
farm, as in the home. The fences are made to 
stop cattle ; the wall is not faced, the rails are 
not laid in straight lines. The meadows are still 
peopled with stumps, and rocks, and the borders 
fringed with unsightly brush and brambles. Work 
that will secure results the present season is the 
one thing needful. There is never a time when 
the farmer can clean up his fences, and meadows, 
and make them look as if a man of taste was 
lord of the soil. 
Young people of the present generation who 
read of the light of the nineteenth century, be¬ 
come disgusted very early with this barren mat¬ 
ter of fact life. They crave society and long for 
the life of the village or the city, where man lives 
for something outside of his calling, and even 
business has a holiday aspect. If their tastes 
cannot be cultivated and gratified upon the farm, 
they will go where they can be. This topic is 
suggestive, and will be resumed on anothe:' occa¬ 
sion. 
Empty vessels make the greatest sound ; emp¬ 
ty heads ditto. 
Mental ornament will hide bodily defects. 
