1877.] 
AMERICAN AGRIC URTURIST. 
467 
.alms-house, or other institution, where he belongs. 
The dainty beggar, who pleads misfortune at your 
door, as a rule, is a fraud and a hypocrite. He 
means to deceive you, and eat your bread without 
-work. Now if Paul’s doctrine be sound, that the 
man who will not work should not eat—it is wrong 
for you to feed this man who plans to live in idle¬ 
ness. You relieve no want of his, that is not pro¬ 
vided for in a legitimate way. You only help for¬ 
ward the work of demoralization already far ad¬ 
vanced in him. You put burdens upon your indus¬ 
trious neighbor, compelling him to pay taxes for 
the support of the idle and the vicious that throng 
the highway. You have no right to indulge your 
misplaced pity at the expense of your neighbors, 
who have to foot the bills yearly for the town en¬ 
tertainment of tramps. There is ample sphere for 
the indulgence of your compassion aud charity, 
without encouraging one of the great public evils 
of our times. And if it is wrong for the individu¬ 
al to interfere with that divine law, which compels 
the eater to work, it is equally wrong for society to 
interpose. The town may feed and shelter its own 
■citizens, who are really needy and helpless. It has 
no right to make paupers of able-bodied men by 
fostering their idleness and vice. Nothing but the 
constraint of hunger and suffering will compel the 
idle to earn their own subsistence. The constraint 
is wholesome for the individual, and for society. 
God has ordained the connection between personal 
toil and physical comfort, and ‘what God hath 
joined together, let no man put asunder.’ ” 
The tramp sermon made quite a stir in Hooker- 
town. Deacon Smith said “ amen ” when he got out 
of the meeting-house door.—Seth Twiggs said, “I 
guess Mr. Spooner’s head is about level to-day.”— 
Jake Frink said, “ It’s as true as gospel, every word 
on’t, hut ’taint exactly the thing for Sunday.” 
Mrs. Deacon Smith said she thought Mr. Spooner 
was rather hard on tramps, and she guessed she 
could tell a thief from an honest man, if he was a 
tramp. The next day a young man came along, 
looking very pale and hungry, said he had not had 
anything to eat for two days, and wanted some 
breakfast. She said he might have some breakfast 
if he would first saw wood enough to pay for it. 
But he said he was very weak and faint, and, in 
fact, was recovering from a fit of, sickness. Her 
"heart melted, and the tramp feasted on the best 
the house afforded. He was set to work in the 
wood-shed to pay for his breakfast, and while the 
good Mrs. Smith was busy up stairs, priding herself 
upon her knowledge of tramps, the pale youth 
clipped into her bedroom to investigate her jewelry. 
.She failed to wind up her watch that night, and her 
jewel box was empty. She was also emptied of her 
conceit, and feeds no more tramps. 
The old heads in Hookertown think Mr. Spooner’s 
-doctrine is good enough for any day in the week. 
This sort of able-bodied pauperism is a crime against 
society, and is to be treated as such. The tramp 
will cease to travel as soon as he finds he must do 
it at his own expense. Private individuals and 
town authorities must shut their doors against him. 
He must be sent back to the city where he landed. 
If he comes a second time, he should be treated by 
law as a criminal. This will cure the evil and re¬ 
duce our taxes. 
Hookertown , Ct., I Tours to command, 
Nov. 1st, 1877. I Timotht Bunker, Baq. 
A Rat-guard.— To keep rats away from anything 
that is hung up, the following simple method may 
GUARD AGAINST RATS. 
be used. Procure the bottoms of some old fruit 
cans, by melting the solder which holds them, upon 
a, hot stove. Bore holes in the center of these 
discs, and string a few of them upon the cord, wire, 
or rope upon which the articles are hung. When a 
rat or mouse attempts to pass upon the rope by 
climbing over the tin discs, they turn aud throw the 
animal upon the floor. This plan, shown in the 
illustration, will be found very effective. 
Drain from a Cesspool. 
The best method of disposing of the waste of 
the house is a matter of serious consideration with 
persons living in country places, or in small towns 
or villages, which are not provided with a complete 
system of public drains and sewers. This waste 
Fig. 1.—CESSPOOL WITH SCREEN. 
has a considerable value, if it can he used as a fer¬ 
tilizer upon grass, in the compost heap, or in the 
-garden, and some manner of thus using it should 
he provided if possible. Generally, where cess¬ 
pools are used to collect the waste from water- 
closets, bath-rooms, and wash-tubs, in houses pro¬ 
vided with these conveniences, there are some mat¬ 
ters which it is desirable to retain in the cesspool, 
as the liquid portion only is conveniently utilized. 
Sometimes cesspools are drained into rivers or 
smaller streams, and the overflow only is required 
to pass off. In this 
case it will he con¬ 
venient to provide a 
screen for the out¬ 
flow, to prevent ob¬ 
jectionable matters 
from escaping. If 
this is provided, the 
cesspool may then be 
flushed out at every 
heavy rain, and to a 
very considerable ex¬ 
tent cleansed or 
purified without per¬ 
mitting any dis¬ 
agreeable results, and the periods of thorough 
cleaning out postponed for several years. A. screen 
that has been used for this purpose, is shown at 
figure 1. It consists of a piece of strong galvanized 
iron wire netting, with a mesh half an inch square, 
cut into the shape shown at figure 2. The drain¬ 
pipe is passed through the round hole in the center, 
which is cut to fit the pipe, and the netting is bent 
where shown by the clotted lines, around the 
shoulder of the pipe, in the form shown at figure 1, 
the flap at each end forming the ends of the screen. 
The joints are then secured by lacing with wire. 
It is impossible for this screen to be choked and 
rendered useless, for when the water rises to the 
lower part of the screen, there is no current against 
it to hold floating matter, and this rises until the 
current flows out at the mouth of the outlet. If 
the floating matter gathers here, the water escapes 
under it; if not the mass rises with the water un¬ 
til an opening is cleared below it. The inlet to the 
cesspool is shown on the opposite side of it. In a 
case in which such a screen as this was made, the 
top of the cesspool was covered with a flag-stone, 
and a round bed of soil was made over it and plant¬ 
ed with hardy bulbs, bv which the precise locality 
can always be ascertained. 
Waste Lands—Make them Useful. 
As one travels through the country, the most con¬ 
spicuous sight, at least to a farmer, is the large pro¬ 
portion of land that adds nothing to the owner’s 
income. Waste land abounds everywhere. It is 
fenced, and has the appearance of farm land, but 
the owner, if a farmer, would be better off without 
it than he is with it. No one locality seems to be 
better or worse than another in this respect, unless 
it be that the Southern States have the most waste 
land, and the Eastern States come next in this re¬ 
spect. There are rocky fields, and fields covered 
with loose stones; swamps and wet ground, and 
land covered with wretched brush and small tim¬ 
ber, and in the South, especially, barren and gullied 
hill-sides. It is true, that to clear up these lands, 
and make them fruitful, will cost in labor, if the la¬ 
bor is valued at the current rates, more than the 
land would bring if offered for sale. But this is 
not the right way to look at this matter. In reali¬ 
ty, it will cost nothing to clear these lands, because 
their owners may do it by working when they 
would otherwise be idle. The way to do it is to set 
about it. To clear an acre or two at a time, of 
those fields that can be cleared ; and to plant with 
timber, of some valuable sort, that ground which 
is too rough for the plow, instead of permitting it 
to grow up with useless brush. In many cases, the 
worst trouble that farmers suffer is, that they have 
more land than they can care for, under their pres¬ 
ent system of management. Hundreds of farms 
are worked as grain farms, that are not well suited 
for any other use than dairy farms, and ground is 
plowed that should be kept in permanent grass. In 
some cases, the owners of land have discovered 
their proper vocation, as in the dairy districts of 
Central New York, in the fruit and grain farms of 
the western part of that State, in the pasture farms 
of the Blue-grass region of Kentucky, and in the 
corn-growing and pork-raising prairies of the West. 
If the system of culture in these places were 
changed, the farmers would be poor instead of be¬ 
ing rich, and one sees very little waste land in these 
localities. There are districts where the surface is 
hilly, and not so well suited for arable purposes as 
for pasture, but where, instead of grass and cows, 
side-hill plows and poor corn fields, washed and 
gullied by rains, are to he seen. Here are waste 
lands in plenty ; and their owners show every sign 
of poverty and want of thrift. It is not easy to 
change these circumstances quickly,^but it is easy 
to begin—just as it is easier to start a stone rolling 
down a hill, than to throw it down bodily; and 
when it is once started, it goes slowly at first, and 
may need help, but it can soon take care of itself, 
aud speedily reaches the bottom. It is just so with 
such improvements as are here referred to. They 
are necessarily begun slowly, but when one or two 
acres of these waste places are reclaimed, the pro¬ 
duct of these adds to the farmer’s resources. He 
is richer than before by the increased value of these 
acres, and he is better able to reclaim more. When 
these in their turn are improved, the means for fur¬ 
ther improvements are greatly enlarged; the am¬ 
bition of the man to excel in his vocation, is excit¬ 
ed, and he speedily becomes a neater, better farmer, 
and necessarily his circumstances are improved. 
Thus the rough waste lands, which give a disagree¬ 
able appearance to the landscape, and are a stigma 
upon its character and that of our farmers, in the 
eyes of our own citizens, and of foreigners, might 
in a short time be improved and a source of profit. 
Export or Eggs and Poultry. —Another new 
opening has been made for our surplus products ; 
viz., the export to Europe of eggs and poultry. 
One steamer from Canada recently carried out 280 
barrels of eggs, and our own steamers from New 
York, have already taken out many cases of dressed 
poultry. This trade will open up an outlet for 
much of our cheap western produce, and will 
doubtless greatly relieve our home markets, which 
are often depressed through superabundant sup¬ 
plies. England imports $13,000,000 worth of eggs 
from the Continent every year, and yet the market 
there is not fully supplied. A large portion of this 
business will now doubtless fall into our hands. 
