18(50 J 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
43 
Slicks from a Lantern.XVI. 
BY DIOGENES REDIVIVUS. 
HOW THE FARM IS DEPOPULATED. 
Nothing is more common in 
the rural districts than to find 
townships and parishes, where 
there lias been no increase of 
population or wealth for the last 
fifty years. In some places there 
has been a decrease, the sanctuary is closed, the 
school-house is not opened except in Winter, and 
everything wears the air of desolation. The farm¬ 
houses only show glimpses of the coat of paint 
that was put on in the last generation, and the 
barns reveal their scanty stores and diminished 
stock, through many a gaping hole and unhinged 
door. The bucket is not only moss-grown, but 
leaky, the curb is shattered, and the well-sweep 
is decaying. The garden fence is mended with 
brush, briers every year usurp a wider domain 
under the wall, and the weeds increase in varie¬ 
ty and luxuriance as useful plants die out. The 
boys and girls, long before they reach their major¬ 
ity, desert the homestead in quest of fortune in the 
city or village, upon the prairie, or on the sea. 
This very common fact is little understood in the 
region where it most frequently occurs, and the 
parents are not able to conceal their astonishment 
that they can not keep a single child at home to 
take care of them in their old age. My lantern 
must throw a little light upon this dark spot in 
farm life. 
Joe Sedgewick lives in one of these blighted 
neighborhoods, and is now with his wife, hard on 
upon seventy years of age. They have managed to 
raise up a family of seven children, four sons and 
three daughters, not one of whom is left with 
them, or settled in their neighborhood. A grand¬ 
son born and bred in the city, with the prospect of 
lull possession of the farm at no distant day, 
has been induced to take up his abode with the 
old folks, and smooth their pathway to the grave. 
The senior Sedgewick has always been an indus¬ 
trious man, having been educated in that school 
of morals which teaches that the chief end of 
man is to work. His farm was not paid for, and 
he felt that it was incumbent upon him to take no 
rest or recreation, until that honorable object was 
accomplished. He worked early and late at his 
business, hiring but little labor, and that only in 
the Summer. He was up at four in the morning, 
the year round, taking care of cattle, fattening 
swine, carting wood, plowing, planting, mowing, 
and gaihering in the harvests. 
As soon as young Joe was big enough to mount 
a horse, he was put upon old Dobbin, to plow out 
the corn for hoeing. This was very entertaining 
for a bright little boy of six years, for a while, 
and he almost felt like a man, as the light pull of 
the rein guided the horse to the right or left, ac¬ 
cording to his will. But as the long, hot days of 
June came on, Joe began to get tired before noon, 
and sometimes the little fellow got asleep in his 
saddle. For this he was scolded, and sometimes 
pelted with a sod. His legs ached at the unequal 
motion of the horse, and the jerking of the plow, 
and it seemed to him that the corn rows grew 
longer every day that he rode. He was put into 
the field to plant and hoe as soon as he had 
si l ength for the work. His childhood ended 
when he was about ten years of age, and he nev¬ 
er had any youth. The senior Sedgewick did not 
h- lieve in play for his boys; could not conceive 
that a rational being had any strength to waste 
in such nonsense, when work would bring money. 
This could not, however, be wholly prevented. 
Whi’o it>e. 1 itv was at school, he indulged in the 
sports of the play ground, ball, goal, hide-and- 
seek, sliding and skating. This was such a con¬ 
trast to the all-work life of the farm, that Joe 
grew fond of his hooks. The school-house Avas a 
sort of palace to him, associated with bright 
faces, sunny smiles, and the gladsome shouts of 
children. It was a sad day to him, when the 
Winter school closed, and he began the Spring 
work. For eight long months, there was to be 
no relaxation, no visiting, no fishing, even on 
rainy days, for his father always had work for 
stormy weather, sometimes under cover, but 
quite as often in the soaking rain. The lad did 
not murmur much at this, for his father worked, 
and the hired men worked, and it seemed very 
manly for a boy to do likewise. 
But his boyish nature craved occasional play- 
days, something pleasant to look forward to, 
when the hoe and the plow might be forgotten. 
He had learned to read, and got occasional 
glimpses of the few books in the household. But 
his father did not fancy the bookish tendencies of 
his boy, and always contrived to keep him as 
busy as possible in the evening, so that he could 
not read. Sometimes it was shelling corn, some¬ 
times it was churning or assorting potatoes. But 
Joe, learning that this was the settled policy of 
his father, contrived to get tired very early even¬ 
ings, and put off for bed,where the tow-wick candle 
lit up the forbidden pages, and the boy refreshed 
his mind, more than his body with sleep. 
By the time he was fifteen, these stolen wa¬ 
ters were so sweet, that he could no longer en¬ 
dure the cheerless, all-work life of the farm. He 
was so much set upon books and an education, 
that his father consented to his leaving home for 
school. By dint of teaching, and hard struggling 
he worked his way through college, became a 
lawyer, and rose to eminence in his profession 
in the city. 
The second son had few of the intellectual 
tastes of the first, took naturally to work, and 
was the special delight of the father. But he was 
kppt with a tight rein, and knew as little of play 
as his brother. He was disposed to remain long¬ 
er upon the farm, and to make improvements 
that his father did not appreciate. He had a taste 
for fine cattle and horses, and always wanted the 
best calves saved for cows and working oxen. 
But the butcher also wanted the best calves, and 
the butcher’s purse usually outweighed the boy’s 
arguments. He wanted the steers kept clean, 
and their horns ornamented with brass knobs, to 
make them look better, as well as to keep them 
from goring other animals. He wanted the fences 
kept in good repair, the Brush cleaned up under 
the walls, the Summer fuel cut and piled in Win¬ 
ter, and all things kept snug around the farm and 
its buildings. But the father despised these 
praiseworthy tastes in the hoy, laughed at him for 
his painstaking, and sometimes scolded him for 
his waste of time upon these unimportant matters. 
At the age of seventeen, the hoy’s' trunk was 
packed for the villago, where he had found a place 
in a store, and could keep things in order. 
The younger sons following the sisters, had 
still more cultivated tastes as they grew up. 
While the father’s views of farming remained un¬ 
changed, his discipline had relaxed somewhat, 
and in the garden the children were permitted to 
carry out their own plans, when it could be done 
without expense. New fruit trees and vegeta¬ 
bles were introduced without his aid or sympa¬ 
thy. He never could be induced to plant an or¬ 
chard, though he was as fond of fruit as any 
member of his household. He never gave any 
attention to the garden, and the flower borders 
and strawberry beds, the grape arbors, and the 
rose trellises of the young folks, were his favor¬ 
ite objects of ridicule. He despised every thing 
like taste in the garden or upon the farm, and 
in due time, succeeded in emptying his home of 
his children. This work of depopulation is not 
confined to the farm of Joseph Sedgewick. 
For the American A griculturist. 
How Farmers live down East. 
It is an astonishment to our Southern and 
Western friends, to see so many evidences oi 
thrift and prosperity in New-England where the 
land is so broken, poor, and stony. Neat, white 
dwellings, substantial barns, handsome churches, 
and attractive school-houses, are every-where 
visible, as if they were a natural growth of the 
soil. Wealtli is somehow squeezed out of land 
that would not be thought worth plowing in more 
favored regions. 
Upon a petition for the laying out of a new 
road in the towns of Candia and Deerfield, N. H , 
before the county court, it appeared that those 
two small towns with a population of about 3,500 
consumed two thousand barrels of flour, seven 
thousand bushels of Indian corn, and seventy 
barrels of salt pork, beside their own home 
grown products. These are agricultural towns, 
made up mainly of small farmers who till the soil 
part of the time, and in the Winter and rainy 
weather, work at shoe-making or some other 
mechanical business. To pay for these imports 
of provision, it appeared that they manufactured 
two hundred and eighty eight thousand dollars 
worth of shoes—forty per cent of this, sum being 
paid for labor. The most of this amount goes 
into farmers’ families for binding and making. The 
business is managed by traders or storekeepers, 
who have the leather cut out in their own estab¬ 
lishments. It is then sent out for binding, into 
all parts of the town, at a fixed price for a given 
kind of work. It is then returned to the estab¬ 
lishment whence it is sent out again, to be made 
up. This makes every home in the community 
a busy hive of industry, all earning money with¬ 
out the contaminating influences of large manu¬ 
factories. 
This sort of mixed farming prevails to a great 
extent in New-Hampshire, and in Massachusetts. 
The annual shoe crop of the latter State is ovei 
forty millions of dollars, and this is but a single 
item among the manufactures that are carried or 
mainly among farmers. Those who see ourblean 
hills and rocky fields, are sometimes inclined to 
pity us. We like to relieve them oV any unhap¬ 
piness on our account, by pointing to these fuels 
in our internal economy. We raise our own 
vegetables and fruits, our own miik, butter, and 
cheese, and most of our meats and breadstuff?. 
We buy flour with the products of our in-dooi 
labor, and have a handsome balance on the right 
side of the sheet, at the close of the year. 
Down East. 
Mrs. Partington says shs can’t understand these 
ere market reports. She can understand now 
cheese can he lively , and pork can he active, and 
feathers drooping —that is, if it s raining ; hut 
how whiskey can be steady , or hops quid, or spir¬ 
its dull , she can’t see ; neither how lard can he 
firm in warm weather, nor iron -unsettled, nor po¬ 
tatoes depressed, nor flour rising- — unless thei'G had 
been yeast put in it, and sometimes it would not 
rise then. 
Luck and Labor. —A gr.irca found in the 
'street will not do a poor mini so much good as 
half a guinea gained by in iustry and eeonomv. 
