116 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
Vo his tomb. In vain does reason speak; in vain does expe¬ 
rience warn; in vain may you balance against his ideal vi¬ 
sions the collected utilities of life; if a man does not, in 
some degree, reach his contemplated goal, he is poor in the 
midst of abundance, and wanders a wretch through the 
world. Nor is it the young and imaginative alone that are 
governed by these ideal forms; the most cool and avaricious 
feel their power. Their Laura is not the same as Petrarch’s; 
they will not write sonnets to her praise—certainly not such 
sonnets—but their views are just as ideal; and the phantom 
they pursue assumes her beauty and her power, solely from 
her relation to their temper and taste. It is not the material 
gold that absorbs the miser’s lust; to him, as to other men, 
it is worthless dross; it is the ideal of being a rich man; it 
is the laurel of a Croesus shading his dwelling and adorning 
his tomb. 
If a certain style of living seem essential to our happiness; 
and in the competitions of life, we are left to fall short of it; 
no philosophy, and I had almost said, no religion, can save 
the strongest mind from a degree of disappointment. 
Now it was the policy of antiquity to give agriculture the 
first place among the professions; I allude not to pastorals; 
that retrospective pleasure with which, from the courts of 
princes and in an age of refinement, men look back upon in¬ 
credible scenes of virtue in Elysian fields of bliss. But the 
most sober calculators, the orator and the historian, delighted 
to relate the story of Cincinnatus, passing from his plough 
to victory and from victory back to the plough— triumphalis 
agricola. The possibility of uniting the highest mental qua¬ 
lities, with that practical skill which makes the desert blos¬ 
som like the rose, was strongly inculcated. It was the lead¬ 
ing article of ancient faith; and must be so again. The man, 
who makes agriculture, not merely productive, but honora¬ 
ble; who surrounds his farm with the images of the most at¬ 
tractive happiness; who dwells in a neat abode, such as 
republican wisdom might build and republican simplicity 
ought to desire; who, in addition to the song of the robin, 
can make the music of contentment flow around his calm 
abode; can unite it with the intelligence of a citizen who 
knows his right and is determined to defend them; who 
knows that this business is favorable to mental culture and as 
fair a road as any to political eminence; such a man does 
more to encourage the profession than all other causes com¬ 
bined. He touches the springs of action in their centre and 
blesses his country t n 1 mankind. He plants the laurel be¬ 
side the plough, and allures thousands to come, and after 
having toiled within its fragrance, to sit beneath its shade.* 
There is still a fourth expedient. The return of those, 
who have been disappointed in the learned professions or 
commerce, to agriculture; and being happy in the return. 
Your father’s farm!—it supported your cradle and may per¬ 
haps be destined to inclose your grave. I am aware, that 
these resumptions of an old employment have not always 
been successful. The body long disused to labor, melts be¬ 
neath the summer sun; aches as it follows the plough; and 
the soft hand, which has worn the glove, becomes blistered 
as it handles the pitchfork or the spade. The stillness, too, 
of a country life, so soothing at a distance, becomes taste¬ 
less when it is the forced choice of men, who have trod the 
mart and been honored in banks. Even the song of the 
robin, which warbled so sweetly in pastorals, becomes harsh 
discord when a man hears it from a house, under a heavy 
mortgage; and it is the only music, which his poverty can 
afford. But let us not be discouraged; life i3 a conquest 
over difficulties. These returning farmers; these prodigals, 
who, having spent their substance, at last go home to their 
father’s house: these shipwrecked mariners on the golden 
sea of fortune, who swim to the shore on the last shivered 
plank—after all, have some advantages. They have increas¬ 
ed their skill; they know mankind; they have seen the 
world; and should they be endowed with genius and glow 
with a new ambition—what discoveries might they not make ! 
Though the triumphs of mechanical skill have as yet been 
chiefly confined to manufactures, and some say can never 
be exhibited in agriculture, yet as an offset to this advantage, 
there is the composition; the improvement of soils. What 
a field is here open! How little do we know of it! How 
important the pursuit! How rich the reward ! All the dif¬ 
ference there is between ten bushels of corn to the acre and 
an hundred, is before us to awaken our invention and acti¬ 
vity: and suppose a Newton, a Davy, a Franklin, a Whit¬ 
ney, to be thrown on such exigencies, how would the trea¬ 
sures of nature be opened! How would the best spots for 
the largest crops be sought out and found. Let no man de¬ 
spair of reaping his substance in his last days from the rug¬ 
ged earth, who retains either of those best instruments, a 
healthful body or a vigorous mind. 
My fellow citizens, I rejoice, on the whole, in the exhibi¬ 
tion of this society, and believe its tendency to be good. It 
reflects credit on the wisdom and philanthropy of the men 
who support it. Any thing that turns our attention to the 
great foundation of our social happiness, must be beneficial. 
But, I am deeply impressed with the conviction, that we 
need a revolution in our ideas of public and private life. 
The road of enterprise must be new laid—new paved— 
and conduct to other objects. We are still misled by certain 
ideas of refinement and felicity descending to us from the 
* After all, mankind, especially the young, will be govern¬ 
ed by their ideas of the beautiful more than utility; in poli¬ 
tics, morals, religion, and general life: nor would a benevo¬ 
lent man w'ish to exterminate this fundamental principle of 
our nature. But there is all the difference in the world, be¬ 
tween conventional beauty, the beauty of fashion and ex¬ 
pense; and that, which is simple, natural and eternal. Let 
us look at a few particulars: a rich shawl to a young lady’s 
eye is beautiful; so is a rose. But the one is a conventional 
beauty; the other a natural. The one lasts while the fash¬ 
ion lasts; the other, i. e. its essential beauty, until flowers 
shall be no more. Take the fluctuations of female dress: 
sometimes its beauty depends solely on the fashion; some¬ 
times it approaches to the everlasting laws of nature. The old 
stays and high-heeled shoes of Queen Ann’s day, were mere 
conventional beauties; the Grecian dress is natural and es¬ 
sentially beautiful. Now it seems to me, what we are to seek 
is—that cheap, simple, essential beauty, which promotes the 
progress of mental refinement, but never leads to the ex¬ 
pense which plunges families and nations in ruin. Let the 
conventional and natural meet in one line of inseparable un¬ 
ion. 
Gothic ages. The public hive must have more working 
bees and fewer drones; and what is of equal importance, the 
drones must cease to engross the profits and the honors. 
The late concussions in the commercial world are not with¬ 
out their moral. They point to a different source of prospe¬ 
rity. Instead of thinking that all talent is to be employed on 
the sea or in speculation, we must turn it to a new channel; 
it must guide the plough; improve the soil, and carry agri¬ 
cultural skill to its last perfection. We shall always be an 
enterprising nation; I hope we shall always be a moral one. 
But that enterprise must flow in a wider channel; that mora¬ 
lity must be founded on a better faith. Perhaps it would 
not be impossible to describe the circle that bounds the last 
expansion of the republican idea. When two young men, 
entering on life with equal abilities and virtues, would not 
turn up a copper for the choice of a profession to ensure their 
future success and distinction, then, and not till then, will 
the republican idea be carried out to its full perfection. 
REMARKS. 
The root of the evils complained of, and which seem 
justly to have excited the doubts, if not the fears of the 
orator,—the want of faith in the permanency of our re¬ 
publican institutions; the general rush to the learned 
and mercantile professions, for fame, fortune and fash¬ 
ion,—the idol Laura ; and the neglect ofrural pursuits,— 
the root of these evils, we think, lies in the defects of our 
system, or rather want of system, of agricultural educa¬ 
tion. Give to rural, the education which we give to pro¬ 
fessional labor,—improve the mental powers of the agri¬ 
culturist, too, as you do those of the lawyer and doctor, 
and you will raise him to the same scale in society; and 
surely when this is done, there are too many substantial 
inducements to rural life, to apprehend any serious defi¬ 
ciency in its labors. Education, if it cannot, like the 
lever of Archimides, be made to move a world, can be 
made to move and model its inhabitants. Education 
has a controlling influence in after life. It makes men 
Christians, it makes them Mahometans, it makes them 
Jews, it makes them Pagans; it makes them ministers, 
doctors, lawyers ; and, had we professional schools of 
agriculture, as we have of law, divinity and medicine, 
it would make thousands farmers,—intelligent, useful 
farmers—real working bees. But, alas! we have no 
professional schools for the farmer—nothing to enlighten 
his mind in his business, which is the great business 
—emphatically the great business of our republic. We 
profess to have adopted the principles of equality, while 
we are fast running into the practices of aristocracy. 
We impart to the few, in our system of education, faci¬ 
lities for lording it over the many. Hence, the great ten¬ 
dency thitherward, and hence, the importance of the 
great agricultural class in the right management of our 
political affairs. 
We are strongly of the impression, that the establish¬ 
ment of professional schools of agriculture, in which 
the mind as well as the hands should be instructed—and 
particularly as normal schools for the instruction of 
teachers, would in a few years work a salutary revolu¬ 
tion in the habits and fashions of society, and avert 
many of the foreboding evils with which our republic is 
threatened.— Conductor. 
Method of using the Chloride of Soda. 
A translation of A. G. Labarraque’s method of using 
the chloride of soda, has been kindly sent us by Jacob 
Porter, the translator. This chloride is the mostpower- 
ful disinfecting agent known, and has been found of great 
use in dressing ill-conditioned sores, and as a means of pu¬ 
rifying unhealthy places, and disinfecting animal sub¬ 
stances. It is sold in a liquid form, at the apothecary’s 
by the bottle. It is used diluted with water. A bottle 
of the liquid, which costs but a few cents, will serve a 
family sometime, for disinfecting the air of vaults and 
other foul places about dwellings, purifying the air in 
sick chambers, in cellars, &c. Its great utility in laza- 
rettoes and hospitals, and, in Asia, in preserving from 
the plague, seems to have been tested and proved by 
officers of the French government. At this season, it 
is peculiarly beneficial. We subjoin some of the di¬ 
rections for its use. 
‘ ‘ For ill-conditioned ulcers let a glass of the chlorated li¬ 
quor be mixed with five times its quantity of pure water, 
and in this mixture dip the lint with which the ulcers are to 
be dressed. The dressings should be applied twice a day. 
If the sore become red and inflamed, this mixture should be 
still further diluted; if, on the contrary, the sore does not 
change its appearance, it should be dressed once or twice 
with some chloride with only half its quantity of water, so 
as to bring on a slight inflammation, which is indispensable 
for causing atonic ulcers to pass to a state of simple sores. 
The healing will then go on rapidly. At the time when the 
chloride is applied to the ulcer, the foetid smell is destroyed. 
“Gangrene, hospital putrefaction, ill-conditioned burns 
and scalds, old syphilitic ulcers, corroding herpetic affections, 
and the like, should be treated in the same manner. 
“ Cancer in a state of supperation maybe disinfected with 
some lukewarm or cold water, containing a twentieth of the 
chloride soda. 
“ For ulcerations of the nasal organ, the throat, the palate 
and the gums, the chloride should be diluted with eight or 
ten parts of water. It will, nevertheless, be necessary to 
touch these sores with a little lint moistened in some pure 
chloride. 
“For the scald, head the chloride should be mixed wfilh 
only an equal quantity of pure water, and the parts affected 
be moistened with this liquid twice a day. 
“ Great advantages have been obtained from using the 
chloride very much diluted in water, for all the purposes of 
the toilet. In a dose of from 25 to 40 drops [not to be 
taken internally,] it acts as a bracing and preserving wash, 
prevents the spread of herpetic eruptions, and cures certain 
diseases of the skin. 
“ The air of sick chambers, and the patients themselves, 
may be purified by mixing a spoonful of the chloride and six 
spoonfuls of water in a plate, and setting it under the pa¬ 
tient’s bed; indeed, several plates with the diluted chloride 
may be placed in the same apartment if necessary. In this 
way the exhalations may be destroyed as soon as they are 
produced. It will be necessary to renew daily the chlorated 
water contained in the plates. 
“ In all places where there is a crowd of nffen or animals, 
whether sick or healthy, the air becomes corrupted, and ac¬ 
quires deleterious properties, owing principally to the ani 
mal exhalations. These exhalations may be destroyed by 
sprinklings of the chloride, diluted in from 25 to 30 parts of 
water; or by setting in these places (and they may be out 
of sight,) some vessels containing the chlorated water, 
which can never be in the least injurious, whatever may be 
the quantity. This method of purifying the air is indispen- 
sibly necessary in lazarettoes, hospitals, prisons, poor-hou¬ 
ses, manufactories, churches, seminaries, convents, halls of 
study, and dormitories in colleges and boarding-houses, ca¬ 
bins of ships, court rooms, crowded theatres, saloons when 
filled to excess on great occasions, and the like. 
“ Sprinklings of the chlorated water will be more espe¬ 
cially necessary whenever an epidemic or contagious disease 
prevails; they should be made in order to guard against the 
deleterious influence arising from the neighborhood of marsh¬ 
es, the rotting of flax, hemp and the like. They will like¬ 
wise be serviceable in the diseases of domestic animals, in 
places where silk worms are raised; finally, in all places 
where the air becomes charged with exhalations, which, on 
being accumulated, produce fatal effects. 
“In cases of asphyxia, produced by the exhalations of 
vaults, sewers, or any considerable masses of putrefying 
animai substances, it will be necessary for the patient to 
breathe the concentrated chloride; and his chamber should 
be sprinkled with the chlorated water, so as to subject him 
to the influence of the disinfecting agent. 
“ It is often necessary, sometime from a tender, pious feel¬ 
ing of regret, to preserve for a long time the bodies of de¬ 
ceased persons. A feetid odor appears more or less readily, 
according to the temperature of the air, the state of the pa¬ 
tient’s body at the time of his decease, or the disease that 
terminated his life. This decomposition may be suddenly 
arrested; indeed, it may be prevented by sprinkling the 
body with some chloride diluted with water. For this pur¬ 
pose a bottle of chloride should be mixed with twelve bottles 
of water; in this mixture a linen cloth should be wet, laid 
on the body, and sprinkled occasionally with the liquid.” 
Influence of Climate upon Seed. 
We received, last spring, twelve ears of Dutton corn 
from Mr. Osborn, of Oswego county, his residence dif¬ 
fering from ours, in latitude and altitude, about two 
degrees. We planted with this seed eight rows across 
our field, the residue being planted with seed of our 
own raising. The Oswego corn tasselled two weeks 
earlier than that from seed raised in Albany, thus show¬ 
ing six or seven days’ difference for a computed degree 
of latitude, in the earliness of the crop—the northern 
seed giving the earliest crop in a ratio inverse to the 
forwardness of the spring. This will serve as a hint 
to farmers in districts where corn is liable to be cut 
off by early autumnal frosts, to obtain their seed from a 
more northern latitude, or from a district of higher al¬ 
titude. 
Hussey’s Patent Reaping Machine, 
Is exciting considerable attention in Maryland, and it 
has been recommended by the Philadelphia Agricultu¬ 
ral Society, and by a society in Maryland. A Maryland 
correspondent speaks of it as follows:— 
“I know not whether the news may not have already 
reached you, of a new mowing machine, invented by Mr. 
Hussey, which adapts itself to all surfaces, up hill and down, 
not encumbered with stones and stumps, and doing its work 
better than can be done by hand, to the amount, in a day, of 
what four of the best cradlers could accomplish. The exe¬ 
cutive powers of this machine are very credibly vouched by 
a Mr. Carroll, who has one or more of them in use on a large 
farm. His moving power is a pair of strong horses. Before 
the thing can reach perfection, we must employ the electro¬ 
magnetic impulse, which your last legislature thought no 
humbug.” 
12th Anniversary of the American Institute. 
The annual exhibition will commence on the 7th of 
October, at Niblo’s Garden, in Broadway, New-York. 
The contributions from exhibitors will be received on 
Thursday, Friday and Saturday immediately previous. 
The anniversary address will be delivered on the eve¬ 
ning of the 10th October. The Silk Convention will be 
held on the evening of the 11th; and a ploughing ex¬ 
hibition will take place at Harlem on the first Thurs¬ 
day of September, at tivo o’clock P. M. We intend 
to give the address of the Institute in our next number. 
Sales of Short-Horn Cattle. 
It will been by our advertising page, that a sale of 
the Messrs. Allens fine stock of Short Horns will take 
place at Tonnewanta, near Buffalo, on the 10th of Sep¬ 
tember, and that a sale will also take place at Powel- 
ton. near Philadelphia, of several imported animals, be¬ 
longing to the celebrated herd of Mr. Whitaker, of 
England, on the 20th of September. The Messrs. Al¬ 
lens have taken much pains to procure the best stock to 
breed from, and from the appearance of their herd two 
years ago, we have no doubt they have succeeded in 
rearing superior animals. 
An Idler 
Cannot bear to be inquired of as to his daily business. 
Every answer to such a question is to him a subject of 
self-reproach. He has either attended to no business, 
or to the business of others. 
AN INDUSTRIOUS MAN 
Will answer such interrogatories with pleasure. His 
