4888 
Cousins. The lake is surrounded by large 
shade trees under which are convenient seats 
where one can sit and enjoy the fine sights 
all around. 
Getting an axe from the wood-pile, we set 
out to cut down that tree, 1 to act as super¬ 
intendent and not do any work. On our way 
up we passed the place where one of the 
potato contest plots was planted, and where at 
the rate of 378 bushels to the acre were grown. 
Uncle Mark has bad trouble with his hired 
men and says: “It does not pay to hire cheap 
laborers, as they won’t do their work 
properly and cannot be trusted.” He showed 
me some of the work by his former help. It 
made me mad to look at it, and I asked him 
if he did not feel the same way. He said he 
felt very indignant, but never got mad, and I 
believed him. Well, we cut down our tree 
which was a red oak, and it was hard work; 
work that would blister one’s hands. We re¬ 
turned to the house and after visiting for a 
while I bade them good-bye, mounted my 
“wheel” and started for home. My thoughts 
were very pleasant as I bowled over the road 
after my visit. I found out several things 
which I will tell you. I found Uncle Mark a 
practical farmer, one who knows what he 
talks about. He lives in New Jersey and in 
answer to a good many of you who ask “Is he 
married?” I will answer “Yes.” He keeps 
the latch string out for all the Cousins and he 
tells me he is proud of you all. 
GEO. T. MOREY. 
CATALOGUES, ETC., RECEIVED. 
Kodac Camera. —Pamphlets entitled, The 
Kodac Manual and The Kodac Primer are 
sent by the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co., 
Rochester, N. Y. It is seldom in this age 
that we can have the pleasure of directing the 
attention of our readers to a genuine noveltj 
We take particular pleasure, therefore, ii. 
speaking of the Kodac camerq. This is an 
article so novel that all who are interested in 
photography will be sure to become enthusi¬ 
astic over it. Amateur photography is “all 
the rage” at present. We may safely say 
that there has never yet been placed before 
the public a device so well suited to the wants 
of the student of photography, as the Kodac 
camera. It is accurate and reliable, and is 
easily carried about from place to place. 
Suppose you go away on a trip for pleasure or 
business. Would it not be pleasant for you 
to bring back accurate pictures of the scenes 
you have visited? Are there not objects and 
scenes all about you, pictures of which you 
would gladly preserve? We invite our 
friends to send for the little books we have 
mentioned and examine them. They will find 
themselves well repaid. 
Sherwood Steel Harness.— In the new 
catalogue issued by the Sherwood Harness 
Co., Syracuse, N. Y., are a number of indorse¬ 
ments from those who have bougnt and used 
the harness. The following from a person in 
Michigan is a fair sample: 
“I received the Harness all right after some 
delay: I have thoroughly tested it and find 
it works completely, and if I could not get 
another I would not take twice what it cost.” 
Draining and Drain Tiles.— The farmers 
of this country are beginning to fully real¬ 
ize the value of land and the importance of 
utilizing every foot of it. There are two 
ways of increasing the productive powers of 
a farm. One is by increasing, if possible, the 
area of tillable land, and the other by improv¬ 
ing the land already under cultivation. 
Both these ends may be accomplished, in very 
many cases, by the judicious use of drain 
tile. It is safe to say that there 
are millions of acres of land now 
only a dreary waste or a wild pasture which 
could be brought into condition to cultivate 
by the use of drainpipe. Land that is thor¬ 
oughly underdrained can be broken in the 
spring very much earlier than other land, 
and the season is made just so much longer, 
and this often insures a good crop. The use 
of drain tile is constantly increasing. It is 
important that farmers should use the best 
quality. It takes just as much time to lay 
poor pipe as it does the best. The pipe made 
at the New York State Works is straight, 
smooth, hard and heavy, and we .should give 
it the preference over all other pipe we have 
examined. Jackson Bros. 7(5 Third avenue, 
Albany, N. Y,, have had years of experience 
in the business of manufacturing tile, and 
are ready and willing to furnish any infor¬ 
mation on the subject that may be desired. 
Wilson Bros., Easton, Pa.— Circular of 
their world-renowned bone and grist mills. 
Their No. O. is used in all parts of the world, 
a large shipment having been recently made 
to China. No farmer or poultry raiser should 
be without a good bone mill. These mills 
range in price from their $5 mill, to $350. 
Ertel’s Victor Hay Press.— Catalogue 
from Geo. Ertel & Co., Quincy, Ills. This is a 
first-rate house to deal with. We advise all 
our hay farmers who want to get a hay press 
to send for this catalogue. 
Folding Sawing Machine. —This circular 
is very handsomely illustrated, showing the 
folding sawing machine in a variety of posi¬ 
tions ready for work. This machine deserves 
to be ranked among the great labor-saving 
devices of the age. It weighs only 41 pounds 
and folds up as completely as a pocket knife. 
With it one man can perform almost, if not 
quite, as much work as two men can with 
the old-fasioned, cross-cut saw. Send to the 
Folding Sawing Machine Co., Chicago, Ill., 
for their circular. It will interest you whether 
you want to get a saw or not. 
Michigan Experiment Station.— Bulletin 
No. 40 is issued by the Horticultural Depart¬ 
ment. The following topics are discussed. 
1, Quantities of sead for given lengths of 
drill; 2, Experiments in hybridizing; 3, 
JNotes on radishes; 4, Notes on germination; 
5, Effects of latitude on season of flowering 
and fruiting. 
POST-OFFICE CLUB. 
The parrot crawled up on top of his box the 
other night, and viewed the company. It 
was a dismal night, and there were but few 
members present. The parrot took a firm 
grip on his box and croaked, 
“Farmin’ don’t pay!” 
“You come about as near to being an old 
fool as it is possible to get,” said a man who 
stood by the stove. This man was a stranger 
to most of us. His clothes were thin and 
threadbare. His nose was red. His hands 
were rough. There was not an evidence of 
prosperity about him. He looked as though 
he didn’t have enough to eat. 
The parrot did not seem at all troubled at 
this interruption. He only croaked a little 
louder, 
“Farmin’ don't pay!” 
“ That’s just what I thought 15 years ago” 
said the stranger. “ I was so sure of it that I 
ran away from the farm in order that I might 
see the world a little. Ihaveseen it! You don’t 
know now, you silly old bird, how the memory 
of the old song my mother used to sing rings 
in my ears. 4 If I could only walk once more 
the old path to the farmhouse door. If the 
dear old meadow I could see, Ah, me! How 
happy, how happy, I could be.’ I’ve lost 
the best years of my life hunting for some¬ 
thing better than farming. 4 Farming don’t 
pay?’ Why, I have thrown away my life in 
hunting for something that pays better.” 
But the parrot could only scratch his beak 
with his claw and repeat: 
44 Farmin’ don’t pay ! Farmin’ don’t pay 1” 
SMALL PICA. 
THE COMMON SCHOOLS AND AGRI¬ 
CULTURE. 
Reform needed in the common-school text¬ 
books; their whole tendency now is to un¬ 
duly elevate other callings at the expense 
of agriculture, to lead lads and lassies 
away from the farm rather than make 
them contented on it. 
The desirableness of some special instruc¬ 
tion beyond what can be gained in the com¬ 
mon schools, to fit farmers’ boys to become 
the successors of the present occupants of the 
farms, is becoming more and more appreci¬ 
ated. The series of articles in a recent 
number of the Rural, by competent author¬ 
ities, gave little encouragement to the hope 
that the curiculum of the common schools 
could be so changed that the special studies 
needed could be supplied. 
I think there is a wide misapprehension of 
the whole subject. It is not expected that a 
couple of studies added to the list, will per¬ 
fect, in the common schools, a system of agri¬ 
cultural education that will have an invari¬ 
able tendency to incline the young idea 
toward agricultural pursuits. The text-books 
are too full of inferences and intimations that 
point to the farms as the dumping ground of 
mediocrity; to the professions as a circle of 
assorted intelligences, with both money and 
leisure at command, to expect such influences 
to be overshadowed by the study of botany, or 
the elements of chemistry. Nine-tenths of 
the boys reared on the farms, between the 
ages of 12 and 16, have strong inclinations 
toward other pursuits, and will name 
their pet vocations. Two-thirds of 
these, perhaps, may change their views 
before they are of legal age and 
become farmers. This change comes from 
more mature judgment and reflection that 
• kill the fancies born in school-boy days. 
These fancies, as I have intimated above, are 
kindled into activity by the reiterated ex¬ 
amples and illustrations, in the school readers, 
of the ragged farmer’s boy, struggling to lift 
himself out of poverty, and always with sig¬ 
nal success. He reads of boys being led by 
tutors across the fields, discussing various ob¬ 
jects of natural history; while he is obliged to 
plow corn in his father’s back lot, along set 
lines, however his inclination may wander 
after the beautiful and interesting objects 
about him, just beyond the bounds of his 
labor. He never has read, or been told of the 
structure of the plants growing in the rows, 
nor of the wonderful alchemy going on in the 
soil, by which clods of earth are transmuted 
into green blades and tall stalks of corn. His 
arithmetic is full of examples illustrating the 
business of the merchant, the broker, the 
buyer and seller of commodities, the surveyor 
and the business of exchange; but it contains 
nothing whatever of the objects about him. 
He never saw a computation in his arithmetic 
to determine the number of seeds to the bushel 
of the different kinds of grains and grasses, to 
illustrate the tables of measures,or the number 
of hills of corn to the acre at a given distance. 
He could not estimate or determine the 
number of rails required to fence a given 
field, or how many more it would take to in¬ 
close a rectangular field of a given number of 
acres, than it would if the field were square. 
His mathematics never led him to estimate 
the number of furrows to the acre of a given 
width, and length; nor can he tell anything 
about base lines and ranges, nor why, nor 
how the counties of his State were divided up 
into towns, and sections, and quarter-sections, 
and farms, and square acres. If there is any¬ 
thing worth thinking about while he is at a 
given piece of farm work, as to the best 
manner of accomplishing the task, he never 
heard of it. It is all following a pattern, 
with no play of the imagination or invention 
accompanying it, to give it zest. Every fact 
he has ever learned at school, is an illustra 
tion of some other calling. All the books in 
the school library might be sifted from pre¬ 
face to finis, to find something to help solve a 
practical question in agriculture, and cer¬ 
tainly fail; but if he is inclined to travel—aDd 
all boys at some period of their lives are 
seized with that frenzy—every highway is 
accurately specified and mapped out. If he 
is influenced and led to the choice of a pro¬ 
fession by the books and papers on his 
father’s table, he would naturally take 
to divinity or to medicine before ag¬ 
riculture. The boy gets many a hard 
day’s work beyond his strength, which 
are mitigated and tempered by his love 
of home, but which grind into his sen¬ 
sitiveness, as he compares his lot with his es¬ 
timation of the professions as he conceives 
them. The common schools are sustained 
largely by the tax drawn from the farmers in 
the school district, and it therefore would 
seem that the tuition should be such as will fit 
farmers’ sons to take the advanced places on 
the farm, which the enterprise of the age has 
established. It will not do any longer to 
ignore agriculture in the common schools and 
foster all other pursuits. Farmers do not 
complain that the studies taught in common 
schools are unnecessary; but that the senti¬ 
ment pervading the whole scheme of studying 
tends to draw away from the farm—to dis¬ 
parage the business of agriculture, and to lift 
the professions into prominence—before the 
youth in country homes. 
Learning the trick of conjugating the verb 
is not considered beyond the capacity of the 
average scholar, and I have known country 
lads and lassies to name the principal cities 
of the several States with readiness and ac¬ 
curacy: if the classification of plants and 
naming of the elements composing the earth, 
air and gases, are too intricate problems for 
both scholars and teachers in the common 
schools, the multiplication table is a large 
stride in elementary mathematics and helps all 
through the after problem. Better a little of 
agricultural chemistry and botany to lead 
the inquiring minds into the more intricate 
processes of their studies, than to hold them 
out temptingly as college perquisites, only to 
be acquired by a college course. 
Van Buren Co., Mich. a. c. glidden. 
IftistuIlaitMUtfi IMvwtitfing. 
Cheaper than Paint. 
CREOSOTE WOOD STAINS. 
For Outbuildings, Shingles. Fences, etc. Durable, 
Strong Preservatives of the Wood. Can be applied 
with a Whitewash Brush by any boy. In all colors. 
SAMCJkL CABOT, Sole Manufacturer, 
Send for Circular. 70 KILBY ST., BOSTON 
W 
X 
H 
LANE&BODLEY GO. 
CINCINNATI, OHIO. 
PEERLESS DYES Sol d by 
MANUFACTURERS OF 
SAW MILLS 
AND ENGINES 
NOW ISTHE TIME TO BUY. Send 
for Circulars. An experience of THI RTY 
YEARS permits us to offer the BEST- 
CHRISTMAS BOX FREE! 
The Ladies’ World Is fin elegant ana refined periodical for 
lai hes and the family. Kach number coiiHintH of 16 large pages, 
” 64 columns of 
enterta I n I n g 
and instruct!vo 
reading matter 
and beautiful 
illustrat Ions. 
It contains 
Serial and Short 
Stories, beautf- 
lul Poems, 
“Housekeepers’ 
De pa rtment," 
“Ladies' Fancy 
Work,” “Fash¬ 
ion Depart¬ 
ment,” “The 
Family Doc¬ 
tor,” “Our 
Boys and Girls,” “ Mother’s Department,” “ Etiquette,” 11 Homo 
Decoration,” etc. Every lady is delighted with this charming 
paper. We desire to at once double its already mammoth cin 
dilation, and in order to Introduce it Into thousands of homes 
where it is not nlready known, we now make the following ex¬ 
traordinary offer: Upon receipt of only Twen ty-flve Cents 
(postage stamps, silver or postal note), we will send The Lull lea’ 
World for Three Months* and we will also send to each 
subscriber, Free and postpaid, our new Chrlstnma Box, 
containing all the following valuable and useful holiday presents: 
A Package of Fine Assorted Christmas Cards, beautiful imported 
goods, warranted to give satisfaction; 35 Perforated Stamping 
Patterns, finest quality, on parchment, with which ladies may 
do their own stamping, for embroidery, etc.; 1 Perfume Sachet, 
to be placed in bureau drawer, handkerchief box, or elsewhere— 
elegant and durable; 1 Ladies ’ Specie Pocket Purse of fine 
grained leather, witli nickel clasp and trimmings; 1 Copy “The 
Common-sense Cook Book,’’ containing a large and valuable col¬ 
lection of cooking and other recipes ; 1 Copy “ How to Be Your 
Own Doctor, ” a valuable book, tolling how to cure all common 
ailments by simple homo remedies; 1 Fine Imported Japanese 
Handkerchief, l Ladies' Glove Buttoner.l White Bone Crochet 
Hook, 1 Fine Button Hook and 1 Ladies ’ Collar Button. Re¬ 
member, we send the Cbristmns Box, containing all the above, 
nlBo our paper three months, for only 25 cents; five subscrip¬ 
tions and five Christmas Boxes will be sent for $1.00. Satisfac - 
tion guaranteed or money refunded . We refer to any publisher 
in N. Y. as to reliability . Do not miss thin chance 1 Address 
S. II. MOOKE CO., «7 Park Place, New York 
RUPTURE 
telSKOTectricTRUSS 
Warranted Bkht Truss made, to CURE 
'all Curable caHesorKefiiiid Money. Only 
Ipjenuine Electric Truss in World. Perfect 
I Retainer,Gives instnntrclief.spcedycuro 
/ Ease and Comfort dnynnd night.This New 
^ v%v/ y Invention combines science,durabilityand 
^ power. Price sf :i A if r». Illus.pamphlet free. 
THESANDEN ELECTRIC CO., Hr.mil 12th SI., new YMK 
HEW FIRM FACTORS I 
That the Rural New-Yorker stands ready 
to supply as Premiums for Subscribers. 
THESE ARE SAMPLES ONLY 
of what we are prepared to furnish. The list 
is without limit: 
Any Harrow, 
Any Flow, 
Any Mowing'Macliine, 
Any Hay Rake. 
Any Steam Engine, 
Any Thrashing Machine, 
Any Road Machine, 
Any Piano or Organ, 
Any Sewing Machine. 
Any Churn or Butter Worker, 
Any Creamer, 
Any Rifle or Shot Gun, 
Any Gold or Silver Watch, 
Any Sort ot Silverware or Jewelry. 
Any Windmill, 
Any Form Wagon, 
Any Feed Mill, 
Any Fodder Cutter, 
Any Carriage or Cart, 
Any Corn Shelter, 
Any Reaper or Binder, 
Any Hay Carrier, 
Any Hay Pres*. 
Any Horse Power. 
Any Dog Power, 
Any Lawn Mower, 
Any 1 und Roller, 
Any Cultivator, 
Any Fanning Mill, 
Any Root Cutter, 
Any Feed Steamer. 
Any Potato Digger, 
Any Hydraulic Rum, 
Any Stump Puller, 
Any Cider Mill, 
Any Corn Planter,* 
Any Thoroughbred Cow or Bull, 
Any Horse of any Breed, 
Any Sheep ol any Breed, 
Any Hog ol Any Breed, 
Any Dog ol any Breed, 
Any Poultry ot auy Breed. 
SIMPLY ANYTHING! 
The terms given on the articles we illustrate 
show what we can do for agents. Write and 
see if we cannot duplicate these figures on 
ANYTHING YOU WANT. 
For further particulars write at once to 
The Rural New-Yorker, 
34 Park How, New York. 
