TO IMPROVE THE SOIL AND THE MIND. 
New Series. ALBANY. MARCH, 1852. Vol. IX.— No. 3. 
The “Long Pasture. 5 ' 
Country residents may be divided into two classes— 
the neat, and the slovenly. Specimens of the former 
may be known on approaching their dwellings, by the 
air of finish and comfort which pervades the premises 
—the whole indicating, that the man who has mastered 
one art, does not find it hard to master another,—or, in 
other words, if he will not allow the intrusion of mul- 
lins and pig-weeds among his crops, neither will he per¬ 
mit the defacement of his door-yard by old rubbish in 
its countless forms. Of the latter class of residents, the 
indications are various. Sometimes they consist in a 
broken fence bordered with an unbroken hedge of briers, 
elders, and thistles—at others, the yard, which might 
have been a neat lawn with shady trees, is mostly occu¬ 
pied with burdocks and nettles, bordering old decaying 
heaps of chips and pools of kitchen slop, and variously 
interspersed with old boards, barrel-hoops, and the drop¬ 
pings of cattle, and cut up by the wheels of carts into 
mud-holes of unknown depth, until sounded in a dark 
evening, by the unwary foot of a neighbor’s wife or 
daughter. 
There is again an intermediate class—belonging partly 
to both the preceding—we are by no means sure that 
they are not the largest class of all, in many districts of 
the country. Over these, neatness and disorder seem to 
hold each a sort of doubtful jurisdiction—sometimes the 
one, and again the other, obtaining the ascendancy. 
Perhaps a neat “ picket” fence in front, has its counter¬ 
part in a decayed rail fence in the rear; or a flower-bed 
by the parlor door, has its off-set in a puddle of soap¬ 
suds at the kitchen door; or the odor of June roses un¬ 
der the windows, may be curiously mingled with breezes 
laden with the perfumes of the hog-pen. Now. such 
of this intermediate class, as have no desire for improve¬ 
ment, and who regard the economy of an adulterated 
neatness as a chimera, will naturally fall under the same 
head as the slovenly. For these the following remarks 
are not intended, and they will therefore, if they have 
read thus far, please skip the rest. But those who 
really love neatness and order, though they may not 
have attained it fully, will be likely to appreciate our 
intentions, in endeavoring to assist in the removal of the 
very common evil, namely, that of converting our public 
highways into promiscuous pasturage for cattle, colts, 
sheep, hogs, and web-footed poultry. 
The evils of this practice are interminable. A friend 
informs us that he finds it next to impossible to preserve 
the contents of his garden from his neighbor’s swine ; 
which have become skilled in all branches of the art of 
squeezing through small spaces, crowding rails and 
boards asunder, and burrowing under fences. Another 
lost, not only some choice young pear trees, but several 
beautiful and costly imported evergreens, devoured by 
the street cattle passing through the gate accidentally 
blown open by the wind in his absence. Why should 
any one own a cow, when he has nothing wherewithal 
to give her? Yet we have known those who had several, 
depending entirely on their skill to pick their own living 
in the streets,—which they did by variously snapping 
boards and entering meadows, vaulting into corn-fields, 
or watching with surprising keenness till some one 
thoughtlessly opened a gate for a few seconds, when 
they would rush in. Heavy and expensive fences were 
kept up by an acquaintance; but he was compelled, for 
the sake of maintaining a decent appearance in the road 
by his house, to “ remove the deposits” daily, left by 
street cattle, who found his shade trees the most con¬ 
venient places in the world for repose; and not unfre¬ 
quently swine, after throwing up the turf into every 
imaginable irregularity, also sought repose in the same 
comfortable shadows. These evils have become so com¬ 
mon in most places, that they are submitted to as a sort 
of necessity,—as an essential share of the evils of this 
life, without an inquiry into the possibility or expedien¬ 
cy of their removal. 
It has been asserted that no man has a moral right 
to keep more stock than he can feed well on his own 
land.” But if the cottager must have his cow kept by 
the public, and every tiling is to be turned to profit, 
would it not be quite as profitable to convert the road¬ 
side into meadow, to be mowed annually for wintering 
the cows of poor men, and save us from all the evils of 
street maurauders, and frequent five-mile journeys by 
their owners in search of them. We throw this out 
merely as a hint to those who measure everything by 
dollars and cents. 
We may also add, for the same class of calculators, 
that the amount of time and attention consumed in 
opening, shutting, and watching gates—the amount lost 
by the plunderings of half-starved street-cattle—the 
enormous expense of heavy street-fences,—not to keep 
in the farmer’s own stock, but to keep out his neighbor’s 
—constitute altogether a most formidable tax, which if 
imposed by government, would be regarded as insuffera¬ 
ble. 
As to the practicability of the proposed improve- 
