m 
Annual Be port of the 
logical statement, we may follow up with a triumph, but not one 
won by reason over the emotions. The victor here must bear him¬ 
self as the vanquished, till the new truths have wrought gradually 
their results on the sentiments. A discreet war, therefore, may be 
opened on the follies of dress without adopting a garb, serviceable 
and defensible in itself, but so far without the pale of custom as to 
be intolerable to the mass of persons. We need not provoke the 
rabble, nor gather the mob in our enunciation of the secondary 
truths of life, giving them such a form that they cannot but be 
scorned by the short-sighted, squint-eyed proselytes of usage. It is 
sufficient if we hold fast and slowly enlarge all that is beautiful and 
serviceable in fashion. 
We can now take but little pleasure in anything sensible in dress 
because we know it came without reason and will depart without 
reason; that it is but an accidental combination of fortuitous forces, 
and has no real significance as indicating any return to sober 
thought; nay, that it is a new instance in which fashion is making 
ready to jilt and mock us in our credulous good-will, to buffet com¬ 
mon sense anew, and put it to open shame. 
Against irrational tendencies, we shall make easiest headway, as 
in a crowd. Violence thrusts aside but a few, and soon arms all 
against us, while a slight, presistent pressure steadily carries us in 
any direction. With wedged shoulder, and body bent forward, let 
us stand ready to part, in behalf of ease,, comfort and character, 
that social mob which now sways here and there, where their eyes 
carry them. 
A FARMER’S ORCHARD. 
BY J. C. PLUMB, MILTON. 
( Prepared for the State Agricultural Convention.) 
PRESENT CONDITION. 
An eastern man traveling in the West remarked two things as 
especially noteworthy: the broad fields and the meagre orchards, 
the wide area of land in fine condition for the most approved labor- 
saving machinery, with less waste from hem, hedgerow, rock, hil- 
