Chapter IV: Preface: To the First Edition (4)

WARMTH.—The best fire in winter is made up of _exercise_, and the poorest, of _whisky_. He that keeps warm on liquor is like a man who pulls his house to pieces to feed the fire place. The prudent and temperate use of liquor is to let it alone. If you don’t touch it, it certainly won’t hurt you; he that says there is no danger, boasts that he is something more than other men.

The way to summer your cattle well is to winter them well; and half the secret of good wintering is _to keep them warm_. Animal heat is generated in proportion to the abundance and excellence of their food. Exposure to the cold air withdraws heat rapidly, and of course makes more food necessary to re-supply it, just as an open door makes it necessary to have more wood in the stove. If your stock run down in the winter and come out lean and feeble, all the summer will not fully bring them up again.

2. WORK FOR FEBRUARY.—Get out rails, both for present use, and for the fence which you expect to lay in March and April. Cut, haul and stack up near your house a good supply of _fire-wood_; no matter if the forest is within ten rods of your door, your wife ought to have her wood chopped and dried ready for use. Look at every fence upon the place; see if the corners of your rail fences are rotting down; if some rails have not broken; if pig-holes have not been made; if boys and cattle have not thrown down top-rails; and in short, put your fences into proper repair.

Of course your tools will now be overhauled; those with steel blades should be thoroughly cleansed when laid aside in the fall, and if you rub a little oil over them and hang them up, all the better. Repair all that are out of order. These things and all your ordinary work, may be done; and still leave you leisure for _reading_. You should have good books and good papers, and read them carefully for your own sake and for your children’s. A man who brings up a family of ignorant children, cheats his children of their rights, and cheats his country of its rights; it is therefore a crime.

GARDEN WORK.—If there be no snow on the ground, the gardens may be cleared of all rubbish, manure hauled and stacked carefully; and if you have a clay soil, and can catch the ground without frost for a few days, it will mellow and ameliorate it to spade it up, leaving it in lumps and heaps, through which the frost may thoroughly penetrate.

It is time to prepare your hot-bed, if you design having early plants in your garden.

3. WORK FOR MARCH.—Begin the year by thorough, deep plowing, where your fields are in good order for it. Depend upon it, that deep plowing is the only good plowing. Your first crop, generally, will tell you so. But if the subsoil is such that the first crop is rather poor, a year’s exposure of the land will ameliorate it so that your second crop will remunerate all expenses of time and labor laid out in deep plowing. No farmer should be without a subsoil plow who has got his lands clear of stumps and roots.

Take especial care of cows now just coming in with calf. See that those which are heavy are carefully handled, well fed, and warmly sheltered. Mares with foal should be tenderly used, exercised a little, but not put to hard or straining work. _The condition of the mother will to a great extent determine the condition of the offspring._ Cows, mares, sows, ewes, etc. etc., should be kept in a hearty condition, without being _fat_.

ORCHARD.—Do not trouble your trees with premature pruning. Let the axe, and knife, and saw alone. Loosen the dirt or sod around and beneath your trees. The best manure for your trees is fresh mold, or forest soil and lime in the proportion of about one part to ten. Take soft soap, dilute it with urine, scrub your trees with it plentifully, having first scraped off all rough bark. If you would work easily always, never let your work drive you.

4. WORK FOR APRIL.—Gather from your barn the loose hay seed, and sow it upon your wheat fields; it will give good pasturage, after harvest, and make fine stuff for plowing under. Push forward your plowing, but look well to the teams; as cattle and horses are like men, unable in early spring to endure severe labor all at once. Your spring wheat should be got in; barley is a better crop, usually, than rye. The middle and last of the month will keep you in the corn-field. Plow deep—plow thoroughly; and after planting, give the plow no rest, if you wish good corn.

YOUNG ANIMALS.—You will now begin to have plenty of calves, colts, pigs, and lambs. If you mean to have profitable pork, you ought to _push_ your pigs from the birth. Look carefully after your lambs; see that the mothers are well cared for; have dry and warm pens for any that are feeble. A little tenderness to the lambs will be well repaid by and by.

GARDEN.—Your lettuce may be transplanted from the hot-bed the middle and last of this month. A foot apart is none too much, if you wish head-lettuce. Sow your main supplies of radishes, cabbage, tomatoes, etc. Get your pie-plant seed in early as possible; also carrots, parsnips, and salsify or oyster-plant. Prune your gooseberries, currants, and raspberry bushes. Grapes, which were not laid in last fall should be pruned and laid in early in March; but if neglected then, let them be till the leaves are large as the palm of your hand. Look out or worms’ nests, and destroy them promptly.

5. WORK FOR MAY.—Your whole force will be required in this month. If the season has been late or wet, you still have your corn to plant. Pastures will be ready for your stock; remember to salt your stock every week. Weeds will now do their best to take your crops. Your potato crop should be put in, as there will be little danger of frost. After the 15th, you may put out sweet potato slips. If you have not grass-land for pasturage, try for one season the system of _soiling_, _i. e._ keeping up your cattle in the yard or home-lot, and cutting green-fodder for them every day. An acre or two of corn, sown broad-cast, or oats and millet, should be tried. Above all other things, if you have warm, deep sandy loam, put in an acre of lucerne.

During the last of this month, and at the beginning of the next, pruning may be done. If the limbs be large, cover the stump with a coat of paint, wax, grafting clay, or anything that will exclude air and wet.

The garden will require extra labor in all this month. After the 15th, tender bulbs and tubers may be planted, dahlias, amaryllises, tuberoses, etc. Peas will require brush; all your plants from the hot-bed should by this time be well a growing in open air. Roses will be showing their buds. If large roses of a favorite sort are required, more than half the buds should be taken off, and the whole strength of the plant be given to the remainder. The soil for this best of all flowers, cannot be too rich, nor too deep.

6. WORK FOR JUNE—May, June, and September are the _dairy months_. The best butter and the best cheese are usually made in these months. If you are not neat, you do not know how to make cheese or butter. Uncleanliness affects not only the looks, but the quality of butter. Broad, shallow glass pans are the best, but the most expensive. In these milk seldom turns sour in summer thunder-storms. Tin pans are good, but unless the dairy-woman is _scrupulously_ neat, the seams will be filled with residuum of milk and become very foul, giving a flavor to each successive panful. The principal requisites for prime butter are, good cows, good pasture for them, clean pans, cool, airy cellars, clean churns. Let the cream be churned before it is sour or bitter; and when the butter comes, at least three thorough workings will be necessary to drive out all the butter-milk.

GARDEN.—Transplant flowers; destroy all weeds; get out cabbages; more lettuce; get ready celery trenches; layer favorite roses, vines, etc.; examine and remove from the peach-tree root, the grub which is destroying them. Sow salt under plum-trees—put on a coat two inches thick.

Transplant flowers; bud roses with fine kinds; see that large plants are tied neatly to frames or stakes. Every morning examine your beds of cabbage, etc., for cut-worms, and destroy them if found; plant succession crops of peas, corn, radishes, lettuce, etc.

7. WORK FOR JULY.—Great difference of practice and opinion exists as to the methods and time of harvesting. Some cut their grass while the dew is on it; others cut it when perfectly dry, and say that if so cut it need not be spread, but will dry in the swath in one or two days. As to the _time_ of cutting grass, we should avoid both extremes of very early or very late. Just before the seed of _timothy_ is ripe, is, upon the whole, the best time for this best of grasses for the scythe. Clover should be cut when in full blossom; instead of spreading, the best farmers make it into small cocks and leave it there to cure, which it will do without shrivelling or losing its color.

GARDEN WORK.—As soon as your roses are done blooming, if you wish to increase them, take the young shoots, and about eight inches from the ground, cut, below an eye, half through, and then slit upward an inch or two through the pith; put a bit of chip in to keep the slit open; bend down the branch and cover the portion thus operated on with an inch or two of earth and put a brick upon it. It will soon send out roots, and by October may be separated from the parent plant. Quinces, gooseberries, and almost all shrubs which branch near the ground, may be propagated in this way. Still keep down weeds. Sow successive crops of corn, peas and salads, for fall use. Begin to gather such seeds as ripen early. Take up tulips, hyacinths, etc., as soon as the tops wither.

8. WORK FOR AUGUST.—If during this hot month you will clear out fence corners, and cut off vexatious intruders, the sun will do all it can to help you kill them. If your wheat is troubled with the weevil, thrash it out and leave it in the chaff. It will raise a heat fatal to its enemy without injuring itself. Every farmer should have a little nursery row of apple, pear, peach and plums of his own raising. Plant the seed; when a year old, transplant into rows eight inches apart in the row and two feet between the rows. During July, August, and September, you may bud them with choice sorts, remembering that a _first-rate_ fruit will live just as easily as a worthless sort. This is a good month to sow down fallow fields to grass. Plough thoroughly—harrow till the earth is fine; be liberal of seed, and cover in with a harrow and not with a bush, which drags the seeds into heaps, or carries them in hollows. The early part of the month should be improved by all who wish to put in a crop of buck-wheat or turnips. If your pastures are getting short, let your milch cows have something every night in the yard. Corn, sown broadcast, would now render admirable service.

If you have neglected to raise your bulbs, lose no time now. Take cuttings from roses and put in small pots, invert a glass over them; in two or three weeks they will take root, and by the next spring make good plants. Gather flower seeds as soon as they ripen.

9. WORK FOR SEPTEMBER.—You should finish seeding your wheat grounds in this month. If sown too early, it is liable to suffer from the fly; if too late, from rust. Those who sow acres by the hundred, must sow early and late both. But moderate fields should be seeded by the middle of this month. In preparing the land, if the surface does not naturally drain itself, it should be so plowed as to turn the water into furrows between each land. Standing water, and, yet more, ice upon it, being fatal to it. See that your cattle are brought into good condition for wintering. Fall transplanting may be performed from the middle of this month; _take off every leaf_—re-set, and stake.

By the latter part of the month, or early in October, according to the season, it will be necessary to raise and pot such plants as you intend to keep in the house; to raise and place in a dry and frost-proof room your dahlias, tuberoses, amaryllis, tigridia, gladioli, and such other tender bulbs as you may have. Let your seed be gathered, carefully put away where it will contract no moisture. Go over your grounds and examine all your _labels_, lest the storms which are approaching should destroy them. Sow in some warm and sheltered part of your garden, early in this month, for spring use, spinage, corn salad, lettuce, etc. As soon as the leaves fall, take cuttings from currant bushes and grapes, and plant them out in rows. They will start off and grow earlier by some six weeks, the next season. Fill in your celery trenches every ten days.

10. WORK FOR OCTOBER.—Push forward your hogs as fast as possible. If they have had a good clover range in the summer, they will be ready to start off vigorously from the moment that you begin to put them upon corn. See that good paths are made in every direction from your house; and be sure to have walks through your barn-yards raised so high as never to be muddy. Your cattle-yards should slope toward the centre in such a way that horses and cattle need not wade knee deep in going in and out.

Frosts will now begin to strip your trees and stop the growth of garden shrubs, and all your preparations should be made for protecting tender trees and shrubs. For cherry and pear-trees, especially, you should provide good covering for their trunk, until they have grown quite large. A good bundle of corn-stalks set round the body so as to keep out the sun, but not the air, will answer every purpose. For beds of China and tea, and dwarf roses, we advise a covering of three inches of half-rotted manure. Cover this with leaves about six inches. Moss is better, if you will take the trouble to collect it; and straw will do if you have neither moss nor leaves. Half cover the part that remains exposed, with fine brush, or pine branches. For single plants, drive a stake by their side, and tie the plant to it; wind loosely about it a wisp of straw or roll of bass matting, or cloth, so as to exclude the sun and not the air. The _sun_, and not the _cold_, usually destroys plants.

11. WORK FOR NOVEMBER.—During this month, if the ground is not locked by frost, you may plow stiff, tenacious clay soils to great advantage. By being broken up and subjected to the keen frosts, your soil will become mellow and tender. See that every provision is made for sheltering your cattle and horses; be sure that your sheep are not obliged to lie out in drenching rains.

IN THE GARDEN see that your asparagus bed is dressed if neglected last month. House all your brush, poles, stakes, frames, etc., which will be fit for use another season. If your tulips, hyacinths, etc. have not been planted, you had better reserve them for spring, as they will be liable to rot in the ground if planted so late in the year. Cover with brush, or leaves, or straw, your lettuce, spinage, and other salad plants designed for spring use. If tender plants, roses, vines, etc., have been left unprotected, cover as directed last month. If you have no cold frame for half-hardy plants, they may be _laid in by the heels_, i. e., taken up, and the roots laid into a trench, the tops sloping at an angle of about twenty degrees, and then covered with earth. The soil should cover about half the stem.

It is now a good season for cutting grafts. Take them from the outside of the middle of the tree; let them be done up in small packages, and set up endwise in the cellar, and covered with about half-dry sand. Roots may be taken from pear and apple-trees, and packed in the same way for root-grafting.

12. DECEMBER.—The year is about to close. Look back upon your toil. In what respect will your year’s labor bear an approval when calmly examined? Can you honestly acquit yourself of indolence and carelessness? and as honestly take credit for enterprise, activity, and a desire for improvement? Your barns are full—your granary is heavy with grain—the year’s bounty has followed a year’s labor, and if you have the heart of a man you will not forget the source whence your blessings have come. You have perhaps done well by your stock, and in so far as the body is concerned, for your children; but what have you done for their education? What have you done to promote popular education? Are you doing anything to make your neighborhood better? What good newspapers do you provide for your family? Do you lay out as much money for books as you do for tobacco? In looking forward to the next year, you ought to mark out your personal course by good resolutions, and your business course by a definite plan of operations. It would be well if a farmer should know beforehand everything he means to do; and afterwards, if he has kept such an account that you can tell anything that you have done.

Sleighing for the young and gay, and warm fire-sides for the aged, are what are now most thought of. Those who are best provided with the comforts of life should remember their less favored brethren.

EDUCATED FARMERS.

It is time for those who do not believe ignorance to be a blessing, to move in behalf of common schools. Many teachers are not practised even in the rudiments of the spelling-book; and as for reading, they stumble along the sentences, like a drunken man on a rough road. Their “_hand-write_,” as they felicitously style the hieroglyphics, would be a match for Champollion, even if he _did_ decipher the Egyptian inscriptions. But a more detestable fact is, that sometimes their morals are bad; they are intemperate, coarse, and ill-tempered; and wholly unfit to inspire the minds of the pupils with one generous or pure sentiment. We do not mean to characterize the _body_ of the common schoolmasters by these remarks; but that any considerable portion of them should be such, is a disgraceful evidence of the low state of education.

Farmers and mechanics! this is a subject which comes home to you. Crafty politicians are constantly calling you the _bone and sinew_ of the land; and you may depend upon it that you will never be anything else but bone and sinew without education. There is a law of God in this matter. That class of men who make the most and best use of their _heads_, will, in _fact_, be the most influential, will stand highest, whatever the theories and speeches may say. This is a “nature of things” which cannot be dodged, nor got over. Whatever class bestow great pains upon the cultivation of their minds will stand high. If farmers and mechanics feel themselves to be as good as other people, it all may be true; for _goodness_ is one thing and _intelligence_ is another. If they think that they have just as much mind as other classes, that may be true; but can you _use it as well_?

Lawyers, and physicians, and clergymen, and literary men, make the discipline of their intellect a constant study. They read more, think more, write more than the laboring classes. The difference between the educated and uneducated portions of society is a _real_ difference. Now a proud and lazy fellow, may rail and swear at this, and have his labor for his pains. There is only one way really to get over it, and that is to rear up a generation of well educated, thinking, reading farmers and mechanics. Your skill and industry are felt; and they put you, in these respects, ahead of any other class. Just as soon as your _heads_ are felt, as much as your _hands_ are, that will bring you to the top.

Many of our best farmers are men of great natural shrewdness; but when they were young they “had no chance for learning.” They feel the loss, and they are giving their children the best education they can. Farmers’ sons constitute three-fifths of the educated class. But the thing is, that they are not educated _as farmers_. When they begin to study they leave the farm. They do not expect to return to it. The idea of sending a boy to the school, the academy, and the college, and then let him go back to farming, is regarded as a mere waste of time and money. You see how it is even among yourselves. If a boy has an education, you expect him to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a preacher. You tacitly admit that a farmer does not need such an education; and if you think so, you cannot blame others if they follow your example.

There is no reason why men of the very highest education should not go to a farm for their living. If a son of mine were brought up on purpose to be a farmer, if that was the calling which he preferred, I still would educate him, if he had common sense to begin with. He would be as much better for it as a farmer, as he would as a lawyer. There is no reason why a thoroughly scientific education should not be given to every farmer and to every mechanic. A beginning must be made at the common school. Every neighborhood ought to have one. But they do not grow of themselves, like toad-stools. And no decent man will teach school on wages which a canal boy, or a hostler would turn up his nose at. You may as well put your money into the fire as to send it to a “make-believe” teacher—a great noodle-head, who teaches school because he is fit for nothing else! Lay out to get a _good teacher_. Be willing to pay enough to make it worth while for “smart” men to become your teachers. And when your boys show an awakening taste for books, see that they have good histories, travels, and scientific tracts and treatises. Above all, do not let a boy get a notion that if he is educated, he must, of course, quit the farm. Let him get an education that he may _make a better farmer_. I do not despair of yet seeing a generation of honest politicians. Educated farmers and educated mechanics, who are in good circumstances, and _do not need office for a support_, nor make politics a trade, will stand the best chance for honesty. But the Lord deliver us from the political honesty of tenth-rate lawyers, vagabond doctors, bawling preachers, and bankrupt clerks, turned into patriotic politicians!

AN ACRE OF WORDS ABOUT AKER.

Our spelling _acre_ according to Webster’s former method[1]—_aker_, has attracted no little attention, in a small way, both far and near. It is very difficult to fix on any rule for anything in our language. Etymology is chiefly useful in settling the primitive signification, and is, or ought to be, scarcely at all authoritative in orthography. Where two languages are very different, it is absurd to attempt the forms of the one in the other. In respect to _idiom_, no one dreams of transferring it from one to another. Oftentimes it is equally absurd to transfer mere literation, as in the Greek-blooded word _Phthisic_ for Tisic, or as Walker would have spelled it, _Phthisick_! Who rebels because _demesne_, as it is written in our best authors until within a little time, is now spelled _domain_? We see no reason why Anglicized words should, against all our notions of sound, retain a cumbrous foreign spelling. Words adopted into a language by the _ear_, which are spoken before they are written, generally conform, on being written, to our modes of spelling. But words introduced first by the eye, as they are written, for a long time wear the original spelling. Thus some foreign words are spelled by one method, and some by another.

Custom is usually regarded as determinate, in the matter of spelling, pronunciation, idiom, purity, etc. But, in respect to spelling, custom is not long the same. If one will examine our literature from the time of Henry VIII., he will find a constant succession of changes in spelling, both for good and for bad. _I_ has been generally substituted for _Y_, as in _Lykwyse_, _accordynge_, _beyng_, _certayne_. Sir Thomas More wrote _hym_, _thynges_, _desyer_, _myndes_. Skelton, the Poet Laureat, has _centencyously_, _dyd_, _advysynge_, _hyll_, etc., etc.

There has, too, and wisely, been a constant tendency to drop all _unsounded_ letters. What earthly use is there of lugging along letters which are entirely mute? In old but classic authors we have God_de_ dyd_de_, now_e_, which_e_, pull_e_, best_e_, such_e_, cou_e_rt_e_ (court) be_e_twen_e_, begun_ne_, etc.

Within our own memory the final _k_ is lopped of from words where it had a perfect sinecure, as in music_k_, etc. “_Kan’t kum it_,” does not look any more odd to our eyes than our spelling would have looked to those who wrote one hundred years ago.

If it be asked why we do not spell every word by the same rule that we do some; we reply, that violent, and sudden changes in languages are _impracticable_; and as in everything else, are not desirable. We are glad to see spelling simplified, and shall move along just as fast as we can do it with a reasonable prospect of carrying the public.

It is not a matter of conscience; we have no necessity laid upon us to reform the language; no call to be _literal_ martyrs; it is a matter of _convenience_ and _taste_, to be done or omitted as one pleases. It would be more inconvenient to stand alone with all writers against us, for the sake of spelling consistently, than to spell foolishly and superfluously in conformity to inveterate practice. Therefore, for the sake of company, we still spell quite absurdly.

It is called _inconsistent_; and by men, too, who spell trough, cough, enough, though; through, bought, six dissimilar sounds (_ou_, _ow_, _oo_, _o_, _uf_, _off_), by the same combination of letters! If consistency be the question, every English writer that ever lived, is a mere bundle of inconsistencies. Every continental living language, and the dead classic languages, have thrown in their contributions, and our tongue comprises the scraps, odds and ends, of all lands, with all the diverse peculiarities of each language more or less retained. Under such circumstances, when no man writes a sentence without spelling inconsistently, it is quite ridiculous to oppose a simplification of spelling, because we cannot do, at once, what it is only practicable to do gradually. As fast as the public is able to bear it, we shall be glad to reduce all cumbrous spelling to a consistent simplicity.

An acquaintance declares, that the derivation of AKER from the Latin and Greek, is “without the least foundation in the words as used in the Greek and Latin and in the English, and built entirely on the resemblance of sounds,” etc. The facts are the other way. In the Greek, and in the Latin, it meant simply a field, an open, cultivated spot. Now, this was the meaning of the word in English, until it was by statutes limited to a particular quantity (31 Ed. III.; 5 Ed. I., 24; Henry VIII., as quoted by Webster) and this is the meaning yet, of the word in German (_acker_) Swedish (_acker_) Dutch (_akker_). There is, therefore, ample foundation in the _use_ of the word; and the _sound_ our friend gives up.

In almost all the languages of the Teutonic family, of which ours is one, the word is still spelled with _k_; and so it is in the Asiatic languages, from which, probably, both the Teutonic and the Greek, alike borrowed it.

The spelling a_cre_, as also cent_re_, theat_re_ we, probably, derived from the French; to which language we owe the emasculation of many a noble Saxon word.

In the _New England Farmer_ our orthographical sins are thus set in order before us:

“The _Western Farmer and Gardener_, is an excellent
journal—very. It has only one feature that we dislike,
viz.—it spells ACRE _a-k-e-r_! We are somewhat surprised at
Bro. Beecher, who usually evinces such good taste, as well
as such good sense, should adopt such an ugly-looking
substitute for an old word of so much better appearance,
although supported in it by the prince of lexicographers.

“_A-k-e-r!_ Wheugh! Bro. editors, _hoot_ at it till it shall
become obsolete. In Todd’s, Johnson’s, and Walker’s, and
Worcester’s dictionaries, _fuel_ is spelled _fewel_, as the
most correct way. This is odd enough and bad enough—but it
is hardly so unsightly as _aker_.”

Nothing becomes obsolete until it has been in vogue. But pass that: what a sight will the hooting confraternity present! I imagine Maine Farmer Holmes—a plump, short, dapper gentleman, giving a long howl, that sounds so ludicrous, that he draws back from the open window to laugh. Our more sober Breck performs the euphonious duty with such conscientious heartiness, that up starts the man of Buckwheat from his (mis-spelled) Plo_ugh_man’s chair, as also does the Cultivator Cole—a trio not practiced to sing together. The uproar reaches Albany, and surprises him of the Cultivator, who hoots supplementary, with such voice as he happens, in his surprise, to have on hand. Next, toward the west, Dr. Lee shall give a scientific roar or hoot such as will make his laboratory jar again. Down across the lake the hooting (not _hunting_) chorus goes (what will the sailors think is to pay!) to Elliot of the yard-long-named Magazine, who, hoarse with lake fogs and winds, shall put in so bass a hoot, that Wight and Wright of the _Prairie Farmer_ will howl of mere fright, if for nothing else.

Audacious men! we utterly defy you! We shall pass by the whole crowing brood of Polands, Dorkings and what-not; and raise a breed of genuine owls, to be our champions in this dire necessity. We say, peremptorily, that we will not bet on any match between hooting birds and hooting editors. But our serious opinion is, that, in grave solemnity of looks, and in professional hooting, a half dozen well-trained owls will beat the whole of you. However, we are open to conviction.

[1] Two-volume edition, imperial octavo.

FARMERS’ LIBRARY.

It is of the highest importance that farmers should possess _reading habits_; and that they should bring up their children to a love of books. Every farmer should have a library; it may, at first, be small; but it should be select. As soon as a farmer is beforehand enough to own an acre, he is prosperous enough to begin a library. It is said by many, _books won’t make money_. Yes they will. To-be-sure, their best effect is the production of intelligence in the reader; but a man well informed in his own business is just the man to make money. Who ever thought of making money by buying grindstones and whetstones? But they sharpen the scythe, and sickle, and the axe, and _they_ produce money. Books are grindstones and whetstones for a man’s mind.

Many are unwilling to buy a treatise upon the disease of the horse, although there are several which will _prevent_ most of the evils which affect this noble animal. In the West, the horse is used, in town and country, by almost every man. But very few profess to know how he should be treated! And, of those who think they are wise, how many have any knowledge except of a few nostrums for sickness? The horse, in man’s service, is living in an entirely artificial state. He takes care of himself if left wild. But living in stables, laboring every month of the year in harness, and under the saddle, not selecting his own food, but fed at the will of his master, his own instincts become of little use, and he is dependent entirely on the mercy and knowledge of those whose slave he is. It ought not to be thought unreasonable to say that every man who is willing to _own_ a horse, ought to be willing to know how to _manage_ him, in the stable and out of it. There is no work in the English language containing more, or better instructions than[2] Stewart’s Stable Economy. It should be read by the farmer; and just as much by every man, of whatever calling, who uses a horse, or owns one. It is of standard authority in England. Mr. Stewart has long been a professor in veterinary institutes. Every man ought to know how to treat a sick horse. Suppose a horse to be taken sick on a journey; most frequently the driver is the only one at hand to prescribe. If you are at a tavern, of what use, generally speaking, are the bragging pretensions of those that crowd around you? Stopping for a night at a wretched hole of a tavern, one of my horses, at night fell sick. I knew no more than a child what to do; the landlord (ah me! I shall never forget him!) was equally ignorant and much more indifferent. A big, bragging, English booby was the only one pretending to know what to do; and to him I yielded the animal. After sundry manipulations—punching him in the loins; pulling at his ears, etc.—he rolled up a wad of _hair from his tail_, and crammed it down the horse’s throat! presuming, I suppose, that the hair would find its way back to the place it came from, and so pilot the disease out! I inwardly resolved never to go another journey until in possession of the best remedies for the attacks common to horses on the road.

* * * * *

PREPARING CUTTINGS IN THE FALL.—Cuttings of the currant, gooseberry, and grape are better if cut immediately on the fall of the leaf, plunged into moist sand two-thirds of their length, and placed in a cellar. If nature is as propitious to others as she has been to us, the cuttings will be found in the spring with the granulations completed at the lower end, and the roots just ready to push; and on being planted out, they grow off immediately, forming during the season well established plants.

[2] _A Treatise on the management of horses in relation to
stabling, grooming, feeding, watering, and working_:
published by A. O. Moore & Co., N. Y.

NINE MISTAKES.

In so far as instruction is concerned, I esteem my mistakes to be more valuable than my successful efforts. They excite to attention and investigation with great emphasis. I will record a few.

1. One mistake, which I record once for all, as it will probably occur every year, has been the attempting of more than I could do _well_. The ardor of spring, in spite of experience, lays out a larger garden, than can be well tended all summer.

2. In selecting the _largest_ lima beans for seed, I obtained most luxuriant vines, but fewer pods. If the season were longer these vines would ultimately be most profitable; but their vigor gives a growth too rampant for our latitude. If planted for a screen, however, the rankest growers are the best.

3. Of three successive plantings of corn, for table use, the first was the best, then the second, and the third very poor. I hoed and thinned the first planting myself, and thoroughly; the second, I left to a Dutchman, directing him how to do it; the third, I left to him without directions.

4. I bought a stock of roses in the _fall of the year_. All the loss of wintering came on me. If purchased in the spring, the nurserymen loses, if there is loss.

5. I planted the silver-leaved abele (_Populus alba_) in a rich sandy loam; in which it made more wood than it could ripen. The tree was top-heavy, and required constant staking. A poorer soil should have been selected.

6. I planted abundantly of flower-seeds—just before a drought. I neither covered the earth with mats, nor watered it—supposing that the seeds would come up after the first rain. But, in a cheerless and barren garden, I have learned that _heat_ will kill planted seeds, and that he who will be sure of flowers should not depend upon only one planting.

7. In the fall of 1843, I took up the bulbs of tuberoses, and wintered them safely upon the top of book-cases in a warm study. Having a better and larger stock in 1844, I would fain be yet more careful, and packed them in dry sand, and put them in a closet beyond the reach of frost. On opening them in the spring all were rotted save about half a dozen. Hereafter, I shall try the book-case.

8. We are told that glazed or painted flower-pots are not desirable, because, refusing a passage to superfluous moisture, they leave the roots to become sodden. In small stove-heated parlors, the evaporation is so great that glazed or painted flower-pots are _best_, because the danger is of dryness rather than dampness in _all plants growing in sandy loams or composts_.

9. I have resolved every summer for three years, to cut pea-brush during the winter and stack it in the shed; and every summer following, not having kept the vow, I have lacked pea-brush, being too busy to get it when it was needed, I have allowed the crop to suffer.

AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES.

Many county societies were formed in 1836 and for some years flourished; few of them, we believe, exist now. We hope that the day has come for them to revive; and, that the experience of the past may not be lost, it is well to record the reasons why these county societies declined.

1. Just after their birth, came on the fatal years of fictitious prosperity; when every man expected a railroad on one side of his farm and a canal on the other—and when everybody was about to be exceedingly rich; not by legitimate business; not by producing wealth; but by the _rise of property_. Now the wealth of a farming community is always to arise from the products of the farm. Whatever withdraws attention from assiduous cultivation, or plants the hope of gain in other sources than in the herds, the dairy, the grain and the grass field, will, eventually, insure disappointment and even poverty, as many of our farmers can testify. It would be difficult for those who had not seen it, to imagine the fervent, sanguine, exulting, state of mind with which the whole community, at the time we speak of, looked for the wealth. Farms were to quadruple in value; pork was to be cashed at enormous prices; grain and grass, stock and fruit, were to swell the golden tide; and, for once, the world was to see great riches from little labor. Carelessness, waste, rashness, and incredible presumption were the result. Societies for the promotion of a careful and patient cultivation of the soil could not long be thought worthy of attention in a community which expected to be rich by a dexterous bargain, by one lucky speculation, by town lots, and shares, and that mysterious hum-bug—the rise of property.

2. Succeeding such days came the opposite extreme. Everybody was poor and expected to be poorer. There was no money and no market. Hogs were hardly salable, grain a drug, and all produce unavailable. Nothing was brisk but debt and debt collecting. Men were discouraged. Said they, “if one can sell nothing, there is no use in raising anything; twenty bushels an acre is as good as forty, when one can’t sell or use it.” Schools languished, public spirit died, business was totally deranged, and agricultural societies became extinct with the downfall of other useful institutions.

3. There were some things in the management of the societies which embarrassed them independently of these other causes. There was too much talk and pretension—wind work; the offices were taken for the honor—patient endurance of drudgery, which somebody must bear, was _shirked_ off. Men took little pains _between_ the meetings; everything was to be done at the time of meeting; and, of course, half done. This led to dissatisfaction. The mistakes of carelessness were attributed to partiality or prejudice. Some dropped off; others relaxed; and, when the excitement was gone, few cared to take the dull but real and necessary business.

4. Notwithstanding all these things, the county societies did a great deal of good. A skillful farmer told me, that in the county, where he resided, there was hardly a considerable farmer who did not try a few acres, at least, to see what he _could do_; and even many renters exhibited specimens of fine cultivation. More attention was paid to every part of the farm; and, for a time, everything felt the impulse.

A few words to those who may embark again in this good cause.

1. It is best to begin as you can hold out. A great meeting, a vast roll of by-laws, a regiment of officers, a parade of speeches, these make a fine meeting, and that’s all. Let a few stanch friends to improvement put their heads and hands together, without show or noise; begin at the little end, and hold fast what is gained.

2. In choosing officers, societies almost invariably steer upon one rock on which thousands have split. There is a desire to put great men into offices, to get their influence. In a mere public meeting of a day, this is well enough; but in a society which is to exist by efficient labor, it is suicide. Such men like to be puffed and published as presidents, chairmen, etc., etc., but that ends the matter. They go away and are not seen again till the next annual meeting, when, lo! a resurrection takes place; and they flame again, a whole year’s zeal exhibited in one day. It is best to select officers, who are well broken, of a good strain of blood, and who pull steadily, on hard ground, in the mud, over bridging, or upon turnpikes. In this way we may not have quite so large a show, but we shall have a steadily growing and efficient society.

3. In the award of premiums, more or less of dissatisfaction will always be felt. A man who has worked a whole year for a premium cannot be expected to lose it without some pain. Premiums should be awarded with great care, with scrupulous impartiality, and every effort made by the leading, substantial farmers to soothe and keep down everything like bitterness and faction, in consequence of disappointment.

4. It is _indispensable_ that agricultural papers should go hand in hand with agricultural societies. We will venture to say, that no society will long exist prosperously, which does not have a reading membership; and that a society can hardly fail to prosper if its members are regular readers of agricultural papers.

SHIFTLESS TRICKS.

To let the cattle fodder themselves at the stack; they pull out and trample more than they eat. They eat till the edge of appetite is gone, and then daintily pick the choice parts; the residue, being coarse and refuse, they will not afterwards touch.

To sell half a stack of hay and leave the lower half open to rain and snow. In feeding out, a hay knife should be used on the stack; in selling, either dispose of the whole, or remove that which is left to a shed or barn.

It is a shiftless trick to lie about stores and groceries, arguing with men that you have _no time_, in a new country, for nice farming—for making good fences; for smooth meadows without a stump; for draining wet patches which disfigure fine fields.

To raise your own frogs in your own yard; to permit, year after year, a dirty, stinking, mantled puddle to stand before your fence in the street.

To plant orchards, and allow your cattle to eat the trees up. When gnawed down, to save your money, by trying to nurse the stubs into good trees, instead of getting fresh ones from the nursery.

To allow an orchard to have blank spaces, where trees have died, and when the living trees begin to bear, to wake up and put young whips in the vacant spots.

It is very shiftless to build your barnyard so that every rain shall _drain_ it; to build your privy and dig your well close together; to build a privy of more than seven feet square—some shiftless folks have it of the size of the whole yard; to set it in the most exposed spot on the premises; to set it at the very far end of the garden, for the pleasure of traversing mud-puddles and labyrinths of wet weeds in rainy days.

It is a dirty trick to make bread without washing one’s hands after cleaning fish or chickens; to use an apron for a handkerchief; to use a veteran handkerchief just from the wars for an apron; to use milk-pans alternately for washbowls and milk. To wash dishes and baby linen in the same tub, either alternately or altogether; to chew snuff while you are cooking, for sometimes food will chance to be too highly spiced. We have a distinct but unutterable remembrance of a cud of tobacco in a dish of _hashed pork_—but it was before we were married!

A lady of our acquaintance, at a boarding-house, excited some fears among her friends, by foaming at the mouth, of madness. In eating a hash (made, doubtless, of every scrap from the table, not consumed the day before), she found herself blessed with a mouthful of _hard soap_, which only lathered the more, the more she washed at it. It is a filthy thing to comb one’s hair in a small kitchen in the intervals of cooking the breakfast; to use the bread trough for a cradle—a thing which we have undoubtedly seen; to put trunks, boxes, baskets, with sundry other utensils, under the bed where you keep the cake for company; we have seen a dexterous housewife whip the bed-spread aside, and bring forth, not what we feared, but a loaf-cake!

It is a dirty trick to wash children’s eyes in the pudding dish; not that the sore eyes, but subsequent puddings, will not be benefited; to wipe dishes and spoons on a hand-towel; to wrap warm bread in a dirty table-cloth; to make and mold bread on a table innocent of washing for weeks; to use dirty table-clothes for _sheets_, a practice of which we have had experimental knowledge, once at least in our lives.

The standing plea of all slatterns and slovens is, that “everybody must eat a peck of dirt before they die.” A peck? that would be a mercy, a mere mouthful, in comparison of cooked cart-loads of dirt which is to be eaten in steamboats, canal-boats, taverns, mansions, huts and hovels.

TOBACCO TRICKS.—It is a filthy trick to use it at all; and it puts an end to all our affected squeamishness at the Chinese taste, in eating rats, cats, and bird’s nests. It is a filthy trick to let the exquisite juice of tobacco trickle down the corners of one’s mouth; or lie in splashes on one’s coat, or bosom; to squirt the juice all over a clean floor, or upon a carpet, or baptismally to sprinkle a proud pair of andirons the refulgent glory of the much-scouring housewife. It is a vile economy to lay up for re-mastication a half-chewed cud; to pocket a half-smoked cigar; and finally to be-drench one’s self with tobacco juice, to so be-smoke one’s clothes that a man can be scented as far off as a whale-ship can be smelt at sea.

It is a shiftless trick to snuff a candle with your fingers, or your wife’s best scissors, to throw the snuff on the carpet, or on the polished floor, and then to extinguish it by treading on it!

To borrow a choice book; to read it with unwashed hands, that have been used in the charcoal bin, and finally to return it daubed on every leaf with nose-blood spots, tobacco spatter, and dirty finger-marks—this is a vile trick!

It is not altogether cleanly to use one’s knife to scrape boots, to cut harness, to skin cats, to cut tobacco, and then to cut apples which other people are to eat.

It is an unthrifty trick to bring in eggs from the barn in one’s coat pocket, and then to sit down on them.

It is a filthy trick to borrow of or lend for others’ use, a tooth-brush, or a tooth-pick; to pick one’s teeth at table with a fork, or a jack-knife; to put your hat upon the dinner table among the dishes; to spit generously into the fire, or at it, while the hearth is covered with food set to warm; for sometimes a man hits what he don’t aim at.

It is an unmannerly trick to neglect the scraper outside the door, but to be scrupulous in cleaning your feet after you get inside, on the carpet, rug, or andirons; to bring your drenched umbrella into the entry, where a black puddle may leave to the housewife melancholy evidence that you have been there.

It is soul-trying for a neat dairywoman to see her “man” watering the horse out of her milk-bucket; or filtering horse-medicine through her milk-strainer; or feeding his hogs with her water-pail; or, after barn-work, to set the well-bucket outside the curb and wash his hands out of it.

ELECTRO-CULTURE.

A few years ago, all the world was agog about electricity applied to vegetation. Sanguine persons grew red in the face with excitement, and enterprising schemers hoped to supersede all past processes of culture by this magical fluid. Things were to be made to grow not only as fast as lightning but _by_ lightning. Those mischievous bolts which had played their dangerous pranks with chimneys, oaks, and towers, were to be regularly harnessed and set to work in the field like horses or oxen. Many of our readers will recollect how widely the agricultural papers copied the glowing accounts brought from over the seas; and nobody was afraid of anything except of not believing enough.

Well, the lightning has been too smart for them; and the whole pack which opened loud on the scent, are now heard just as loud on the back track. It usually takes two foolings to satisfy the public. They first swing to an extreme folly of injudicious admiration, and them vibrate to the opposite extreme of disgust. Everybody was fever-hot with morus multicaulis; and then they went into chills about it. Durham stock brought almost their weight in silver at one time, and then could hardly be sold at butchers’ prices. Berkshire hogs were all the rage, and now are in great and unmerited contempt. The guano fever sent hundreds of ships a-dung-hunting all over the earth: and lucky were they who espied a precious heap of excrement. How little did the penguins and sea gulls of the Pacific imagine, that their unconscious observance of the laws of nature was one day to figure so largely on the British Exchange, and to raise such a bustle in chemical laboratories!

We believed but few of these accounts of electricity, because we perceived nothing which could be regarded as settled. And now, we are far from sympathizing with the recantations and apostasies from the electric faith. Like all other things driven to extremes, we shall by and by see it settle upon a middle point.