e shade of his
broad-spreading beech-trees. On the contrary, you find Tityrus in the
back sitting-room, rolling his eyes in a fine frenzy over a very prose
bucolic on the Condition and Prospects of Sheep-Husbandry, which he is
writing for the "Country Gentleman" at five dollars a page. All the cool
of the day he works on his farm, and all the hot of the day he devotes
to his manuscript; and he avers with a solemnity which carries
conviction, that he and his wife have come to the conclusion that they
are carrying on their farm for the benefit of the hired help! He is
devoted to farming; he is interested in its processes; but the men and
maids get all the profits, and he supports his family by his pen.
Everywhere you find one song with variations. Farmers and farmers' wives
are not in love with their calling. They are not enthusiastic over it.
The "smartest" of the children do not remain at home to take charge of
the farm, unless impelled by a sense of duty to their aged parents, or
lured by some promise of extraordinary recompense. Everywhere the farmer
finds farming to be "a slave's life," "a dog's life," "delve all your
days, and nothin' to show for 't," "hard scrapin' to make both ends
meet." It is so unwieldly a mode of applying means to ends, that, if you
must believe him, every quart of milk costs him six cents, with the
labor thrown in, while you pay the milkman but five cents at your own
door; every dozen eggs which he gathers from his own barn he gathers at
the rate of twenty-five cents a dozen, while you are paying only
twenty-two. And even when both ends do meet, and not only meet, but lap
over, you scarcely find a hearty cheerfulness and sunshine, a liberal
praise and unfeigned ardor, a contagious delight in the soil. "Jolly
boys" in purple blouses may drive ploughs around pitchers, but they are
rarely met on the hill-sides of New England. If we may credit Dr. Hall,
they are quite as rarely seen on the rich, rolling lands toward the
sunset.

Is this state of things inevitable? Farmers have a very general belief
that it is. They not only plod on in the old way themselves, but they
have no faith in the possible opening-up of any other way. Their sole
hope of bettering their condition lies in abandoning it altogether. If
one son is superior to the others, if an only son concentrates upon
himself all the parental affection, they do not plan for him a brilliant
career in their own line; they do not look to him to