Part 16

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.