LINES TO A CANARY

BIRD.

WRITTEN during the difficulties of the boundary question in Maine, when Sir JOHN HARVEY, Governor of the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia was deterred from actual hostility by the judicious conduct of General ScOTT, his personal friend. PRESCOTT'S nuble work of Ferdinand and Isabella' had just appeared, and the 'Crayon Papers' were in course of publication.

Forget my bars, forget my cage

Like thee; my wants, my cares, my age,
A lone and widow'd bed;

And raise to Heaven thy magic song
In words, that might to both belong,
'Thanks for our daily bread.'

JOHN WATERS.

MEADOW-FARM: A TALE OF ASSOCIATION.

BY THE AUTHOR OF EDWARD ALFORD AND BIS PLAYFELLOW."

CHAPTER FIFTH.

THE common notion has been, that the mass of the people need no other culture than is necessary to fit them for their various trades; and though this error is passing away, it is far from being exploded.' 'SELF-CULTURE: CHANNING.

THE cultivation of the soil is the most easily learned of any art. It is falsely supposed that a certain degree of obtuseness, roughness, clod-hopper ignorance, is essential to the farmer; that intelligence, refinement, and science are poorly applied to agriculture. This is the impression that farmers themselves have; and as a body they mistrust the advantages of education as applied to their occupation. The cause of this impression may be traced to the fact, that most of the scientific farmers sink money in carrying on their farms, while they who doggedly plough, plant, and dig, as their fathers did before them, lay up money yearly. These successful men sneer at the gentleman-farmer, and deride his science; and his yearly losses only confirm them the more strongly in their previous habits. Now they might be told that this gentleman farmer expects from the beginning to sink money; that he has taken up the cultivation of the land for amusement, health, or scientific experiment; that his object is not to make money, but to gratify his taste, or perhaps benefit the general farming interest of the country by his failures. It can easily be understood that a very erroneous notion of the value of science, as applied to agriculture, is likely to be drawn from such instances, and how the true farmer comes to mistrust the spirit of modern improvement.

It is pretty well understood among farmers that no man can succeed in their employment who hires his labor. The price of products is so low that wages consume all the profits. And yet there is a great deal of labor hired on the land by those who have lately begun to cultivate it; and the farmer should know that these persons can afford to lose five or six hundred dollars a year, and that they expect to do so, while learning the art of country life, and still be better off than they would had they continued in commerce at a yearly loss of as many thousands.

Much surprise is often expressed by those unacquainted with the

facts, that the farm-houses of the country look so rough; that more attention is not bestowed upon the cultivation of shade-trees and pleasure-grounds. Why, they ask, are the houses unpainted? why is it that the farmer's horse and cattle look as if they never felt the curry-comb? His harness looks as if it were never washed, and the owner himself only shaves on Sundays! Oh! farming must be a horrid business! So dirty! such smells! and so slovenly! It will do well enough in poetry and pictures, but Heaven preserve us from this harrowing, dung-heaving life!

It must be confessed that the first business of the tiller of the soil is to attend to his crops, his wheat-fields and corn-fields; to think more of the fences around his pasture-lands than the flowergarden before his house. He must think first of these, and afterward of ornament. It must be confessed that the man who makes money or who keeps his farm from running him in debt, 'in these times,' must rise in the morning with his 'boys,' eat with them and work with them. He must wear a coarse frock and thick boots, and lead a rough but a healthful life. And we aver that the smell of the barn-yard is like a bed of violets, when compared with the reeking gutters of the city, and that the very gentlemen who take a pride in eating cheese all alive, turn up their noses with a poor grace of consistency at the earth-worms the plough-share turns up in the furrow.

It is worse than idle for any man to expect to better his condition in a pecuniary point of view, by turning gentleman farmer. If a person have a fortune already, he may lay out pleasure-grounds, fence in parks, make experiments in crops, try crosses in breeds of cattle, and set out trees for shade and scenery, and thus gratify his taste, and possibly make some discovery for others to benefit by; but in his own case he will lose money; probably he expects it. What would any one think of a gentleman warrior or gentleman poet? that is, of a man who should hire all his fighting done or all his verses made. If success only crowns individual, personal exertion in all other matters, how is it that in this alone, in the primitive occupation of mankind, men expect it, without putting their own hand to the plough, and girding themselves for the labor? It is a common remark among husbandmen that he who works with his 'hands' gets double the amount of work out of them compared with him who only gives his orders and waits until they are accomplished. The general must lead his troops to victory; he must endanger his own life if he would infuse bravery into the hearts of his soldiers; and this principle is not inapplicable to the 'boss' of the farm.

The snow was not yet off the earth when Rufus Gilbert and his companions reached their new home in Landsgrove. It was one of those late seasons when winter departs tardily and reluctantly, but which almost always repay the farmer by a year of abundance. Vegetation, when it does begin to appear, shoots up as if by magic, and hardly has the snow melted from off the hills before flowers are in blossom all over the valleys. But we must attempt to give the reader some idea of the situation of the place at which they had arrived.