GENTLEMAN-FARMING--ESTABLISHING A HOME.
From all these industrial antecedents, few would set me down as
belonging to the class of gentlemen farmers. Generally they are men of
leisure, and are always presumed to be independent; for most of us have
inherited the strange idea that one must be wealthy in order to be
gentlemanly. They go into the country because they are rich. I went
because I was poor. Notwithstanding this antagonism between their
condition and mine, it was practically, and for all purposes of human
comfort, so insignificant as to disappear entirely when brought to the
test.
There were neighbors within a mile of me, wealthy citizens who had
purchased lands, erected splendid houses, established lawns that were
gorgeous with fruits, and evergreens and flowers, while costly graperies
were made to yield a winter harvest of extraordinary fruit. They sported
elegant carriages, and had professional experts to look after the
hot-beds in winter, and the garden in summer. My riding was done a-foot,
and I was the professional genius of my own garden. Every avenue of
theirs was nicely gravelled and rolled; every hedge of evergreen was
trimmed into the most artistic shape. Not a day in winter but the
vegetables of early spring were spread in abundance on their tables;
yet many times they have overflowed with generous attention on my own.
I could boast of but few of these ever-present luxuries; yet with these
men, some of whom were the life and charm of the neighborhood, I mingled
with the most cordial association. Though there was no community of
wealth, yet there was one of feeling, such as springs from education,
character, and kindred aspirations after whatever is captivating in the
intellectual, or good in the moral world. Our families became cemented
by cordial friendships, and intercourse was enjoyed and regulated, not
on the assumption that it was money that made the country gentleman, but
that mind, and heart, and education were the true ingredients. Thus,
with no pretensions to a position so widely coveted, I enjoyed all its
advantages.
There is no such leveller as politics, short of the great leveller
himself. Some of my neighbors were prodigious politicians. As most of
them were sensible men, all such agreed with me; and having myself a
good deal of zeal in the cause, we had at times a world of caucussing;
on which occasions the most luminous discussions occurred. I have
sometimes been astonished at the depth of political and financial wisdom
developed on these occasions. There was little doubt, in my mind, that a
cabinet of the strongest character could have been made up from among
us. When I hinted this idea to one of us, he expressed his decided
opinion that there was material enough for two or three. As to
finance--for most of these had been successful and become rich--they
talked of hundreds of millions as if they were every-day trifles. These
caucusses occupied many long evenings just before election-day, when
funds were to raise, candidates to be selected, tickets to print, and
other equally weighty matters were to be engineered to a crisis.
Sometimes, even after election, they were held, especially when it was
discovered that the funds had been used up without expenses having been
paid. On such occasions it was evident we had much less talk and fire,
and that the cash deficit was a considerable damper on the spirits of
all present. But I feel convinced that at these caucuses the nation has
been repeatedly saved. As we generally carried the day at the polls, it
was then unanimously agreed on “our side” that the country was safe--at
least until it needed saving over again.
Somehow--I can hardly say exactly how--these gentlemen discovered that I
was pretty good at writing resolutions, getting up posters that made the
town ring with sensation, and that in a general way I was what one of
the party--a retired grocer--called a “good egg.” The result was that I
was speedily promoted to a high position in their political and social
confidence. On one occasion they even did me the honor of making me
secretary of a meeting which had been called to consider what had better
be done with the town pump; and I have good reason to believe that had I
intimated a wish to that effect, they would have honored me with the
extremely responsible position of chairman. If the country had been in
any actual danger, I think they would have turned to me by a sort of
instinct, so great was their admiration of my ability to get up a
handbill at the shortest possible notice. But having no political
ambition, the security in which I have been content to vegetate will not
surprise the sympathetic reader. Thus village politics are a very
agreeable pastime, especially when you happen to be generally of the
same mind.
Some of these country gentlemen had purchased naked fields, inclosed by
decrepit fences, over which the rank poison-vine and poke-bush struggled
with the wild blackberry for ascendancy, while the weather-beaten trunks
of blasted apple-trees, grown ghastly by age and decay, threw up their
leafless branches in the centre of the grounds. There were stones and
gulleys and barren knolls denuded of the soil. There were ponds which
stagnated in summer, overgrown with spatter-docks and cat-tail, and so
densely populated by frogs, that even when times were most flourishing
and money most abundant, the neighborhood was never without its
congregation of croakers. The buildings were in some cases the
architectural residuum of the men who first squatted on the soil, with
low and unplastered ceilings, blackened by the smoke from huge open
fireplaces. As every thing within was primitive and inconvenient, so all
without was rude and squalid.
It has everywhere been the mission of the gentleman farmer to
reconstruct and regenerate all this. I have seen him engaged in
numberless undertakings of the kind. No one begins improvement with
such courageous zeal; no one goes through with what he undertakes with
such unflagging liberality of expenditure. Wherever he locates he leaves
an almost imperishable mark. Whatever he lays his hand to he improves
and beautifies.
All this is proverbial in the country, though the zeal, the efforts, and
the expenditures of such men are far from being properly appreciated. I
was one day standing near an old homestead, which was thus crumbling
into a heap of firewood, by order of a wealthy citizen who had recently
become the purchaser. A group of idle neighbors were leaning, like
myself, against the old rickety fence, watching the progress of
demolition, when an ancient farmer, who knew nothing beyond six per
cent., broke the silence by observing--
“So it is. When a city man buys a farm and pays for it, then he begins
to spend money.”
“Always so,” responded another, who belonged to the same antediluvian
class; “I’ve seed it many a time.”
There was quite a general assent to this proposition among the group.
The idea of the first speaker was, that because he possessed money, his
sole duty was to keep it, and that gentlemen farmers were great
simpletons for doing otherwise; never for a moment imagining that if for
himself it were a luxury to hoard, it might be with the others a still
greater luxury to spend.
In many neighborhoods, the advent of a gentleman farmer is not hailed
with genuine hospitality. He is too often regarded as a foolish man,
because he spends his money freely, even though it be scattered among
the sneering crowd. However thoroughly he pulls down, however
judiciously he builds up and improves, the masses neither appreciate nor
comprehend. They see him exterminate the most impenetrable hedgerows
with no other remark than as to what the job will cost. He drains the
immemorial marsh, abolishes the spatter-docks, squelches the frogs, digs
up the dead apple-trees, and brings in a huge stand of clover. The
latter they can comprehend, because they know what clover is. They have
been educated to believe in it; but of most of the former operations
they know nothing, and having a vague idea that they cost great sums of
money, condemn them as useless and unprofitable fancies.
But among the gentlemen farmers of this country are to be found its
loftiest minds, its purest patriots, its greatest public benefactors.
They have imported our celebrated breeds of domestic animals, sometimes
at enormous cost, and in many cases have propagated them with no view to
their own profit. The farm-stock of entire neighborhoods has been
regenerated by this infusion of new and better blood. They build neater
and more convenient barns and outhouses; they patronize new plants and
tools; they ditch and under-drain the swamps and meadows; they plant
vast orchards of the choicest fruits; they try costly experiments
exclusively for the public good; their labors enhance the value of the
lands around them; they are the animating spirits of half our
agricultural societies, and, in a hundred ways, by precept and example,
with a generous outlay of means, have made themselves the models of
improved processes which have acted powerfully in inducing others to
imitate their management.
Yet these men are sometimes pitied because their labors afford them no
profit, as if the whole duty of man lay in the acquisition of six per
cent. It is not important that their labor should result in profit; and
if of no consequence to themselves, why should their failure to realize
it be so distressing to others? It would cost them quite as much to live
if they had remained in the city. The only real money difference is,
that what they spend is disbursed in one place instead of another. There
is the vast collateral gratification of living where the most comfort is
to be obtained. They have tramped and sweltered over the hot pavements
of a city long enough. Now they have broad acres and health-inspiring
breezes, glorious lawns, trees loaded with abundant crops of luscious
fruit, gardens whose contents would be coveted by the tenants of every
city market, society enough, books, and whatever they may order the
daily mail to bring them. It is perhaps the most valuable incident in
the whole aim and practice of gentleman farming that profit is not the
object.
But if these establish pleasant homes by restoring the waste places of
the earth, it is not accomplished by merely scattering at random the
contents of a well-filled purse. Taste and inclination must combine to
make the whole effort effective. Take these two last ingredients,
substitute industry and economy for the purse, and then unite all in the
person of a persevering man, penniless though he be, and a home may be
established, less pretentious, it is true, but within which Love will
gladly seek to fold his wings, evermore to nestle round the heart, while
Time, sure in his approaches, but lavish of his compensations, will lift
up the modest occupants into the sunshine of a grateful independence.