Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England

Front matter

WALKS AND TALKS OF AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. BY FEEDEEICK LAW OLMSTED, NOW SUPERINTENDENT OF THE CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK ; AUTHOR OF A JOURNEY IN THE SEA-BOARD SLAVE STATES, A JOURNEY IN TEXAS, ETC, ETC. New Edition, Revised, with Additions by the Author. COLUMBUS, OHIO: JOS. H. EILEY AND COMPANY. 1859. Entered according to Act dr-OtmgfSss, in the year 1869, by JOS. H. RILEY & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of Ohio. FOLLETT, FOSTER & CO., Printers, Stereotypers, Binders and Publishers, COLUMBUS, OHIO. TO GEOEGE GEDDES, Esq., OF ONONDAQA COUNTY, NEW YORK, THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.

Preface

. I DO not deem it necessary to apologize for this memoir of a farmer's visit to England. Every man in traveling will be directed in peculiar paths of observation by his peculiar tastes, habits, and personal interests, and there will always be a greater or less class who will like to hear of just what he liked to see. With a hearty country appetite for narrative, I have spent, previous to my own journey, a great many long winter evenings in reading the books, so frequently written by our literary tourists, upon England ; and although I do not recollect one of them, the author of which was a farmer, or whose habits of life, professional interests, associations in society, and ordinary standards of com parison were not altogether different from my own, I remember none from which I did not derive entertainment and instruction.

Notwithstanding, therefore, the triteness of the field, I may presume to think, that there will be a great many who will yet enjoy to follow me over it, and this although my gait and carriage should not be very elegant, but so only as one farmer's leg and W PRE FACE. VI one sailor's leg, with the help of a short, crooked, half-grown academic sapling for a walking stick, might be expected to carry a man along with a head and a heart of his own. And as it is especially for farmers and farmers' families that I have written, I expect that all who try to read the book, will be willing to come into a warm, good-natured, broad country kitchen fireside relation with me, and permit me to speak my mind freely, and in such language as I can readily command, on all sorts of subjects that come in my way, forming their own views from the facts that I give them, and taking my opinions for only just what they shall seem to be worth.

Some explanation of a few of the intentions that gave direction to my movements in traveling may be of service to the reader. The wages, and the cost and manner of living of the laboring men, and the customs with regard to labor of those countries and districts, from which foreign writers on economical subjects are in the habit of deriving their data, had been made a subject of more than ordinary and other than merely philanthropical interest to me, from an experience of the difficulty of applying their cal culations to the different circumstances under which work must be executed in the United States. My vocation as a farmer, too, had led me for a long time to desire to know more of the prevail ing, ordinary, and generally-accepted practices of agriculture than I could learn from Mr. Coleman's book, or from the observations of most of the European correspondents of our agricultural peri odicals ; the attention of these gentlemen having been usually

PREFACE.

. VII directed to the exceptional, improved modes of cultivation which prevail only among the amateur agriculturists and the bolder and more enterprising farmers. The tour was made in company with two friends, whose pur poses somewhat influence the character of the narrative. One of them — my brother — hoped by a course of invigorating exer cise, simple diet, and restraint from books and other in-door and sedentary luxuries, to reestablish his weakened health, and espe cially to strengthen Iris eyes, frequent failures of which often seriously annoyed aud interrupted him in the study of his profes sion. The other, our intimate friend from boyhood, desired to add somewhat to the qualifications usually inquired after in a professed teacher and adviser of mankind, by such a term and method of study as he could afford to make of the varying developments of human nature, under different biases and institutions from those of his own land.

We all thought that it should be among those classes which form the majority of the people of a country that the truest exhibition of national character should be looked for, and that in their condition should be found the best evidence of the wisdom of national institutions. In forming the details of a plan by which we could, within certain limits of time and money, best accomplish such purposes as I have indicated, we were much indebted to the information and advice given by Bayard Taylor, in his " Views a-Foot." This volume contains a narrative of the earlier, and to us most

PREFACE.

. VIII interesting, though not the most practically valuable, part of our journey. I was in the habit of writing my diary in the form of a letter, to be sent as occasion offered to friends at home. It is from this desultory letter-diary, with such revision and extension and filling up of gaps as my memory and pocket-book notes afford, that this book has been now made. FRED. LAW OLMSTED. Tosomock Farm, Socthside, i Staten Island, 1859. J CONTENTS.