water,
whose shores he has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it? Some
skin-flint, who loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a
bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen face; who regarded
even the wild ducks which settled in it as trespassers; his fingers
grown into crooked and bony talons from the long habit of grasping
harpy-like;--so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him nor to
hear of him; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who never loved
it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor
thanked God that He had made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes
that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild
flowers which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the thread
of whose history is interwoven with its own; not from him who could show
no title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or legislature
gave him--him who thought only of its money value; whose presence
perchance cursed all the shores; who exhausted the land around it, and
would fain have exhausted the waters within it; who regretted only that
it was not English hay or cranberry meadow--there was nothing to redeem
it, forsooth, in his eyes--and would have drained and sold it for the
mud at its bottom. It did not turn his mill, and it was no privilege to
him to behold it. I respect not his labors, his farm where everything
has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God,
to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his
god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no
crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars; who
loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him
till they are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true
wealth. Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as
they are poor--poor farmers. A model farm! where the house stands like a
fungus in a muckheap, chambers for men horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed
and uncleansed, all contiguous to one another! Stocked with men! A great
grease-spot, redolent of manures and buttermilk! Under a high state of
cultivation, being manured with the hearts and brains of men! As if you
were to raise your potatoes in the churchyard! Such is a model farm.

No, no; if the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after
men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men