ights of lawn and bower, and
the exquisite sensation of eating your own hams, the largest class of
patients in insane asylums comes from the "jolly boys" and their wives
and daughters; but better watch a grass-blade struggling up under the
curb-stone of the sidewalk than view the fairest landscape in the world
from behind a grated window. We learn also, that, in spite of his ample
larder, his freedom from envy and carking care, the farmer does not live
so long as the pale clergyman whose white hands he looks upon with only
not contempt; but how sweet soever may be the scent of clover and
buttercup, he little heeds their fragrance who lies beneath them. We are
told that a very large part of our farming population have no breadth of
view; that they cannot enter into a conversation beyond a few comments
on the weather, the crops, the markets, and the neighborhood-news. The
freshness, the beauty, the music and motion, that breathe and stir
around them, can gain no foothold in the unvarying routine of their
lives; but in vain do the heavens spread out their glory, and in vain
the earth unfolds her loveliness, if

"A primrose by the river's brim
A yellow primrose is to him,
And it is nothing more."

To these skeletons is added, perhaps, the causal and certainly the most
common skeleton of all: in this rustic paradise, this home of all the
graces and comforts, the grim spectre Debt stalks to and fro, eating out
the farmer's substance, and giving him in return anxiety, makeshifts,
irascibility, and despair. Three homes out of four, according to this
writer's estimate, suffer from the ravages of debt.

This is a general, perhaps a national view. We may come a little nearer
home, and find that a closer examination only confirms the conclusions
arrived at by the broader survey. Thoreau, who "has travelled a great
deal in Concord," and whose keen eyes took note there for forty years,
says,--"When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord,... I find
that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty
years, that they may become the real owners of their farms, which
commonly they have inherited with incumbrances, or else bought with
hired money,... but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is
true, the incumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that
the farm itself becomes one great incumbrance, and still a man is found
to inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he