ntries, and bribe "an honourable
mention" out of them with champagne treats and oyster suppers.
Indeed, my Quaker host largely participated in this opinion, and
took no pains to conceal it when speaking of his enterprising
neighbor.

From what I had read and heard of the Tiptree Hall estate, I
expected to see a grand, old, baronial mansion, surrounded with
elegant and costly buildings for housing horses, cattle, sheep, and
other live stock, all erected on a scale which no bona fide farmer
could adopt or approximately imitate. In a word, I fancied his
barns and stables would even surpass in this respect the
establishments of some of those most wealthy New York or Boston
merchants, who think they are stimulating country farmers to healthy
emulation by lavishing from thirty to forty thousand dollars on a
barn and its appurtenant out-houses. With these preconceived ideas,
it was an unexpected satisfaction to see quite a simple-looking,
unassuming establishment, which any well-to-do farmer might make and
own. The house is rather a large and solid-looking building,
erected by Mr. Mechi himself, but not at all ostentatious of wealth
or architectural taste. The barns and "steddings," or what we call
cowhouses in America, are of a very ordinary cast, or such as any
country-bred farmer would call economical and simple. The homestead
occupies no picturesque site, and commands no interesting scenery.
The farm consists of about 170 acres, which, in England, is regarded
as a rather small holding. The land is naturally sterile and hard
of cultivation, most of it apparently being heavily mixed with
ferruginous matter. When ploughed deeply, the clods turned up look
frequently like compact masses of iron ore. Every experienced
farmer knows the natural poverty of such a soil, and the hard labor
to man and beast it costs to till it.

To my great regret, Mr. Mechi was not at home, though he passes most
of his time in Summer at Tiptree. But his foreman, who enters into
all the experiments and operations which have made the establishment
so famous, with almost equal interest and enthusiasm, took me
through the farm buildings, and all the fields, and showed me the
whole process and machinery employed. Any English or American
agriculturist who has read of Alderman Mechi's operations, would be
inclined to ask, on looking, for the first time, at his buildings
and the fields surrounding them, what is the great distinguishing
speciali