and, in many
cases, quite convenient household and farm arrangements. Numerous
farmeries in every section of the United States, particularly in the
older ones, demonstrate most fully, that where our farmers have taken
the trouble to _think_ on the subject, their ingenuity has been equal,
in the items of convenient and economical arrangement of their dwellings
and out-buildings, to their demands. But, we are forced to say, that
such buildings have been executed, in most cases, with great neglect of
_architectural_ system, taste, or effect; and, in many instances, to the
utter violation of all _propriety_ in appearance, or character, as
appertaining to the uses for which they are applied.

The character of the farm should be carried out so as to _express_
itself in everything which it contains. All should bear a consistent
relation with each other. The former himself is a plain man. His family
are plain people, although none the less worthy, useful, or exalted, on
that account. His structures, of every kind, should be plain, also, yet
substantial, where substance is required. All these detract nothing from
his respectability or his influence in the neighborhood, the town, the
county, or the state. A farmer has quite as much business in the field,
or about his ordinary occupations, with ragged garments, out at elbows,
and a crownless hat, as he has to occupy a leaky, wind-broken, and
dilapidated house. Neither is he any nearer the mark, with a ruffled
shirt, a fancy dress, or gloved hands, when following his plough behind
a pair of _fancy_ horses, than in living in a finical, pretending house,
such as we see stuck up in conspicuous places in many parts of the
country. All these are out of place in each extreme, and the one is as
absurd, so far as true propriety is concerned, as the other. A fitness
of things, or a correspondence of one thing with another, should always
be preserved upon the farm, as elsewhere; and there is not a single
reason why propriety and good keeping should not as well distinguish it.
Nor is there any good cause why the farmer himself should not be a man
of taste, in the arrangement and architecture of every building on his
place, as well as other men. It is only necessary that he devote a
little time to study, in order to give his mind a right direction in all
that appertains to this department. Or, if he prefer to employ the
ingenuity of others to do his planning,--which, by the way, is, in most
ca