acquainted with the art, it appeared a pleasant and cheerful occupation;
for I could now turn a furrow as true and as straight as "the path of an
arrow." My father, who was an excellent and an accomplished husbandman,
never failed during this time to pass some part of the day with me, in
order to instruct me how to set my plough, to fix the share and point, and
so to regulate its various bearings as to make it, at the same time it did
the work well, go easy and pleasant to the holder. This may, perhaps, be
very uninteresting to many sedentary readers, and to those who are mere
passing observers, and who believe that there is no art in holding plough;
but they are very much mistaken who think that any body will make a
farmer, and that to be a good husbandman is the natural result of living
in the country. It is a very common and vulgar saying in the country,
among farmers, when any one has a son that is more stupid than common, "if
he will make nothing else, if he is unfit or incapable of learning any
business or trade, why, he will make a parson." But to make a good farmer,
a man must have served a double apprenticeship to the profession; and
after that, he must be a philosopher and a chemist. No business requires
the exercise of a man's patience and his reasoning faculties so much as
that of a farmer. Every day, nay, every hour, produces something new,
something fresh, which calls forth the active use of his reason, his
exertion, and his talent. No two seasons are alike, and scarcely any two
days. In every other profession or business, a clever intelligent person
can calculate for any given number of hands, nearly, the work of a week, a
month, or almost a year, in advance. The manufacturer or the tradesman has
a constant regular routine of business for his workmen to perform; and if
he be called from his home, for any length of time, he can leave orders
what work almost every man shall do till his return; but the farmer's
occupation, and that of all his servants, changes with the weather; nay,
it becomes his peculiar care, at some periods of the year, to watch with
anxiety every change of the wind, and his business to observe the