PREFACE.
I do not deem it necessary to apologize for this memoir of a farmer’s visit to England. Every man in travelling will be directed in peculiar paths of observation by his peculiar tastes, habits, and personal interests, and there will always be a greater or less class who will like to hear of just what he liked to see. With a hearty country appetite for narrative, I have spent, previous to my own journey, a great many long winter evenings in reading the books so frequently written by our literary tourists, upon England; and although I do not recollect one of them, the author of which was a farmer, or whose habits of life, professional interests, associations in society, and ordinary standards of comparison were not altogether different from my own, I remember none from which I did not derive entertainment and instruction.
Notwithstanding, therefore, the triteness of the field, I may presume to think, that there will be a great many who will yet enjoy to follow me over it, and this although my gait and carriage should not be very elegant, but so only as one farmer’s leg and one sailor’s leg with the help of a short, crooked, half-grown academic sapling, for a walking stick, might be expected to carry a man along with a head and a heart of his own.
And as it is especially for farmers and farmers’ families that I have written, I trust that all who try to read the book, will be willing to come into a warm, good-natured, broad country kitchen fireside relation with me, and permit me to speak my mind freely, and in such language as I can readily command on all sorts of subjects that come in my way, forming their own views from the facts that I give them, and taking my opinions for only just what they shall seem to be worth.
Some explanation of a few of the intentions that gave direction to my movements in travelling may be of service to the reader.
The wages, and the cost and manner of living of the labouring men, and the customs with regard to labour of those countries and districts, from which foreign writers on economical subjects are in the habit of deriving their data, had been made a subject of more than ordinary and other than merely philanthropical interest to me, from an experience of the difficulty of applying their calculations to the different circumstances under which work must be executed in the United States. My vocation as a farmer, too, had led me for a long time to desire to know more of the prevailing, ordinary, and generally accepted practices of agriculture, than I could learn from Mr. Coleman’s book, or from the observations of most of the European correspondents of our agricultural periodicals, the attention of these gentlemen having been usually directed to the exceptional improved modes of cultivation which prevail only among the amateur agriculturists and the bolder and more enterprising farmers.
The tour was made in company with two friends, whose purposes somewhat influence the character of the narrative. One of them, my brother, hoped by a course of invigorating exercise, simple diet, and restraint from books and other in-door and sedentary luxuries, to re-establish his weakened health, and especially to strengthen his eyes, frequent failures of which often seriously annoyed and interrupted him in the study of his profession. The other, our intimate friend from boyhood, desired to add somewhat to the qualifications usually inquired after in a professed teacher and adviser of mankind, by such a term and method of study as he could afford to make, of the varying developments of human nature under different biases and institutions from those of his own land.
We all considered, finally, that it should be among those classes which form the majority of the people of a country that the truest exhibition of national character should be looked for, and that in their condition should be found the best evidence of the wisdom of national institutions.
In forming the details of a plan by which we could, within certain limits of time and money, best accomplish such purposes as I have indicated, we were much indebted to the information and advice given by Bayard Taylor in his “Views a-Foot.”
The part now published contains the narrative of the earlier, and to us most interesting, though not the most practically valuable, part of our journey. I was in the habit of writing my diary usually in the form of a letter, to be sent as occasion offered to friends at home. It is from this desultory letter-diary, with such revision and extension and filling up of gaps, as my memory and pocket-book notes afford, that this volume has been formed. I have most desired to bring before my brother farmers and their families such things that I saw in England as have conveyed practical agricultural information or useful suggestions to myself, and such evidences of simply refined tastes, good feelings, and enlarged Christian sentiments among our English brethren, as all should enjoy to read of. It was my design to have somewhat extended this volume, that it might contain a greater proportion of more distinctly rural matter, but the liberal proposal of Mr. Putnam to include it in the excellent popular Series he is now publishing, makes a limit to its length necessary. Should I have reason to believe, however, that I have succeeded in the purposes which led me to write for the public, I shall be most happy at another time to continue my narrative.
FRED. LAW OLMSTED.
Tosomock Farm, Southside, Staten Island.