From the consideration of these vanishing or vanished types, a single illustration of which alone was usually to be found in any ordinary village, we turn now to a class that then, as their successors do now, made up the predominant element in every section—the “Country Farmer”—and I mean the country farmer of fifty years ago.
The farmer of to-day is a man who lives in a comfortable, perhaps handsome house, whose parlor is carpeted and is graced with a piano, whose acres are mowed or reaped by the horse-power machine, and grain threshed by steam, who drives in a good carriage, and his son has a top buggy of his own; whose wife wears silk, and his daughters spend their winters in the city. He wears handsome clothes, takes one or two agricultural papers, keeps fancy stock, Jerseys and Hollands, and occasionally furnishes articles to the press on “Creameries” and “Ensilage.”
Not such was the typical farmer of a generation or two ago—a man whose comforts were fewer and helps much less, and also a man of stronger traits of character, more decided convictions, harder working, and probably in proportion fully as successful in accumulating the profits of careful industry.
One such I have in mind, an example of the best of his class. He was a large man, well built, tall and muscular. He had been educated at the common district school of the vicinity, had succeeded his father in ownership of the farm, had married early, and became in time the head of a large family. No chance visitor ever spent the night at the house without being taken out into the kitchen and shown the long line of boots, seven pairs arranged in a regularly diminishing row, and all ready for the morning.
He was not what would be called an educated man to-day, but he had studied the national and the state constitutions; knew all about the politics of the country; looked after the interest of the district school near his home; attended regular in all seasons and weathers the village church, four miles away, and in which also he served as a trustee. He was a firm believer in the stanch Calvinism of his fathers; taught his children the Westminster Catechism on Sunday afternoons; always voted his party ticket straight, and believed with all his heart in his minister and in his favorite political leader.
He toiled hard, rising early and going to bed early also. His food was simple, beef, pork, salt fish, dried apples, beans, and farm vegetables, with milk, butter and eggs in abundance, and bread, if not the whitest, yet always sweet, made from the wheat of his own growing, ground into flour at his neighbor’s grist mill. His work did not present any great variety. In spring there was the regular round of repairing the fences, cleaning out the barnyard, ploughing and sowing; followed in due time by the long and laborious hoeing the corn and potatoes, and then by the mowing the grass with scythes, reaping the grain with sickle or cradle, and afterward the threshing on the barn floor by the well-swung flail, whose sturdy blows filled all the valley with answering echoes.
In winter there was the cutting, hauling, sawing, splitting and piling in the shed the abundant supply of wood that was to keep up the next year’s fires in the great fireplace, the huge brick oven, and the kitchen and “living room” stoves.
Pleasures and recreations were few; the huskings in the fall, the squirrel and rabbit hunts, the evening chats with a neighbor along with the apples and mug of cider, the game of checkers by the kitchen fire on a stormy day, the occasional larger gathering for an early supper, the spelling match, and the singing school. Books were not numerous, the weight making up for the lack of variety. There were the Bible, Watts’s Psalms and Hymns, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,” Rollins’s “Ancient History,” Watts’s “Improvement of the Mind,” Baxter’s “Saint’s Rest,” Young’s “Night Thoughts,” and a stray volume of The Spectator.
Trained by such books, by lessons of hard experience, by intercourse with neighbors, and by the sermons of his minister, such a farmer became, not the polished man, or versatile, or widely informed, but the man of strong character, rugged worth, decided convictions unflinchingly adhered to, true, honest, upright, kindly, careful, close perhaps, but generous also and helpful. To men of to-day he might seem narrow-minded and opinionated. We may smile at some of his ideas and apprehensions, and tell humorous stories illustrating his acknowledged inquisitiveness; but none the less at heart we must do him honor and admit that more men like him were a blessing in the community to-day. Rigid necessity compelled him to be carefully economical and exact in his dealings to a degree even that verged on parsimony, but he was just in it all, and demanded only what was rightfully his own. For the sake of securing that however he would, if necessary, be at the trouble once taken, as it is told, by a certain New England farmer. A United States surveying party had taken a single chestnut rail from his fence, and using it as a signal pole, had neglected either to return it to its place or to compensate him therefor. Discovering this trespass he started after them, walked ten miles in the hot sun, interviewed the chief, informed him that people’s property was to be respected, and that he was not a man to be imposed upon or frightened. Pleasantly and respectfully met, and asked to state the damage, he replied: “Well, seein’ as no cattle got in, there warn’t no damage; chestnut rails ain’t of much account anyway, and that one I calc’late wasn’t worth more’n ten cents;” and receiving that amount duly paid in legal coin of the country, he returned home amply satisfied.
Sketches of vanishing types, such as these, might be almost indefinitely continued, but we must be content with simply indicating some of the fit subjects.