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If Farmers attend the Time with Care, and employ Hands on those Days, they will find their Account in it.1

This passage from "the curious and learned Dr. Elliot," as Mr. Thomas calls him, is inserted in the Almanac for 1803, but without any comment, whether favorable or adverse.

In 1805 Mr. Thomas prints a letter from an unknown correspondent, whose signature is P. S. and who describes himself as "an old Ploughjogger." It contains an obser

vation with regard to the effect of the moon on fruit trees which may profitably be compared with the principles laid down by Mr. Deane. Mr. Thomas does not say what he thinks of the Ploughjogger's theory.

There is one thing however, I have always admired that you, or some other writer on fruit trees never have mentioned, though I think it well worth observing, which is, setting fruit trees in the old of the moon, that they never thrive so well, and it is rare that any come to perfection, but, generally turn to shrubs or die in a few years. I am, Sir, an old farmer, upwards of seventy-five years of age, and this I have proved by my own experience, as well as by observing it of others, whom I could point out, but I think it needless. Apple trees as well as all other fruit trees should be set out in the new of the moon, and the top cut down until there are no more limbs on the top than roots on the bottom, a tree thus pruned will grow more in four years than one that is not, will do in ten. I have another observation, Sir, to make, which is, on the cutting and preserving scions for grafting; these should be taken off in the last of March and tied in a bundle, and buried in the ground five and six inches deep, there to remain until the bud begins to open, and the moon changes, then they should be taken up and the dirt washed off in cold water, when they are fit for grafting; these will be plump and grow four times as well as those that have been lying in a cellar and become wilted.

1 Essays, as above, pp. 123-4.

There is nothing strange in the doctrines of Dr. Deane, Mr. Eliot, and the old Ploughjogger. They are not offshoots of superstition, but merely a slight aberration of science. We must not confuse the attitude of these sober experimenters with the whimsies of astrological theorists a century before, to whom the planets were the lords of life and death, of growth and decay, and who held that the wholesomeness and medicinal virtue of plants depended as well on the planet under which they were gathered as on that under which they were eaten or administered to the patient. Such a philosopher was Israel Hübner, whose Mystery of Seals, Herbs, and Stones, was translated by one B. Clayton, and published at London in 1698. Hübner was Professor of Mathematics in the University of Erfurt, and his work is full of perverse learning. Lunar diseases, according to his system, were ulcers, measles and spots on the face, cataracts, epilepsy, and dysentery. Among herbs, roots, and trees under the especial influence of the moon he includes beans, cabbages, cucumbers, lettuce, mandrake, pompions (i. e. pumpkins), plum trees, and watercresses. On the tenth of March, 1698, "at 31 minutes past 7 at Night, the Moon is in Mid-Heaven with 31 Testimonies. At which time you must cut up or gather the Herbs and Roots of the Moon; you may provide your self half an hour before-hand, but the Herb or Root must be cut or gathered at 31 minutes past Seven, and put into a pale, white or grey coloured Silk bag, and kept till Occasion serves." How these vagaries were received may be inferred from a commendatory poem by Gadbury, the astrologer and almanac-maker, which is prefixed to Clayton's volume, and which declares that "the World is govern'd by Stars Energy" and that every physician "must have a Warrant from the spangled Skies"!

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WHAT TO READ

R. THOMAS does not neglect to recommend suitable reading to the farmer. His Calendars for December contain many items of this sort, suitably intermingled with directions for threshing, putting sleds and sleighs in order, and the several occupations appropriate to the winter season. At other seasons the farmer had enough to do in attending to the diversified agriculture of a time when every estate was its own home market and aimed at being sufficient unto itself so far as the products of the climate would allow. A sample of Mr. Thomas's literary advice may be seen in his very first number (1793):

Put your sleds & sleighs in order.
Complete your thrashing.
Visit your barns often.

See that your cellars are well stored with good cider, that wholesome and cheering liquor, which is the product of your own farms: No man is to be pitied, that cannot enjoy himself or his friend, over a pot of good cider, the product of his own country, and perhaps his own farm; which suits both his constitution and his pocket, much better than West-India spirit.

Now comes on the long and social winter evenings, when the farmer may enjoy himself, and instruct and entertain his family by reading some useful books, of which he will do well in preparing a select number. The following I should recommend, as books worthy the perusal of every American. - RAMSAY'S History of the American Revolution; MORSE'S Geography; and BELKNAP'S History of New-Hampshire.

Adjust your accounts; see that your expenditures do not exceed your incomes.

And again, in 1795, we find:

The winter affords many enjoyment[s] to mankind in general, but to no one class of men more, than to the industrious husbandman, who now sets down at leisure surrounded by all the comforts and necessaries of life pleasingly spending the long winter's evenings in social converse as by reading some useful and entertaining author. "Reading and conversation are, to winter, what flowers are to the spring, and fruits are to autumn. They are the boast of the season. Superior to vernal joys, these permanent pleasures of the intellect are in vigor, when those are faded and no more."

Another specimen may be taken from the Almanac for 1814:

It is all important that every man should know the history and geography of his own country. — Yet a vast many of us hardly know our right hand from our left in this respect. What more profitable employment can you have during the long winter evenings than reading Hutchinson's history of Massachusetts -Belknap's New-Hampshire Williams's Vermont Life of Gen. Washington American Revolution, Morses' and other Geographies, &c.

The farmer and his family are not to be limited to so solid a diet as this paragraph prescribes. At the end of December, 1794, we read: "The Life of Dr. Franklin, I would recommend for the amusement of winter evenings, also the Life of Baron Trenck." Franklin's Autobiography has become classic. The celebrated Baron Trenck, however, has almost dropped out of sight, though he long remained a popular author with boys. His imprisonments and escapes from durance are still good reading. Many

will remember the exciting moment when he was caught by the leg as he was just getting over the palisades that enclosed his prison. Trenck was regarded as altogether too worldly a writer for Sunday perusal. "Baron Trenck," writes Mr. Aldrich, in his Story of a Bad Boy, "Baron Trenck, who managed to escape from the fortress of Glatz, can't for the life of him get out of our sitting-room" closet on a Sunday.

Mr. Thomas, it will be noticed, was inclined to recommend American authors. There had been much historical writing in this country, and geography, too, was a favorite pursuit in New England. As Dr. Benjamin Trumbull said, in his Century Sermon preached at North Haven, Connecticut, on New Year's Day, 1801, when the Almanac was in its first decade, "by the assistance of the Reverend Dr. Morse's Universal Geography, and that of Dr. Dwight's for schools, school boys know more of geography now, than men did an hundred years ago; nay more than even the writers on geography knew at that period. Besides, several good histories of the colonies have been written during the last century, which have greatly increased their knowledge of each other, and acquainted the world more intimately with their affairs."1

There was a large importation of books from England. Booksellers abounded in the country towns, and, what is more, in the last part of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth, there were local presses without number, and cheap copies of standard English authors bearing the imprint of Newburyport, Salem, New Bedford, Exeter, Brattleboro', and so on, were the order of the day. It was likewise a common practice for large publishers to sell books in sheets to the trade in the country, thus allowing them the profit on binding as well as the retail profit. The present centralization of the publishing business 1 A Century Sermon, New Haven, 1801, p. 6.

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