One is tempted to go on indefinitely with the Old Farmer's sketches of life and manners, and the stock is by no means exhausted, but enough has been quoted to show not only their literary interest but their significance for the student of social conditions in New England.

7

"T

LAWYERS AND QUACKS

HE best houses in Connecticut are inhabited by lawyers," wrote Henry Wansey in 1794. Here was a great change from the state of things when Thomas Lechford found it so hard to practise his profession in Boston that he was constrained to warn the colonists not to "despise learning, nor the worthy lawyers of either gown (civil or ecclesiastical), lest you repent too late." 2 But there were corners of New England in which the old order long maintained itself, and one of these was West Boylston, the home of Mr. Thomas. When, in 1826, the local minister, the Rev. Mr. Crosby, wrote his brief history of the town for the Worcester Magazine, he remarked that there were three justices of the peace, one of them being Mr. Thomas himself, but that they had little to do and that there was no resident man of law.3

It was natural, then, as well as sensible, for the Almanac to bid its readers beware of litigation. "I would not run to 'Squire Fraylove," says Mr. Thomas in the Farmer's Calendar for April, 1815, "at every petty dispute with a troublesome neighbour. You will be sure to be advised to a suit, and then comes business enough." And still earlier, in December, 1810, after a hearty commendation

1 Journal of an Excursion to the United States of North America in the Summer of 1794, Salisbury, 1796, p. 70.

2 Plaine Dealing, 1642, p. 28; ed. Trumbull, p. 68.

8 Worcester Magazine and Historical Journal, August, 1826, II, 201. West Boylston was set off from Sterling and Boylston in 1808 (cf. pp. 4–5, above).

of married life, the farmer's counsellor has a sly fling at the legal profession:

Now having been industrious in the summer, you will have the felicity of retiring from the turbulence of the storm to the bosom of your family. Here is divine employment. Surely if happiness can any where be found on earth, 't is in the sweet enjoyment of the fireside, surrounded by a domestic throng a lovely wife and prattling babes. Ye cold and barren fens of celibacy, behold the delightful regions of matrimony! Leave your frigid abodes, and come and dwell in society, and taste the rational pleasures of a connubial state. Lawyers gowns are lined with the wilfulness of their clients. Then let us be accommodating and not run to the lawyer at every little offence. An honest and upright attorney is an advantage to a town; but one that is ready to set his neighbors at variance to govern a few thereby is a pest to society. 'Tis not likely that we have many of the last description in New England as we have so very small a number in the whole.

The distinction between honest attorneys and pettifoggers is clearly made, but the closing sentence ingeniously takes back a large portion of the compliment that precedes it. Yet it is clear that Mr. Thomas made a sharp distinction between reputable men of law and pretenders. Of the latter there seem to have been a good many in the country districts. John Adams, in 1760, speaks of "the multiplicity of pettifoggers" in Braintree, which had become proverbial for litigation, and specifies one "Captain H.," who, he says, "has given out that he is a sworn attorney till nine tenths of this town really believe it." 1

In December, 1818, Mr. Thomas varies his usual advice to settle up the year's accounts by introducing some reflections on going to law:

Now prepare your papers and make it a business to go round and settle with all your neighbours with whom you have accounts 1 Works, ed. C. F. Adams, Boston, 1850, II, 90–91.

open. Avoid wrangling and law fighting. It is never worth your while to go to law at the expense of $500 about nine pence; but should you ever be forced into a law suit, take the advice of respectable counsel and then keep your tongue within your teeth. If you foolishly blab your case to your neighbours they will all, men, women and children, become prodigiously wise and knowing. They will talk law at a great rate, and distress you with their wisdom.

Five kinds of pestilence are associated in a single prayer for immunity in August, 1813:

From quack lawyers, quack doctors, quack preachers, mad dogs and yellow fever, good Lord, deliver us! This is my sincere prayer, let others do and say as they will. A respectable attorney is an advantage to a town and ought to have the esteem of his fellow citizens; but a meddlesome pettifogger deserves the treatment of any other sneaking puppy that runs his nose into your closet. As for strolling preachers, "O ye generation of vipers' ! I would hear any evil far better than the gabble of one of these intruding boobies. Yet how many forsake all business and pleasure that they may enjoy the ecstatic bliss of listening to their empty disgusting and blasphemous nonsense! It is a serious misfortune to have a woman, a head of a family, yet bewitched by one of these fellows. Whenever this happens, farewell to all business, to all comfort! No more dairy, no more spinning or weaving or knitting or sewing. Forenoon, afternoon and evening nothing but attending lectures to hear the charming, the pious, the godly Mr. Bitemslily — totally regardless of that text of the sacred volume which says 'six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work.'

For physicians and ministers, as well as for upright attorneys, Mr. Thomas had plenty of respect, but he could not abide a charlatan. Quack doctors come in elsewhere for some rather slashing satire. Thus in September, 1806, we read: "There are a great many asses without long ears.

Quack, Quack, went the ducks, as doctor Motherwort rode by with his saddle-bags stuffed with maiden-hair, and golden-rod. Don't let your wife send Tommy to the academy six weeks, and make a novice of him."

And in September, 1813, there is a drastic description of "the famous Dr. Dolt": " A larnt man is the doctor. Once he was a simple knight of the lapstone and pegging awl; but now he is blazoned in the first orders of quack heraldry. The mighty cures of the doctor are known far round. He is always sure to kill the disorder, although in effecting this he sometimes kills the patient."

An agreeable and ingenuous letter addressed to Mr. Thomas in 1801, by an esteemed correspondent in Franklin, Massachusetts, called out a comparison not very flattering to the legal profession. The writer is worried by the apparent neglect to answer certain questions proposed in the Almanac five years before. He expostulates with the editor in a strain of dignified forbearance, and improves the occasion to commend the work highly. His letter was printed in the Almanac for 1802, with a full reply to each of the problems. The reader will remember that both millers. and tailors had, in old times, a reputation for pilfering.

MR. THOMAS,

In looking over the Farmer's Almanack for the year 1796, I there found four Miscellaneous Questions, viz. 1st. Whether the Sun goes round the earth and the earth stands still? &c. 2dly. Which is counted the most honest employment of the three folowing, viz. a Tailor, a Lawyer, or a Miller? 3dly. Whether the Shrub commonly called Fern, bears or produces any seed? &c. 4thly. How long it is since smoking tobacco, and taking of snuff, has been in use in England; the time when? &c.

Now, SIR, I have been a constant patron of your Almanack, and have waited in anxious expectations these four years last past, of seeing answers to the above questions, but have ever been disappointed; I would not be misunderstood, SIR, that you