Page 153, note 1. This sentence recalls Mr. Emerson's wise treatment of his children if they cried at table. He always quietly sent the unhappy one to see whether the front gate were latched, or whether there were perhaps a rain-cloud coming. He knew that the change of scene and the quiet face of Nature would calm the child, who returned and duly reported, wondering why the fear of cows getting in, or a storm coming, had so suddenly come over his father.
Page 153, note 2. The following picture of the Nine-Acre Corner farms along the river, and of the old-time Concord farmers, is from the journal of 1848:—
"The cranberry meadow yonder is that where Darius Hubbard picked one hundred bushels in one season worth 200 dollars, and no labor whatever is bestowed on the crop, not so much as to mow the grass or cut down the bushes. Much more interesting is the wood-lot, which yields its gentle rent of six per cent. without any care or thought when the owner sleeps or travels, and fears no enemy but fire. But E. declares that the railroad has proved too strong for all our farmers and has corrupted them like a war, or the incursion of another race;—has made them all amateurs, given the young men an air their fathers never had; they look as if they might be railroad agents any day. We shall never see Cyrus Hubbard or Ephraim Wheeler or Grass-and-oats or Oats-and-grass, old Barrett or Hosmer, in the next generation. These old Saxons have the look of pine-trees and apple-trees, and might be the sons got between the two; conscientious labourers with a science born with them from out the sap-vessels of these savage sires. This savagery is natural to man, and polished England cannot do without it."
The Cattle-show Address concluded thus:—
"I congratulate the farmer of Massachusetts on his advantages.
