Various

“ In practical result, the farmer who leaves his field to the generosity of nature is more judicious, because in our humid climate the soil possesses a tendency to generate the indigenous grasses, of which some are really good, and which, from their overpowering qualities, soon dispossess those that may have been sown, and form a close and excellent turf. But to sow weeds is inexpressibly absurd, and this the man does who buys such a compound as that to which I have referred, or who sows them because he happens to have them by some means, and is unwilling to have them lost. ”

“ We know the great difficulty, even in botanical gardens, of keeping the kinds separate, and the rapidity with which grass seeds become commingled. The only certain way is to raise the desired seeds in detached portions of land, perfectly clean, and carefully cleared of intruding plants. Can the seedsman, with the most honourable intentions and greatest caution, be himself secure from the effects of negligence or wilful imposition?
But to return to the case of the poor man who thinks he has a bargain when he buys four bushels of bad grass seeds for half-a-crown. ”

“ How often does the rich man, surrounded with every luxury, look back from the pinnacle which he has attained, with fond regret, to those days of humble but happy toil when he was struggling up the steep ascent of fortune! Make industry, then, a part of fireside education. ”

“ So can any man criticize a book; but very few can build the one or write the other. Many of the vinegar-critics of the day who haunt the shores of literature, would utterly fail in penning even the preface to a respectable book. It is a recorded and well-known fact that many of our standard works were rejected for the want of a publisher, owing to the unfavourable opinion of stolid rule-and-figure critics; but when they came before the people, who, judging from the impulses of the heart, are never wrong, how soon was their verdict reversed! The PEOPLE are the only true tribunal. ”

“ While, therefore, I would inculcate industry, I would remark that it may be carried to excess. Every virtue has its bordering vice. The extreme of courage touches upon the precincts of rashness, and a step beyond the proper limit of industry brings you into the dreary regions of avarice.—Fireside Education, by S. G. Goodrich, an American Author. ”

“ A person who cannot compel himself, from a mere sense of duty, to overcome a slothful reluctance to do what is disagreeable, is but half educated, and carries about him a weakness that is likely to prove fatal to his success in life. Such a person may act vigorously by fits and starts as he may be occasionally urged by impulse; but the good begun will often remain unfinished, and, from subsequent negligence, will result in final disaster. The only safe way is to found industry upon principle, and establish it by habit. ”

“ The old lady was less foolish than the farmer who sows the seeds of weeds, because she had previously ascertained that the flour of mustard was harmless; but the husbandman must know that those seeds which are not genuine grass seeds are noxious to his land, by rendering it foul, and it is therefore extravagance and not economy on his part to use bad seeds, merely to save waste. ”

“ I have no doubt that some poor and uncalculating petty farmers were silly enough to purchase this trash on the penny-wise and pound-foolish principle, and I well know that there is no point on which greater ignorance prevails than on that of a proper selection of grass seeds, although they should be sown with an accurate regard to the nature of the soil, the number of years during which the land is to be left in meadow or in pasturage, each of which conditions also requires a different description of seeds. ”

“ Nor is industry more a duty to society than a source of individual happiness. There are no pleasures so sweet as those earned by effort, no possessions so dear as those acquired by toil. The truth is, that the main happiness of life consists in the vigorous exercise of those faculties which God has given us. ”

“ The boxes of the opera, splendid as they are, and splendid as the appearance of those in them is, do not breathe a spirit of enjoyment. They are rather like the sick wards of luxury and idleness, where people of a certain class are condemned to perform the quarantine of fashion for the evening.—Hazlitt. ”

“ For the first time in his life Dennis Costigan told an untruth with an evil intention. He protested that Kate Kavanagh had a fortune, and a good one too; he praised her person and industrious habits; and at last became so zealous in his friendship to his absent neighbours as to give a cordial invitation to Mr Magrah to his house, for the purpose of seeing and being introduced to the “belle o’ the barony,” but never once asking what sort of person this Magrah was, or what was his means of living. ”

“ Just like the merchant who may be seen in the city, on a bright Sunday morning, in clean shirt collar, and with hands thrust into his pockets, loitering slowly down the street, or standing in ruminating attitude at the corner, pondering carefully every step of the morrow’s tangled path, or perhaps calculating the amount of time lost in Sundays, by the whole world, taken individually and collectively from Moses’s day to the present time ”

“ Turn about, man, an’ let us live in paice an’ good will while we’re on the earth together.”
Dennis Costigan stood, perpendicular as a poplar, with his back to Miles Kavanagh while he was speaking, and the latter thought, from the stiffness of the farmer’s air, that he had nerved himself up to break sooner than bend, and that he was determined to retain his sturdy pride to the last, and perhaps to cut with him altogether. ”

“ The man who sows bad or ill-suited grass seeds, merely because he has obtained them, and is unwilling to lose the acquisition, reminds me of an old lady who was for many years of her life in the habit of giving annually (in the spring of the year) to her grandchildren, a regular course of sulphur and treacle mixed up together, whether the recipients required it or not. ”

“ I can conceive but one case in which a rational farmer could deliberately use such defective seed as that which I saw in the little huckster’s shop, namely, when he is about to surrender his farm (being obligated to lay down his land with grass) , and has all that unamiable and inexcusable feeling which so generally prompts men in such circumstances to act in defiance of their great Christian principle of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. ”

“ We should hope that none could now be found so weak, but certainly there have been those who, having heard this story, would fear to trust their precious lives in a ferry-boat with any one of the name of Hugh Williams, but a little local knowledge would go far in removing such an absurd apprehension, as indeed there are few of the most apparently extraordinary events, the origin of which cannot be traced to simple natural causes. ”

“ The successful establishment of grass seeds depends materially, besides the clean and pulverised state of the land, on their adaptation to the soil; and if that be in a state perfectly fit for their reception, a much smaller quantity of seed will be sufficient than under the opposite circumstances; and if the land be in a foul state previously to laying it down, it is clear that the sowing of weed seeds, with a trifling and uncertain admixture of true grass seeds, cannot render it cleaner. ”

“ Petty seedsmen, no doubt, do so frequently; and how can it be otherwise, when their stock is a motley contribution from farmers’ wives, hostlers, and labourers, who collect every variety of good and bad seeds from every description of meadow and soil? It is better to pay a great deal more for the best seed, of which a far lesser proportion will suffice. ”

“ Well, next morning he set out for Bargie, after taking an affectionate farewell of his good little wife, and after cautioning her repeatedly to have a constant look-out after the “boys and Kate Kavanagh.” Fain would he have persuaded his eldest son to accompany him to the wedding, but Jem pathetically pleaded “pains in his bones an’ headache” (heartache he should have said) , and his father very unwillingly set off without him.
Our farmer had only ridden a few miles, when, coming to a village, like a true son of the soil he should stop at the “public” to taste the “mountain dew.” ”

“ Now, there is something extraordinary in the blood of an Irishman. A fight is his choicest amusement, and if he is not a principal actor in one, he must be a spectator. Even our sober barony Forth farmer was excited, and eagerly asked “what it was all about?”
“All about nonsinse,” replied Mrs Boniface, “all about nonsinse when it is about a woman. All the uproar was about a naibur ov yours, Misther Costigan, who has turned the heads ov some ov our lads here, an’ many others besides—one Miss Kavanagh. Do you know her?” ”

“ In one of these classes we must be numbered; but our self-respect is dependent upon our selection. The practice of deception generally secures its own punishment; for callous indeed must be that mind which is insensible of its ignominy! ”

“ A prudent man who is not a perfect judge himself of the matter, will first consider the quality and nature of his land before he sows grass seeds, and then consult Lawson’s Tables, which furnish precise information on every particular as to the quality and quantity of seeds for all soils, and whether for one, two, three years, or for permanent pasture, and he will endeavour to obtain what he wants accordingly ”

“ Peace of Mind.—Though peace of mind does not constitute happiness, happiness cannot exist without it; our serenity being the result of our own exertions, while our happiness is dependent on others: hence the reason why it is so rare ”

“ Though he sees the bad effects in the inferiority of his herbage, and at first lays the blame on the proper source, he actually persuades himself afterwards (when He, who in his bounty doth “clothe the grass of the field” throughout the whole earth, has covered the surface of his field with natural herbage) that to the seeds which he had sown two or three years previously, he is mainly to attribute what the prodigality of Nature, or, more properly, the munificence of God, has supplied. ”

“ If neglected, these children will grow up in the habit of omitting many duties, or of performing only those which are agreeable. It is indispensable that such should be trained to patient exertion, habituated to the performance of every duty in the right time and the right way, even though it may require self-denial and onerous toil. ”

“ Critics.—It is a little singular that the mass should attach much importance to the small opinions of every-day critics. Because a man happens to have the facilities of publishing his views and opinions to the world, though he be the veriest blockhead on earth, his verdict is often of more than ordinary weight among men. Indeed, a Johnson could not influence some men by his verbal opinion, to the extent that an ignoramus can influence them through “press and types.” ”

“ But the deluded purchaser very frequently forgets that though he has a great bulk for his money, he has a bad bargain; he does not consider that the respectable seedsman, though he charges much more for his seeds, gives a far better quality in general, and does not sell dirt and unprolific grass seeds in the compound which he supplies. ”

“ But if persons should allow themselves to be guided in their actions by such observances, their lives would become perfectly burthensome from the constant state of watchfulness in which they would be obliged to live; for instance, the following anecdote would show the absolute necessity they would be under of ascertaining the names of their fellow-travellers, lest any one rejoicing in the name of Hugh Williams should be amongst them. ”

“ The more juvenile readers of the Penny Journal must be informed that the portion of the sea which flows between the island of Anglesea and the coast of Wales, called the Menai Straits, which is now spanned by the celebrated Menai suspension bridge, was passable, previously to the erection of the bridge, only by boats, a regular ferry-boat plying constantly at the place called Bangor ferry. On the 6th day of December, in the year 1664, the ferry-boat, having eighty-one passengers on board, was upset whilst crossing the Strait, and only one man was saved, whose name was Hugh Williams. ”

“ But he who has been duped is conscious, even in the very moment that he detects the imposition, of his proud superiority to one who can stoop to the adoption of so foul and sorry a course. The really good and high-minded, therefore, are seldom provoked by the discovery of deception ”

“ Although it is but one man who speaks, and he may have one hundred opponents who may argue successfully against him, yet they will all fail with the public. But let either of them publish the same opinion, and the ore, which was rich and weighty, becomes refined. Common critics, moreover, are always ready to find imperfections, for thus will the public be made acquainted with their penetration. In fact, many of them seem to think that to criticize is to find fault ”

“ I wondher very much that you don’t think ov changin’ yer state, Miss Kavanagh. The marriage life is the happiest life ov all, as I know (sighing deeply) , an’ I would recommend ye to thry it:” and he launched into a long harangue in praise of the honourable state, its happiness, comfort, and safety, compared to a single life—so full of peril to a female; to all of which our “belle o’ the barony” listened, and assented as demurely as could be wished. ”

“ Mr Costigan actually stamped on the floor with passion when he heard the name of Kate Kavanagh; and as the tailor’s mother perceived unusual anger in his countenance, she flattered herself that it was all sympathy for her “darlint Jemmy,” and she hastened to give him the particulars “ov the murdher” foul and unnatural. “So now, my darlint Misther Costigan,” she concluded, “his poor eyes is black an’ blue, and closed up into the bargain, an’ he couldn’t handle a needle if it was for Misther Grogan Morgan himself—God bless him for the fine lan’lord that he is.” ”