Such a mistake, however, is not unaccountable. Farming, it must be conceded, is in some respects a hard-hearted business, little calculated to cherish the finer feelings. Separation of families is so common a thing among farmers that the sight of sorrow ceases to sadden. Calves are taken from their mothers at a tender age, to the great trial of both mother and child; and a sufficient excuse for this trampling upon Nature is supposed to be concentrated in the one word, _Veal_. All last night the air reverberated with the agonized mooings of a bereaved cow in a neighboring pasture, and with the earliest dawn there she stood forlorn, pressing her aching breast against the cold, dew-damp gate, and gazing with mournful longing up the road last trodden by her darling's lingering feet. But it is all right, because--_veal_! A hen may be suddenly wrested from her infant brood and brought back from her private nest into the dreary phalanstery, because Mr. Worldly Wiseman thinks the laying of eggs a more important thing than the cultivation of domestic virtues. To the exigencies of "profit" everything else must give way. The result can but be deleterious. The peach-bloom of sensibility is presently rubbed off by constant trituration of harsh utilities. Only yesterday I received an invitation from a gentleman of standing and character to visit a famous farm, and one of the inducements expressly held out was the pleasure of seeing a hundred sheep from Canada, with a hundred little lambs, all their respective little tails cut off short. What a request was there, my countrymen! For why were those little tails cut off, in the first place? and if they were cut off, why should any humane person be invited to see such a spectacle of man's rapacity? It must have been sheer wantonness. You sometimes prune away sundry branches of a tree, to make the rest of it grow better; but will there be any more to a leg of mutton because it had no tail? No, Sir. When I go a-sheep-gazing, I want to see the sheep walking about with dignity and comfort, and coming home, as little Bo-Peep wanted hers, bringing their tails behind them.