My fine turnips, Indian corn, potatoes, &c. were in the field by the
orchard without any fence. Indeed hogs are not allowed to run at large
within five miles of Baltimore, by an act of assembly; and mine were
too valuable to risk such a misfortune; and especially as I was a great
hog-shooter myself, it would have been fine diversion for any of my
neighbours to have shot one of my fifty-dollar pigs. Seeing that these
plants would not succeed, all that remained was to fatten my own hogs
with them. I had but seven hogs; and they would have employed a man
with horse and cart half a day to feed them; for, after a short time,
they will only eat the best peaches, and refuse the others as a man
would. I found this plan would not answer; and the consequence was,
that, after every trial and exertion, they rotted on the ground. Now
my farm was so situated that the great road through the heart of the
country went through it, five or six stage-coaches, and great numbers
of other carriages of all kinds. In all probability some of my own
countrymen as merchants (for there begin to be many of these gentlemen
to settle their accounts with the American merchants, and I suppose
they will increase) seeing this waste committed, would, on returning
to England, relate their story in this way--That when at the tavern
at Baltimore on the same day, the fruit-people were asking eleven
pence apiece for peaches. An Englishman says to himself, 'What idle
fools those Americans are! and I think all the English, when they get
to America, are as bad: but, when I get there, I will set them the
example.' But when there, he finds himself much disappointed, and does
not know how it is that he does not increase in riches, while neither
himself nor his family enjoys any comfort. He at last finds out that
the Americans are not a set of fools as he once thought: and, as he
must have a name for them, perhaps he calls them rogues; which, if Lord
Chesterfield was right in his observation, pleases a man the best of
the two.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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