is what we called at Yale college a Tabula rasa, where spontaneous and strong impressions are delineated with facility.  Ah, neighbour! had you received but half the education of Mr. F. B. you had been a worthy correspondent indeed.  But perhaps you will be a more entertaining one dressed in your simple American garb, than if you were clad in all the gowns of Cambridge.  You will appear to him something like one of our wild American plants, irregularly luxuriant in its various branches, which an European scholar may probably think ill placed and useless.  If our soil is not remarkable as yet for the excellence of its fruits, this exuberance is however a strong proof of fertility, which wants nothing but the progressive knowledge acquired by time to amend and to correct.  It is easier to retrench than it is to add; I do not mean to flatter you, neighbour James, adulation would ill become my character, you may therefore believe what your pastor says.  Were I in Europe I should be tired with perpetually seeing espaliers, plashed hedges, and trees dwarfed into pigmies.  Do let Mr. F. B. see on paper a few American wild cherry trees, such as nature forms them here, in all her unconfined vigour, in all the amplitude of their extended limbs and spreading ramifications—­let him see that we are possessed with strong vegetative embryos.  After all, why should not a farmer be allowed to make use of his mental faculties as well as others; because a man works, is not he to think, and if he thinks usefully, why should not he in his leisure hours set down his thoughts?  I have composed many a good sermon as I followed my plough.  The eyes not being then engaged on any particular object, leaves the mind free for the introduction of many useful ideas.  It is not in the noisy shop of a blacksmith or of a carpenter, that these studious moments can be enjoyed; it is as we silently till the ground, and muse along the odoriferous furrows of our low lands, uninterrupted either by stones or stumps; it is there that the salubrious effluvia of the earth animate our spirits and serve to inspire us; every other avocation of our farms are severe labours compared to this pleasing occupation:  of all the tasks which mine imposes on me ploughing is the most agreeable, because I can think as I work; my mind is at leisure; my labour flows from instinct, as well as that of my horses; there is no kind of difference between us in our different shares of that operation; one of them keeps the furrow, the other avoids it; at the end of my field they turn either to the right or left as they are bid, whilst I thoughtlessly hold and guide the plough to which they are harnessed.  Do therefore, neighbour, begin this correspondence, and persevere, difficulties will vanish in proportion as you draw near them; you’ll be surprised at yourself by and by:  when you come to look back you’ll say as I have often said to myself; had I been diffident I had never proceeded thus far.  Would you painfully