After we got to sleep that night, we dreamed a dream. We went into that man’s barn; boards were kicked off, partitions were half broken down, racks broken, floor a foot deep with manure, hay trampled under foot and wasted, grain squandered. The wagon had not been hauled under the shed, though it was raining. The harness was scattered about—hames in one place, the breeching in another—the lines were used for _halters_. We went to the house. A shed stood hard by, in which a family wagon was kept for wife and daughters to go to town in. The hens had appropriated it as a roost, and however plain it was _once_, it was ornamented _now_, inside and out. (Here, by the way, let it be remembered that hen-dung is the _best_ manure for melons, squashes, cucumbers, etc.) We peeped into the smoke-house, but of all the “fixings” that we ever saw! A Chinese Museum is nothing to it. Onions, soap-grease, squashes, hogs’ bristles, soap, old iron, kettles, a broken spinning-wheel, a churn, a grindstone, bacon, hams, washing tubs, a barrel of salt, bones with the meat half cut off, scraps of leather, dirty bags, a chest of Indian meal, old boots, smoked sausages, the ashes and brands that remained since the last “smoke,” stumps of brooms, half a barrel of rotten apples, together with rats, bacon bugs, earwigs, sowbugs, and other vermin which collect in damp dirt. We started for the house; the window near the door had twelve lights, two of wood, two of hats, four of paper, one of a bunch of rags, one of a pillow, and the _rest_ of glass. Under it stood several cooking pots, and several that were _not_ for cooking. As we were meditating whether to enter, such a squall arose from a quarrelling man and woman, that we awoke—and lo! it was a dream. So that the man who left his plow out all the season, may live in the neatest house in the county, for all that we know; only, was it not strange that we should have dreamed all this from just seeing a plow left out in the furrow.
Farmers may be surprised to know that their crops will depend a good deal on the color of the plows! yet so it is. Bright plows are found to produce much better crops than any other. It may be electricity, or magic for aught we know; we merely state the fact, leaving others to account for it. But very much depends upon the manner of doing it, for merely scrubbing it by hand with emery or sand is not the thing—_it must be scoured by the soil_. It is found that the subsoil scours it better for wheat, than the top soil—for a plow kept bright by very deep plowing affords better wheat than a plow brightened by the surface of the soil. It is the same with corn. In respect to this last crop, if you will keep your plow bright as a mirror until the corn is in the milk, you will find that it will have a wonderful effect. We appeal to every good farmer if he ever knew a rusty plow to be accompanied with good crops? Iron rust on a plow-share is poisonous to corn.