When the cows were brought into the yard, I was puzzled to know how they were to be handled; but the stable doors being thrown open, each cow entered the door nearest her stall, and went to it with as much regularity as a young miss goes to her seat in a boarding-school. There is a drop in the floor immediately behind the cows, 14 inches wide and 4 inches deep; into this all the excrements fall, the water running off immediately to a reservoir prepared for the purpose of receiving it; this, together with all the manure, was taken away daily, and put upon the land or crops or in a heap to make compost; so that the premises were kept perfectly clean and sweet. The floor was covered with a thin bed of cut straw, which was passed off with the manure as it became soiled, and by being cut, worked immediately into and incorporated itself with the manure, without vexing the husbandman or gardener as long green manure so frequently does. The floor behind the cows, between the trough to catch the liquid and the wall, is six feet wide, with strong plank platforms or tables on which to set the vessels containing the milk. There is an open space directly over the vat for steaming, where all the feed is cut and passed down through a hopper into the vat; also, hoppers or spouts leading from the meal room over head directly into the vats, which contain the steamed feed for cooking. The mangers in which the cows are fed are broad, so that the food may be thrown into them with scoop shovels without waste, of which I found nothing of the kind about the whole premises. If a little too much feed is given to one animal, and consequently left, it is carefully scraped out and fed to one having a better appetite; thus the mangers were kept clean and sweet. Mr. Charley feeds roots, but to what extent I did not learn. I hope he may be induced to write you a letter, giving a description of his cutting machine, which does its work better than any one I have ever seen; having two blades coming together like shears, cutting corn-stalks through their joints with as much apparent ease as a pair of tailor's shears would cut a thread.
There is a stable for dried cows which were feeding for the butcher. Box stalls are provided for cows about to calve; the young cattle are kept by themselves, as are also the calves. Mr. Charley was not at home when I visited his dairy; but this disappointment to me was made up by the kind Mrs. C., who, with justifiable pride, showed me her spring house with its large copper caldron for scalding her milk tubs, pans, pails, churns, &c. &c., in the best of order, all of which she personally superintends and looks after; and whenever there is an overstock of milk for city customers, it is here converted into butter of the choicest quality, and each market-day finds her at her stand with her butter and lots of garden vegetables, the raising of which she also superintends and takes into the city at the dawn of day. That some families are sick and others miserably poor, is not strange, to one who looks behind the curtain and sees what can never otherwise be described.