"Farewell, thou busy world, and may
We never meet again,
Here I can eat and sleep and pray. ..."
but for the fact that he found time to turn the clods, withal, and
eyes to watch the earth blackening behind the plough. "Our
necessities," wrote Poe, who contended, in a half-hearted way, that
the Americans of his generation were as poetical a people as any
other, "have been mistaken for our propensities. Having been forced
to make railroads, it has been deemed impossible that we should make
verse." But here was Saint-John de Crevecoeur writing, in the
eighteenth century, his idyllic Letters, while, if he did not build
railways, he interested himself in the experiments of Fitch and
Rumsey and Parmentier, and organised a packet-line between New York
and Lorient, in Brittany. This Crevecoeur should from the first have
appealed to the imagination - especially to the American imagination-
-combining as he did the faculty of the ideal and the achievement of
the actual. It is not too late for him to appeal to-day; in spite of
all his quaintness, Crevecoeur is a contemporary of our own.
WARREN BARTON BLAKE.
BRADFORD HILLS, WEST CHESTER,
PENNSYLVANIA.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Letters from an American Farmer (London), 1782, 1783; (Dublin),
1782; (Belfast), 1783; (Philadelphia), 1793; (New York), 1904;
(London), 1908; translated into French (with gratuitous additions)
as Lettres d'un cultivateur Americain (Paris), 1784 and 1787; into
German as Briefe eines Amerikanischen Landmanns (Leipzig), 1788,
1789. Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans l'etat de New York
(Paris), 1801.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION by Warren Barton Blake
LETTER
I. INTRODUCTION
II. ON THE SITUATION, FEELINGS, AND PLEASURES OF AN AMERICAN
FARMER
III. WHAT IS AN AMERICAN
IV. DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLAND OF NANTUCKET, WITH THE MANNERS,
CUSTOMS, POLICY, AND TRADE OF THE INHABITANTS
V. CUSTOMARY EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT OF THE INHABITANTS OF
NANTUCKET
VI. DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLAND OF MARTHA'S VINEYARD, AND OF THE
WHALE FISHERY
VII. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS AT NANTUCKET
VIII. PECULIAR CUSTOMS AT NANTUCKET
IX. DESCRIPTION OF CHARLES-TOWN; THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY; ON PHYSICAL
EVIL; A MELANCHOLY SCENE
X. ON SNAKES; AND ON THE HUMMING BIRD.
XI. FROM MR. IW - N AL - Z, A RUSSIAN GENTLEMAN, DESCRIBING THE
VISIT HE PAID AT MY REQUEST TO MR. JOHN BERTRAM, THE
CELEBRATEDPENNSYLVANIA BOTANIST
XII. DISTRESSES OF A FRONTIER MAN
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER;
DESCRIBING CERTAIN PROVINCIAL SITUATIONS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS, NOT
GENERALLY KNOWN; AND CONVEYING SOME IDEA OF THE LATE AND PRESENT
INTERIOR CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE BRITISH COLONIES IN NORTH AMERICA.
WRITTEN FOR THE INFORMATION OF A FRIEND IN ENGLAND,
By J. HECTOR ST. JOHN, A FARMER IN PENNSYLVANIA
ADVERTISEMENT
[To the first edition, 1782.]
The following Letters are the genuine production of the American
Farmer whose name they bear. They were privately written to gratify
the curiosity of a friend; and are made public, because they contain
much authentic information, little known on this side the Atlantic;
they cannot therefore fail of being highly interesting to the people
of England, at a time when everybody's attention is directed toward
the affairs of America.
That these letters are the actual result of a private correspondence
may fairly be inferred (exclusive of other evidence) from the style
and manner in which they are conceived: for though plain and
familiar, and sometimes animated, they are by no means exempt from
such inaccuracies as must unavoidably occur in the rapid effusions
of a confessedly inexperienced writer.
Our Farmer had long been an eye-witness of transactions that have
deformed the face of America: he is one of those who dreaded, and
has severely felt, the desolating consequences of a rupture between
the parent state and her colonies: for he has been driven from a
situation, the enjoyment of which the reader will find pathetically
described in the early letters of this volume. The unhappy contest
is at length, however, drawing toward a period; and it is now only
left us to hope, that the obvious interests and mutual wants of both
countries, may in due time, and in spite of all obstacles, happily
re-unite them.
Should our Farmer's letters be found to afford matter of useful
entertainment to an intelligent and candid public, a second volume,
equally interesting with those now published, may soon be expected.
ADVERTISEMENT
[To the Second Edition, 1783.]
Since the publication of this volume, we hear that Mr. St. John has
accepted a public employment at New York. It is therefore, perhaps,
doubtful whether he will soon be at leisure to revise his papers,
and give the world a second collection of the American Farmer
Letters.
TO THE ABBE RAYNAL, F.R.S.
Behold, Sir, an humble American Planter, a simple cultivator of the
earth, addressing you from the farther side of the Atlantic; and
presuming to fix your name at the head of his trifling lucubrations.
I wish they were worthy of so great an honour. Yet why should not I
be permitted to disclose those sentiments which I have so often felt
from my heart? A few years since, I met accidentally with your
Political and Philosophical History, and perused it with infinite
pleasure. For the first time in my life I reflected on the relative
state of nations; I traced the extended ramifications of a commerce
which ought to unite but now convulses the world; I admired that
universal benevolence, that diffusive goodwill, which is not
confined to the narrow limits of your own country; but, on the
contrary, extends to the whole human race. As an eloquent and
powerful advocate you have pleaded the cause of humanity in
espousing that of the poor Africans: you viewed these provinces of
North America in their true light, as the asylum of freedom; as the
cradle of future nations, and the refuge of distressed Europeans.
Why then should I refrain from loving and respecting a man whose
writings I so much admire?
