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'You see, said he smiling, as he came in the last time, 'a farmer's life in this country is no sinecure," A third Virginian, endorsing Olmsted's observations, wrote that a planter's cares and troubles were endless; the slaves, men, women and children, infirm and aged, had wants innumerable; some were indolent, some obstinate, some fractious, and each class required different treatment.
If in their haste to finish it they neglect to do it properly he 'sets them back, so that carelessness will hinder more than it hastens the completion of their tasks." But Olmsted's view was for once rose colored. A planter who lived in the régime wrote: "The whole task system ... is one that I most unreservedly disapprove of, because it promotes idleness, and that is the parent of mischief."
"Olmsted's work," he wrote, "in vividness of description and in photographic minuteness far surpasses Arthur Young's." During this journey he wrote letters to the London Daily News, and these were continued after his return to New York City.
All that Southern abolitionists ever asked was the privilege of remaining at home in their own South in the full exercise of their constitutional rights. Southern leaders were undoubtedly aware of the concurrent publications of travelers and newspaper reporters, of which Olmsted's books were conspicuous examples.
Olmsted's admirably arranged, but remote pleasure-ground and our Common, with its batrachian pool, but between his Eccentric Park and our finest suburban scenery, between its artificial reservoirs and the broad natural sheet of Jamaica Pond, I say this not invidiously, but in justice to the beauties which surround our own metropolis.
" 'Very well, said I; 'all I ask of you is, that this arrangement shall not be mentioned. He assented. 'On the 27th day of December, at ten o'clock A. M., I wish you to meet me in Mr. Olmsted's apartments, prepared to sign the writings, provided this incorporated company do not pay you $14,000 on the 26th. He agreed to this, and by my request put it in writing.
Your hedge can be as loose as you care to have it, while your enclosure may be rigidly effective yet be hidden from the eye by undulating fence-rows; and as we now have definite bounds and corners to plant out, we do not so often as formerly need to be reminded of Frederick Law Olmsted's favorite maxim, "Take care of the corners, and the centres will take care of themselves."
But on the following morning, as agreed, I was promptly and hopefully at Mr. Olmsted's apartments with my legal adviser, at half-past nine o'clock; Mr. Heath came with his lawyer at ten, and before two o'clock that day I was in formal possession of the American Museum. My first managerial act was to write and dispatch the following complimentary note: " 'AMERICAN MUSEUM, NEW YORK, Dec. 27th, 1841.
Olmsted's qualifications as a traveller are so remarkable that we cannot help wishing that he would make a journey through New England and make us as thoroughly acquainted with its internal condition as we ought to be. We believe there is no book of the kind since that of President Dwight, and that gives us little of the sort of information we desire.
But, in the broad view, it is well to remember that a few years earlier very much worse things than these were happening, and that a system which made cattle of men and women might be expected to avenge itself. Another work may be merely mentioned as illuminating the facts of slavery. It is Frederic Law Olmsted's three volumes of travels in the slave States.
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