He Busied Himself In
Preparing His Three-Volume Voyage Dans La Haute Pensylvanie (Sic) Et
Dans L'Etat De New York, And In Adding To His Paper On Potato
Culture,[Footnote:
Traite de la Culture des Pommes de Terre, 1782.]
a second on the false acacia; but his best work was done and he knew
it.
Crevecoeur lived on until 1813, dying in the same year with
Madame d'Houdetot, who was so much his elder. He paid a worthy
tribute to that lady's character; perhaps we do her an injustice in
knowing her only for the liaison with Jean-Jacques. He died on
November 12, 1813: member of agricultural societies and of the
Academy (section of moral and political science), and of Franklin's
Philosophical Society at Philadelphia. A town in Vermont had been
named St. Johnsbury in his honour; he had the freedom of more than
one New England city. It is, none the less, as the author of Letters
from an American Farmer, published in 1782, and written, for the
most part, years before that date, that we remember him - so far as
we do remember.
IV
Much remains unsaid - much, even, of the essential. Some of the facts
are still unknown; others may be looked for in the biography written
by his great-grandson, Robert de Crevecoeur, and published at Paris
some eighty years ago. There is hardly occasion to discuss here what
Crevecoeur did, as consul at New York, to encourage the exchange of
French manufactures and American exports; or to tell of his packet-
line - the first established between New York and a French port; or
to set down the story of his children; or to describe those last sad
years, at home and abroad, after the close of his consular career.
There is no room at all for the words of praise that were spoken of
the Letters by Franklin and Washington, who recommended them to
intending immigrants as a faithful, albeit "highly coloured"
picture.
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