In Letter 1, James's minister tries to convince him to write his letters to F. B. and recount his experiences as a colonial farmer. In one particularly persuasive remark, the minister uses smell imagery in a turn of phrase that demonstrates the value of James's perspective:
He is your friend; who would be ashamed to write to such a person? Although he is a man of learning and taste, yet I am sure he will read your letters with pleasure; if they be not elegant, they will smell of the woods and be a little wild; I know your turn, they will contain some matters which he never knew before.
James's relationship to nature and his experience as a farmer are enough to justify his storytelling, the minister argues, which will lend his letters the "smell of the woods"—in other words, his letters will carry an inherent authenticity that is not so much intellectual or literary as it is felt or, in this case, sniffed out.
The power of James's letters is this very wildness: his love of nature, his belief in the land's potential to support the colonial settlers and provide them with nature's bounty, and his willingness to address the complicated (and brutal) realities of colonial life form the emotional heart of Letters from an American Farmer.
