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the impostures — not tho hollow artifices of the great city. Each breeze brings 

 freshness, fragrance, vitality, and is rarely laden with pestilence. Each exer- 

 '^'tion which affords vigor to the arm, by sympathetic action communicates vigor 

 'to the intellect. Thus health ought to clothe the whole man. Yet living 

 ^ among such glowing scenes, operated upon by such instructive and healthful 

 influences, farmers as a class, take the world over, in their habits, opinions, 

 and aspirations, have most doggedly tramped and wallowed along on the dead 

 ' level morass of complacent conservatism. If farmers had constant and unre- 

 mitting communion with each other — if each mind was open — if each faculty 

 was shai'pened — each mistake promptly corrected — each agricultural invention 

 communicated, explained and understood, farmers would be marked by the same 

 characteristics as the most keen, energetic and vigorous in any other pursuit. 

 Fortunately fairs, periodicals, discussions, are supplying the schools which the 

 exchange, the counting room, the store, the workshop, the street, the wharf 

 and the deck perpetually supply to other men. 



It is of no use for any man in any walk of life, in any pursuit, to hope for 

 success, unless his views of the objects of life are well considered and rationaL 

 Success cannot be measured by accumulation of wealth. Mere accumulation 

 may cost health and peace ; then, such success is punishment, such success is 

 poison. There is a worm in the core. Accumulation may be attended with 

 ceaseless and harassing anxieties and cares. It is then just as far from being 

 success. The man who earns three hundred dollars per annum, and saves a 

 quarter of it, and has a sounder mind in a sounder body on the thirty-first day 

 of December than he had on the first day of January, is an independent and 

 successful man. The man who has an income of $10,000 and expends $11,000 

 is a slave, and draws behind him a chain of trouble as heavy and exhausting, 

 as the clanking chain of iron. " A ploughman on his legs is higher than a 

 gentleman on his knees." The man who goes to California and procures his 

 tens of thousands, is not successful if there or on his homeward voyage, he 

 incurs risks which deprive him of it all ; or if his frame is penetrated with 

 diseases which shorten a miserable existence, or if he incxirs habits of idleness, 

 recklessness and extravagance, which render him an object of scorn, instead 

 of respect, forever after. Poor he may return, and penniless, yet if he retains 

 health, has profited by experience, has a clearer vision and higher capacity for 

 the future, then he is successful. That man is successful in any calling whose 

 desires fall within his income — who is able to render every work of duty a 

 charm and a pleasure; who measures the respectability of his pursuit by the 

 spirit and dignity with which he pursues it : who, with a cheerful temper and 

 a clear head, keeps a mastery over his business and over himself; who is not 

 whirled into the delirium of rapacity or ambition ; who rejoices in the triumph 

 of his genius, his energies and his will, rather than in acquisition of gold, or 

 empty applause, and whose home is a home indeed, glowing with all the asso- 

 ciations which cluster round that old familiar Saxon word, home, instead of a 

 waste, a prison house, or a broker's shop. 



The first object of a farmer should be to secure a home. A homestead in 

 this country is within every man's reach, even in youth. It may be that to 



