FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 75 



sions. Ah, ha! human nature is human nature under whatever guise ; and 

 •what wonder, under such false training, daughters sought rich husbands, 

 whetlicr loveable or not, and sons preferred a clerkship in the city, or, ques- 

 tionable employment even at the gaming-table, to this shabby gentility on the 

 farm that deceived no one. 



But in those retrospective days of which I write there were other causes that 

 drove the boys and girls from the farm. It was toil, not labor, men and 

 women required of themselves and children. Unremitting toil for fifteen or 

 eighteen hours in twenty -four. Nature's laws were ruthlessly broken. Young 

 children were taken from their sleep at four o'clock in the morning to do 

 *' chores " by lantern-light, eat breakfast (if eat they could at that early hour) 

 by candle-light, go to heavier toil at day-light, and stay afield as long as it 

 lasted, do chores again by lantern-light, eat supper by candle-light, and husk 

 corn or thresh with a flail, or turn the wheel on winter evenings till bedtime, 

 wear homespun clothes and hodden-gray, — coarse and uncouth indeed, — for 

 "store clothes" were too fine and costly and would not last; besides, to desire 

 to look well was considered vain, and vanity was a sin. That was in the days 

 when people supposed angels were only made in heaven, and all their beautiful 

 drapery woven there. 



It is no wonder to one that young people wished to escape from such circum- 

 stances, where learning was deemed a dangerous thing, and all recreation a 

 sin except, perhaps, the ''siiigin' schule" and husking and paring bees, — 

 the last two tolerated no doubt because they were profitable. 



To desire to appear well and command personal respect from others is as 

 God-given as any other aspiration of the human soul. It dwells in the breast 

 of every young man and maiden, and should be and would be cultivated to a 

 ripe and beautiful old age if it were not trampled out by the iron feet of want 

 and toil in the hard struggle for bread, where comparatively few win suste- 

 nance from the soil for themselves and the many viciously idle or cunningly 

 successful pensioners on the bounty of the farm. 



Naturally the boys and girls of the immediate past shrank from toil 

 that was deemed only servile, — that denied the culture, hardened their muscles, 

 rendered uncouth their forms, browned their cheeks and hands, stultified their 

 intellects, and rendered them objects of aversion, ridicule, and contempt to 

 their pliant, lilly-handed, delicately-clothed, well-educated city cousins, who 

 living without physical labor were successful claimants of worldly honors and 

 respect. 



Now, Mr. President, what can we, or what shall we do to overcome past and 

 present evils, and keep our boys and girls on the farm? 



We can neither bribe nor coax them, — that we know. The broad sweep of 

 our lands and waves, the free, wild rush of winds cradled in the topmost peaks 

 of our Sierras, the vastness, might and freedom that pertains to all our country 

 has nursed into being a race of little giants — " Young America," we call them, 

 — who will neither brook coercion nor delay. Let us be wise and leave them 

 alone. Nature is a master builder, and here on this continent she is building 

 public opinion and society anew. Let us give it no anxious thought my brother 

 and my sister; only just keep steadily at the work we have begun of forming 

 farmers' clubs and granges, and State institutes and agricultural colleges where 

 erudition feels honored to hold a professorship, and our sons and daugh- 

 ters can become refined and educated in all things, especially in the science of 

 our profession, — the epitome of all otiiers, — and understanding the laws of 



