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stock brokers, the squelching of rings, and the bursting of bubbles, 

 there is growing up a firmer belief in, and truer appreciation of, the 

 dignity of agriculture. 



I can find no better text than this same one of the dignity of agri- 

 culture; and though it is quite possible I shall wonder off a little 

 now and then, still I shall endeavor to keep strictly to the subject 

 matter. You do not want me to tell you about cultivating beets or 

 weeding turnips; about the latest improvements in headers or the 

 easiest way to shell peas; about the depth at which to plant white 

 beans or the kind of soil best fitted for alfalfa. Neither do you want 

 the old, old story, of the watermelon vine running twenty miles 

 over the country, or the equally valuable history of the pumpkin 

 whose growth-power raised a barn fifteen inches. Rather it is my 

 intention to present you with a broad, intelligent consideration of a 

 great interest — to say something which it shall not be a waste of time for 

 you to hear — which it shall not be a waste of time for me to speak; 

 whilst if I can introduce a word of encouragement and hope, so 

 much the better. 



Some may think this last phrase mal apropos to so flourishing a 

 community that the proffered encouragement and hope imply, if not 

 distress, at least disconsolation. Let me explain myself before pro- 

 ceeding farther, and in doing so I shall use all possible delicacy. 

 You know, then, that with very many otherwise sensible people 

 there exists a feeling of this sort: They imagine that when a man 

 goes into the country he sinks a little — remember these are not my 

 words — that the heaviness of the clod clings to him ; that because he 

 gives his attention to cereals he will read no serial outside of the Turf, 

 Field and Farm, or the Farmer's Friend ; that becoming a good judge 

 in hogs, he loses claim to being a good judge of paintings; that he 

 can only take interest in a sunset as an indication of the next day's 

 weather; that in fact, a man dulls to the extent of partially losing 

 his identity. Sensible and honest though Civis may be, he has been 

 guilty of a libel on his brother Rusticus. It — like the generality of 

 libels — has an admixture of truth somewhere about it, but is in the 

 main unfair and untruthful. The farmer of long ago was a stolid 

 plodder, whose hands grew horny and gnarled as he dibbled in his 

 potatoes and bound his wheat sheaves, whose back grew bent from 

 swinging the scythe and looking down, who generally lagged behind 

 in the way of news, and who was — to confess the truth — a trifle 

 stupid and decidedl} 7 uninteresting. 



But that is not the farmer of to-day. The man who now under- 

 takes to make a living out of the cultivation of land must have the 

 knowledge of a practised mechanician, for the use of machinery on 

 farms is so universal that it is quite as necessary for him to know 

 the value and place of cog, crank, bolt, and eccentric, as it was to know 

 how to treat for the glanders. It is a proposition which, I think, you 

 will not dispute, that the acquirement of such knowledge does not 

 help make a man a dullard. 



Elsewhere, the division and subdivision of land was formerly prac- 

 tised to the extent of making farms meagerly small, with every two 

 or three acres fenced off into almost infinitesimal patches, whilst 

 flocks and herds were numbered by the scores, or at most by the 

 hundreds, they contained. Natural result — a contraction of ideas 

 and expectations. Now, and here, however, you tillers of the soil 

 are a little more expansive in your notions. It is a day's journey to 



