THIRD DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 557 



and stomachs and must be fed, and those that have been best fed and 

 cared for, other things being equal, will carry off the premiums to-morrow. 

 But a plant has a thousand mouths, and every one must be fed, and every 

 one leaves less for the others. Treat the soil as a factory. If you want a 

 fabric furnish the warp and woof and you shall have it, but don't kill the 

 goose that lays the golden eggs. 



Says Mr. Edward Atkinson, "one hundred million people could be sus- 

 tained and our exports doubled where we now support fifty million, with- 

 out increasing the area of a single farm, or adding one to their number, by 

 a reasonably good system of agriculture." 



Your pursuit, too, my farmer friend, is a school of manhood and of 

 morals, and that fact ought to have weight with men in their choice of 

 vocations. Labor is more than a mere means of making a living, or of 

 making money. Those are only its lowest ends. He who toils merely to 

 eat and drink, to get bed and board and clothes, out of nature, merely 

 pastures upon the surface of things. The man who lives solely for mate- 

 rial gains, to add lot to lot, acre to acre, and dollar to dollar, or that he may 

 be able to revel in a swine's heaven of sensual enjoyment, is of the earth 

 earthy, and the assessor ought to tax him as real estate. As I have said, 

 labor has a higher end than to feed and clothe the body, or to add to its 

 possessions, and that is to realize God's ideals, and to perfect our work and 

 His. The true farmer is not content to merely make a living or to merely 

 get rich. He has a noble ambition to excel in his vocation. It is that 

 enthusiasm and emulation that has given us all our improvements in 

 machinery and stock and productions and our model farms; and it is that 

 spirit that this agricultural association is intended to foster. 



But labor has a yet higher end than that. Its loftiest aim is to develop 

 the manhood of the laborer. It should not only produce thoroughbred 

 trotters, and slick Devons, and prize cabbages, and pumpkins, and pears, 

 but men. John G. Saxe was once present when little rocky Vermont was 

 being laughed at for the meagerness of its material productions. Said the 

 poet, "As for Vermont, she is content to build school houses and churches 

 and raise men." 



" Men are the choicest growth our realms supply, 

 And souls are ripened 'neath our northern sky." 



Now there is no pursuit so well adapted to produce some of the most 

 sterling qualities of manhood as the cultivation of the soil. The greatest 

 men have nearly all been nurtured on the bosom of our common mother. 

 In the first place, it is happily the lot of the farmer to follow a calling that 

 perhaps more than any other conduces to physical health and manly 

 vigor. We cannot too highly value bodily energy, a robust constitution, 

 good digestion, steady nerves, and strong, tough sinews. They are as 

 essential to a well developed manhood as a substantial foundation is to a 

 building. You must possess physical health to be intellectually and spirit- 

 ually at your best. Soul and body are as vitally united as the Siamese 

 twins, so that one cannot take a spree and the other keep sober. Now, the 

 farmer never has to say with Talleyrand, " Oh, that sleep could be bought ! 

 Oh, that it were in the market at any quotation !" The man who dreamed 

 that the devil came one night and sat down on his stomach holding the 

 Bunker Hill monument in his lap, did not live on a ranch. Farmers' girls 

 can blush without paint, and farmers' boys do not stay out at night till 

 the small hours. The average of the farmer's life is sixty-four years, the 

 highest of all averages — seven years more than the lawyer's or minister's, 

 ten years more than the doctor's, thirteen years more than the blacksmith 



