524 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



and sixteen hours a day, who can blame them for escaping such 

 slavish toil? Ten hours of good, sharp, vigorous work is all any man 

 or boy should do in a day. Get up early, eat well, work well, quit 

 well (at a Christian hour). Have your evenings at home, read and 

 study the papers and good books, and teach your boys to do likewise. 

 By the study of good books, and an habitual intercourse with noble 

 and pure thoughts and ideas, they will become ennobled, become 

 thinking men, better citizens, and better farmers. Prove to them that 

 agriculture is an art, and must be followed as such. Show them the 

 dignity of the calling; that the farmers of the United States hold in 

 their hands one fourth of the wealth; that the nation depends on 

 them for a living, every farmer in this broad land supporting thir- 

 teen individuals. Thus interest them in the work, pay them for what 

 they do, and you will have no trouble in keeping the boys on the old 

 place. 



farmers' wives. 



Above all, be cheerful about the house. Meet the wife with a smile. 

 Her work is as hard as ours. She is invaluable, and does earnest 

 work, with all her heart. She loves home cares. She identifies her- 

 self with her woman's life, duties, and hopes, and is always ready to 

 give help and sympathy in times of trial. Surely it is our duty to 

 lighten her labors, not to allow her to exhaust her strength or sniffer 

 nervous prostration. Have a care for the wife, for the low, dull pain 

 of laborious work, never done too often, has stricken the already over- 

 burdened frame of the farmer's wife. 



PERORATION. 



In the beginning, when the progenitors of the race wrestled with 

 the wilds of a virgin world, agriculture was the first and most impor- 

 tant step in the path of their progress. In the last quarter of a cen- 

 tury we, likewise, have carved out a new empire on the golden soil of 

 California, and agriculture must be the basis of its future prosperity. 

 For in the coming years, in the early morn, when the sun sheds 

 redundant light over plain and peak, and the azure waters of our 

 inland sea, scarce lisping up the sands, then the inquiring mind 

 of posterity, viewing our work from the translucified peak of old 

 Konockti, will judge us by the evidences of our husbandry, as the 

 agriculture of a country affords the surest data for estimating the civ- 

 ilization, the character, aims, and practical virtues of its inhabitants. 



