No. 105.] 21 



farther than we can imagine. When you throw wheat into the 

 ground, you know what will be the product ; but when you exemplify 

 or inculcate a moral truth, eternity alone can develop the extent of 

 the blessing. 



About a hundred years ago there lived in Boston a tallow-chandler. 

 He was too ignorant to give, and too poor to pay for his children's 

 instruction, but he was a «^ise and an honest man, and there was one 

 book, upon whose precepts he relied, as being able to instruct his 

 children how to live prosperously in this world, as well as to prepare 

 them for another. We are told that he daily repeated to them this 

 proverb : " Seest thou a man diligent in his business ? He shall 

 stand before kings." In process of time this tallow-chandler died 

 and was forgotten. But the good seed had fallen upon good ground. 

 One of his little boys obeyed his father's instruction ; he was dili- 

 gent in his business, and he did stand before kings, the first repre- 

 sentative of his native land ! He lived as a philosopher, to snatch 

 the lightning from heaven ; as a statesman, to wrest the sceptre from 

 tyrant?. And when he died, he confessed that it was the moral 

 teachings of his father, added to the little learning he picked up in a 

 town school at Boston, to which he owed his success, his happiness 

 and his reputation. He did what he could to testify how sensible he 

 was of these obligations. He bequeathed liberally to his native city, 

 the means of inducing the young to improve their advantages, and 

 to enable the industrious to succeed in their callings. And he erected 

 a monument over his father to tell his virtues to another age. But 

 the glory of the father was in the, child. His son's character was his 

 noblest monument. The examples that son set, of industry, perse- 

 verence and economy, have excited and are exciting many to imitate 

 them. And thousands, yet unborn, may owe their success and hap- 

 piness to the manner in which a text was enforced, by a poor tallow- 

 chandler, upon Benjamin Franklin. 



But, being useful and profitable to others, is not tlie only advan- 

 tage of a farmer's life. He wdio is wise maybe profitable to himself. 

 In the most busy agricultural life, there are hours that can be devot- 

 ed to intellectual improvement. And I confess, in my ideal of the 

 American farmer, much more is included than the regular systematic 

 performance of the routine of ploughing and sowing, reaping and 

 gathering into barns. 



I cannot sativ'fy my imagination with the hard working man, who, 

 after toiling through the day, has no thought at its close, but to satis- 



