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518 [Assembly 



his suffrages entitle Mm to, until her protecting arm is extended 

 over us, and a large proportion of her means devoted to the direct 

 training of young men for the profession of agriculture. It is high 

 time the farmer became aroused to his necessities, and spreading 

 his banner to the breeze, proclaimed his privilege, nay, his rights, 

 before the body that owe their existence to his bone and sinew. 

 Send such men to your public councils as not only know your 

 wants, but appreciate their bearing, and actuated by a love of 

 truth, will conscientiously set themselves to work to meet your 

 necessities, and leave self-aggrandizement to smaller minds and 

 more appropriate spheres. 



ESSAY 

 On the injtuence of rural life and its pursuits on the human mind. 

 For which a silver Goblet was awarded to tbe auth:>r, Hugh 

 C. Wilson, of Putnam Valley, by the Putnam County agricultural 



Society, 1852. 



Going back through long ages, the early history of the world 

 tells us of a garden filled with fruits and flowers, and in it a man 

 was placed to tend it. Two things unfold themselves to us while 

 contemplating that history, rural life and labor, God's first ordina- 

 tions to man. Labor is twofold, physical and mental. Physical 

 labor however intense can never achieve much without the co- 

 operation of mind ; nor can mental labor alone bring to its votary, 

 that sound body and mind whjch belongs to the proper blending 

 of the two. These things,! belive are truisms, fixed facts in na- 

 ture, which as they have been noted by all men, of even limited 

 powers of observation, I presume need jiot again be argued out at 

 length. The question may perhaps arise with some, why was 

 Adam our great progenitor made a gardener. The answer is 

 plain. It is obvious that constituted as he was, he could have 

 been nothing else and lived. He was formed to eat and drink ; 

 without foo..l his body must have perished. His labor was not 

 that severe bodily toil to which so many of us are subjected at the 

 present day, it was essential to his sound physical and mental 

 well being. In the garden of Eden was no clergyman, for Adam 



