STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 193 



In the best Agricultural districts, we find in the implements all 

 over the farm, in the farm buildings, in the garden, in the orchard, 

 in the laying out of the land, in its cultivation, in the front yard, in 

 the street before the house, clean and grassy, except on the drive, 

 in the highway through the farm, as if the owner recognized an 

 obligation to keep things decent about him, or at least as if he 

 thought it for his interest, that the wayside should not be a hot bed 

 for mice and Canada thistles and other pests. One rejoices in 

 such signs of thrift. There must be competency there, perhaps 

 wealth. But this is only one of the indications — the least 

 important. There are men there and women, and children 

 growing up to be like them; and the premises show pretty well 

 what sort of men and women the parents are, and of what sort 

 the children are to be. If you rejoice in the signs of wealth, it 

 is not simply in the fact that it is there, but that it is in the right 

 hands. Suppose you are riding through a farming district — you 

 come to a house that was old fifty years ago, but is older now; 

 there was a front fence once, but there is none now; the ground 

 in front is in pretty much such shape as the pigs choose to have; 

 what a dirty apology for a garden ! it is jaggedly fenced, and the 

 weeds look as if the owner had too much important business on 

 hand, to attend to so insignificant an affair as a garden; the cracks 

 in the barn are wide; the sheds are falling; how cruel to winter 

 a cow or two and a horse in such a place ! You begin to think 

 of hard names by which to call that man. But softly ! farmers 

 in this country have had a prodigiously hard row to hoe. Per- 

 haps if you and I had been educated as he was, and put in his 

 place, we should have been no better. Possibly he may have 

 other virtues than his premises show. Tliink the best you can of 

 him, and when you get by, don't look back, fur there are other 

 premises just ahead, on whicli your eye will rest witli more 

 pleasure. The street is clean as you appruacli — no thistles, no 

 unsightly stone heaps, no flea-breeding piles of chips and sawings 

 and old timber, no neglected chuke cherry, covered with worms' 

 nests, and producing fruit encjugh of a catterj)illar kind to stock 

 a whole farm and spread through the neighbi>rh(>od. How beau- 

 tiful and cool those shade trees are! Whether there is a moral 

 in trees, by which men become better in their presence or not, 

 there is certainly coiiilort and beauty. That garden has some 

 [Ag. Trans.] ^^ 



