318 PISCATAQUIS CENTRAL SOCIETY. 



ness, mendicity, pauperism, and a train of ills which never wait on 

 industry, nor follow in the steps of effort. Especially is farm labor 

 looked upon as an undignified employment by many who do not 

 hesitate to accept as an alternative all the degrading concomitants of 

 indolence ; while wise men of other pursuits, especially those bur- 

 dened with the cares and anxieties of mercantile life, with an oppres- 

 sive sense of its insecurity and hazards, look forward to a quiet 

 rural home and its beautiful surroundings, and the comfortable sense 

 of independence which it inspires, as the bight of their worldly 

 aspirations. 



While many other modes of life are precarious, depending upon 

 contingencies, and liable to bo effected by varying circumstances) 

 accidents and conditions, no secondary cause stands between the 

 husbandman and his Maker. The labor of the garden and the farm 

 cannot be affected by commercial disasters nor financial panics, but 

 depends for ample returns of subsistence and comfort, on the regular 

 succession of the seasons, and the timely fall of the rain, and the 

 genial warmth of the sun, and the sure productiveness of the soil, 

 and the certain operation of those laws of nature which are nothing 

 less than the varied exertions of omnipresent energy. While other 

 classes are harrassed by anxiety, and often oppressed with an appal- 

 ling sense of instability and insecurity, the man who depends upon 

 the bounty of his generous foster-mother earth, upon the vine which 

 his right hand has planted, and the branch which he has made strong 

 for himself, can ever cherish an agreeable feeling of independence, 

 confidently relying upon the fulfillment of the promise of seed time 

 and harvest, dwelling in peace under his own vine and fig tree, fas- 

 cinated with none of the fictitious pleasures, ajinoyed by none of the 

 unnatural wants, fashionable follies, and tyrannical vices of more 

 busy and splendid life. 



Why then should there be such discontent, and uneasy casting 

 about for more lucrative as well as more questionable modes of life, 

 rather than a steady pursuit of honest business, whose returns, 

 though limited, are sure? Whence this spirit of unhallowed ambi- 

 tion and reckless adventure — these prevalent scenes of wild disorder, 

 where so many quit their spheres and rush into pursuits for which 

 they have not been qualified by suitable discipline, and where com- 

 mercial embarrassments and financial ruin follow hard on fashionable 



