PISCATAQUIS CENTRAL SOCIETY. 317 



It above all labor gives health to the body, energy to the mind, is 

 favorable to virtuous and temperate habits, and to knowledge, and 

 purity of moral character ; which are the pillars of good govern- 

 ment and the true support of national independence." 



Agriculture lies at the foundation of all other interests, inasmuch 

 as we are mainly indebted to it for our daily bread. Let agricul- 

 tural labor cease, and the few that could remain alive on the spon- 

 taneous products of the earth, would soon relipse into a state of 

 barbarism, with all the severities and discomforts of savage life. 

 While all the industrial interests are interlinked and mutually de- 

 pendent, agriculture, supplying the requisites to life, could be less 

 safely dispensed with than any other. 



We are selfishly prone to cherish individual and isolated interests 

 to an extent that makes us forget our common relations and common 

 dependence ; and especially do we often seem unmindful of the fact 

 that our support — the essentials to our daily life— ^must come from 

 the bosom of the earth. This it must be that leads to that habit 

 which turns over a fiine day in summer to the special benefit of 

 farmers, with the expressions so common: "This is a fine day for 

 farmers; this will make the farmer rejoice;" just as if a day of 

 sunshine and shower, so grateful to vegetative life, should inure to 

 the exclusive interest of the farmer, as if secured by letters patent 

 from heaven. Rather should we, in a correct view of that wise 

 ecoi-omy of nature in which all interests are indissolubly linked 

 and from which none can be safely severed, regard every day good 

 for the farmer as equally good for us, and hail with gratitude every 

 genial and propitious influence of sun or rain by which the farmer's 

 prospects are improved and his heart made glad. We can only live 

 and develop our plans of usefulness or prosecute our schemes of 

 ambition as the labors of the firmer are blessed of God ; as he is 

 successful by an intelligent application of the arts adapted to the 

 cultivation of the soil, in producing in abundance the fruits of the 

 earth. 



There is a prevalent and it is to be feared, increasing disinclina- 

 tion to labor, notwithstanding labor is the divinely appointed means 

 of living, and has the sanction of the great and good of all ages. 

 Many have in some way acquired the notion that labor is a curse ; 

 a curse above idleness, and the fruits of idleness, which are wicked- 



