60 MAINE STATE SOCIETY, 



ESSAY 



On the Intellectual Wants of Farmers. 



BY EPDRAIM MAXHAIT, WATERVILLE. n 



In every pursuit, improvement is the great source of happiness. 

 The man who has accumulated wealth till desire ceases to stimulate 

 exertion, either turns his ambition to another channel, or finds his 

 enjoyment of life daily diminishing. The farmer who has nourished 

 his fields and decorated his buildings till every plan seems complete, 

 if not ready to sit down in the weariness of age under his own vine 

 and fig-tree, at once seizes the idea of selling and buying again, to 

 enter the march of progress on a broader field. No sphere is so 

 humble, no position so high, that its occupant is secure from the 

 alternative of fixing his eye steadily upon the motto, " Onward and 

 upward, " or losing it to an indefiniteness that throws it at last 

 darkly to the earth. Money acquired may not, indeed, be lost, and 

 plans executed may not go backward ; but both are comparatively 

 worthless when they fall upon the sense and cease to bring happi- 

 ness, Man's destiny is progress — earthward or heavenward — and it 

 is only in progressive improvement that he can look for happiness. 



Here, then, is suggested the necessity of enlisting mind and effort 

 in improvements that embrace the broadest idea of usefulness and 

 permanency ; such as shall longest continue to give joy to the heart 

 and quiet and peace to the mind. 



These suggestions point us to "the intellectual wants of fiirmcrs," 

 Education — self-culture — mental improvement — here is a field more 

 extensive than his broadest acres, and more neglected than his most 

 barren plains ; a field that borders nearer his homestead, and prom- 

 ises a richer harvest, than any to which the plow or the sickle have 

 ever been applied. No man cultivates this field under more advan- 

 . tageous circumstances than the farmer. No man gathers a nobler 

 crop in proportion to time and labor expended, or turns it, when 



