WEST OXFORD SOCIETY. IQ'J 



ing of cattle, and the enjoyment of sweet sleep belong especially to 

 the farmer. 



Sweetly as sung the poet in praise of the farm, he did not in that 

 age conceive of the farmer as a thinking, scientific man. Those 

 higher pleasures of the inner man formed but little place in his pic- 

 ture. "Happy he," exclaimed our poet, "who can know the causes 

 of things." He did not dream that the farmer could know these 

 things, but that all learning must be locked up forever from their 

 sight in the brains of the mere man of science. Unlike that of anj 

 other employment, the pleasures, or rather the solid comforts of the 

 farm increasjj with age. But few men in the complete enjoyment 

 of the farm could be induced to shut themselves up in a counting 

 room, or the shop of the mechanic. Few farmers would be willing 

 to hear the rap at their door at midnight, and, like the physician, 

 be compelled to harness horse and ride several miles for the sake of 

 earning a dollar. 



In looking over the catalogue of mortality among the different 

 occupations of men, it would seem as though old age was the lot of 

 the farmer alone. Look back, gentlemen, upon the young men of 

 your youth, and especially on the fast young men, who engaged in 

 any other employment than farming, and I think you will be sur- 

 prised at the small number that has ever passed beyond the middle 

 age of man. 



Cicero, in his charming treatise On Old Age, speaks worthy the 

 philosopher and the christian. "I come now," he says, "to the 

 pleasures of the farmers with which I am exceedingly delighted, 

 which are not hindered by old age, and which seem to me to belong 

 especially to the life of a wise man. The earth delights him by its 

 productions, by the opening spring, by the growing vine and corn, 

 the planting and grafting of trees, the irrigation of his fields, bis 

 garden and orchard, his flocks and swarms of bees, and the variety 

 of flowers." Nor could he be satisfied with pleasure in beholding 

 the beautiful home of his neighbor, Marcus Carius, who had tri- 

 umphed as a general over the enemies of his country, but was now 

 embellishing a home for his old age. It was the latter, who, while 

 sitting by his own fireside, spurned with contempt those who broutrht 

 to him a great amount of gold, regarding it as something not worthy 

 the consideration of the truly happy man. 



