SAGADAHOC COUNTY SOCIETY. 113 



possible panoply of protection against temptation, vice and 

 dishonor. 



But I do not wish to be understood that I would have you bestow 

 these high mental and moral attainments upon those who go out 

 from among you to the neglect, or detriment of those who remain. 

 As I before remarked nearly one-half of the population of the free 

 States is engaged in the pursuit of agriculture. It is from our 

 agricultural districts that the country is furnished with its best 

 models of physical, intellectual and moral manhood and woman- 

 hood. By their moderation, prudence, healthy example, and by 

 their power at the ballot box, the farmers of the country exercise a 

 controlling influence over its character and destiny. As a whole 

 class they should be well prepared by education and general intel- 

 ligence to exert this power in the way best calculated to advance 

 the interest and welfare of our whole country. When we reflect 

 that oitr government and its benign institutions are upheld, and 

 can only be upheld and borne on to the future by the intelligence, 

 virtue and patriotism of the people, we see and realize the magni- 

 tude of the duties and responsibilities which the American people 

 have undertaken. We owe it to ourselves, to our country, to the 

 age in which it is our good fortune to live, and to that liberal free 

 spirit which is advancing to the conquest of the world, that these 

 responsibilities be fully met, these duties well performed. Educa- 

 tion or general information then is one of the necessities of the 

 American people, and it is both the duty and interest of our rural 

 districts to make the best provision for good free schools that 

 the circumstances by which they are surrounded will permit. 

 Although the good industrious farmer will always find something 

 useful and profitable to do about his farm, and need never have 

 any surplus time to waste away in idleness, he can spare more 

 leisure hours for mental culture, for studying the science and best 

 modes of agriculture, and for general reading than any other of 

 all the industrial classes into which communities are divided. If 

 we could all realize more fully the. immense value of time, how 

 rapidly it draws us to our journey's end, how much we ought to 

 learn to enable us to perform our various duties even decently, we 

 should be far more eager to seize the passing moments, and so use 

 them as to make us better and more capable men and citizens, and 

 our lives a living illustration of the benefit and happiness conferred 

 by time well spent. 



The first duty of the farmer is to make himself master of his 

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