PROGRESSIVE AGRICULTURE. 165 



yield not only the necessaries of life, but the medium through 

 which the highest moral and intellectual culture may be attained ; 

 as these are secured, so will be the money profits of your calling. 

 He who knows most, in any pursuit, will generally succeed the 

 best, and agriculture will not prove an exception. Men are 

 selected for places of responsibility and trust, because qualified for 

 them by study and observation. 



The farmer's occupation has been too much looked upon as one 

 of drudgery. Let it be so no longer. No profession has so much 

 of the true poetry of life as his. He labors amid the purity and 

 freshness of Nature herself, and good thoughts are ever suggested 

 by the beautiful things around him. He who gives voice to poetic 

 inspiration, comes to your forests and fields, or on your mountains 

 and along your fertile vales, for the materials of his portraitures 

 and imagery ! Agiiculture has now also an elegant literature. 

 Some of the best minds have been occupied by it. Numerous 

 persons at home and abroad, might be cited, who have given their 

 chief thoughts to it, and whose names will ever be uttered as 

 benefactors. The poetry of the Sciences, too, is so intimately 

 connected with it as to become the handmaid of our great art. 



To these add but a single other feature, and the profession of 

 agriculture becomes pre-eminently attractive, and promises all that 

 man may expect in this condition of his being — that feature is 

 Agriculture in its social relations. 



In most other pursuits th.Qfainiily is excluded from a participa- 

 tion. It is not so in this — every member may not only feel an 

 interest, but may take part in its active employments, either in-doors 

 or out, and thus the social feelings are enlisted in the general 

 welfare. But where Woman is cut off from a proper share in the 

 common interests of all, neither a high degree of refinement, nor 

 a full and complete mingling of the affections can exist. 



I have said that the occupation of the farmer is peculiarly a 

 solitary one ; so in the same sense are his enjoyments — they are 

 domestic ; he will realize them in the bosom of his family ; not in 

 gay saloons, or the unsatisfying exactments of artificial life. In 

 the intelligence of his wife and children must he find mental as 

 well as physical help in his profession. Polite learning should find 

 a congenial home around his winter evening fire, and the scholar, 

 the artist, and the statesman find kindred spirits there too. 



Woman, free and unconstrained by unequal laws and harsh 

 restrictions, would move in her charmed- circle, softening and 



