1902.] THE FARMER AS A CITIZEN. 95 



lives the closest to him lives in admiration of that pattern, and 

 consequently grows more like him. We always grow like 

 the things we love or admire. We can control our admira- 

 tions and our affections, and grow like the things we admire, 

 and like the things we love, and get away from the things that 

 disgust us, because our backs are always towards them, our 

 faces are in another direction, and we always go in the way 

 we look, and away from the things behind us, forgetting those 

 things behind us, and pressing towards those things that are 

 before if we are to run for the prize of the high calling of God. 

 A man to be a good citizen has got to think about the right 

 sort of things. If you will just examine yourselves, and ex- 

 amine your acquaintances, you will find the truth is just what 

 I have been saying. So that here is the fundamental thing 

 about good citizenship — good thought. That is follow^ed 

 by good acts, and they are followed by good habits, and they 

 are followed by good character, and character is all there is 

 to any of us. We may weigh one hundred and seventy-five 

 or two hundred and seventy-five avoirdupois, we may be rich, 

 or we may be poor, yet, after all, all there is of any of us is our 

 character; positively nothing else. That is all there is, and 

 that character fixes our destiny for time and eternity. That is 

 all fixed by our character. 



Now, then, if a man starts out right by thinking right, his 

 first relation when he goes outside of himself is to that unit of 

 civilization — the family. Now% the good citizen, in all the 

 relations of his citizenship, in exercising his duties as a good 

 citizen, he first of all must begin at home. You cannot con- 

 ceive of a good citizen, in the highest acceptation of the term, 

 who is not the right sort of a man in his own family. He has 

 got to begin at home. And when I say " family," I mean his 

 own family. I do not mean when he is living with his mother, 

 or wath his sister to keep house for him; that is not his family. 

 He may own the farm, and he may support everybody in the 

 house, but, if his mother keeps house for him, or his sister 

 keeps house for him, or some dear, sweet old maiden aunt 

 keeps house for him, it is not his family. The family is based 

 on the marriage relation, and that is not a family which is not 

 based or which does not have its foundation in the married 

 state. And, so, begging the pardon of all the old bachelors 

 in the room, I will say that the very fundamental idea of 



