SOCIAL LIFE OF THE FAK.MEIl. 121 



of improvement in the farmer's character, notwithstanding 

 liis limitations, must then be admitted. But that much re- 

 mains to be done, that agricultural life is still much too far 

 behind the general wave of progress, seems to me equally 

 evident. It remains to point out some of the means to be 

 employed to bring the social and intellectual life of the 

 farmer more nearly to the level of that of other professions. 



RECOGNITION OF THE NEED. 



The first thing needed, of course, is a clearer recognition 

 by the farming class of the fact of its deficiency in the di- 

 rection in which we are looking to-day. Without this, im- 

 provement is impossible, while the sense of the need will 

 help much to its own remedy. What you need, gentlemen, 

 as the starting-point of improvement, is what we of all pro- 

 fessions need, a clearer sense of the danger that the profes- 

 sion may swallow up the man. Clergymen are sometimes 

 buried out of sight and beyond resurrection in their white 

 neck-cloths ; doctors become walking pill-boxes ; and law- 

 yers and politicians — well, language fails me to say what 

 they do become from their pi'ofessional habit of making the 

 worse appear the better reason. But the danger in your 

 case is a special one. You need to be vigilantly on your 

 guard lest the farm swallow up the man. Resolve, whatever 

 comes, that your souls shall not be buried under your dung- 

 heaps. Stand superior to your cows and your sheep and 

 your hogs, however aristocratic their pedigree. Let the most 

 cherished product of the farm be its liuman product, the 

 farmer himself and his family. While you must ask the 

 question, "Will it pay?" as men of all callings must ask 

 it, give to the words a somewhat broader meaning than has 

 been your wont, remembering that man does not live by 

 bread alone, but that there is a hunger of mind the claims 

 of which cannot be disregarded without the sacrifice of the 

 best part of manhood. What you need is a different waj^ of 

 looking at things, a higher estimate of the graces of life, and 

 the willingness to sacrifice some other things in the effort at 

 their attainment. 



