34 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



and humanity, all tributaries to the granary ; and the granary 

 becomes the store-house of ideas, which will bless the world 

 long after this year's produce has been consumed. 



But this is but half the influence. The farmer perceives his 

 own mind to expand, and his sphere to be thus enlarged. He 

 comes to occupy, of right, a new place in political economy and 

 in domestic life. He no longer divides his time upon labor, 

 food and sleep ; but a fourth demand, greater than the others 

 combined, and making them, also, more profitable, will have its 

 full share ; it is ihotig-ht. The power of thinking is a divine 

 gift, by which a man pushes out beyond his acquired knowl- 

 edge, and seizes great principles and makes them his own ; by 

 which ignorance may become enlightened, and an individual, 

 however wisely read in books, may come to know more than he 

 has learned. 



It is with the secrets and mysteries of your vocation, quite 

 as much as with its expedients and profits, that thought 

 engages. The hands turn the soil ; the mind analyzes its parts. 

 The eye selects and the fingers sow the seed ; the mind discov- 

 ers the elements of fertility which can convert it into a hun- 

 dred-fold ; or weighs the opportunities of making some new 

 combination, out of which greater blessings shall come to the 

 race. And every step in this direction, every new accession of 

 intelligence to the farmer's work, will show itself in the ingather- 

 ings of future years. And I give you, in conclusion, as a sen- 

 timent worthy of a place in every daily calendar of duty, — 

 Agricultural Head-work ; Not to save the hand-ivork, but to 

 wake it more heneficent, and more in correspondence with the 

 way of Him, ivho works with unerring intelligence, by the side 

 of the husbandman, for a loorld's continuous welfare. 



