26 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 



From an Address before the Worcester West Agricultural Society. 



BY GEO. B. LORING. 



The business of farming in this country, rests in the hands 

 of the people, and it is for them to say, whether it shall be well 

 done or ill. Consider for a moment what an advantage agricul- 

 ture possesses here, over the same pursuit under that state of 

 society in which large landed estates are cultivated by tenantry 

 or peasantry, controlled by a master. In the one case, all the 

 strongest impulses of man's nature are appealed to, and his call 

 to duty comes from the most powerful forces within himself; in 

 the other, a reluctant service is paid to a superior, or emulation 

 is excited by a subservient attachment. The New England 

 farmer goes forth in the morning to toil upon his own acres, 

 looking forward as each hour goes on to the rewards of his 

 industry, enhanced and magnified, and sweetened by that subtle 

 and unshakable satisfaction which possession alone can give. 

 Between himself and the animals which graze upon his green 

 slopes, there is a bond of union, which makes their proportions 

 fairer to his eyes. Each plant of his growing crops is clothed for 

 him with a sort of human interest, unknown to any other plant 

 on the face of the earth. All through the long day, in the 

 brisk labor of the early hours, in the trials of the noontide 

 heat, in the weariness of the declining sun, he is sustained and 

 refreshed, and stimulated by a feeling of alliance with all about 

 him, and with a deep and perhaps unrecognized consciousness 

 that upon the face of his farm he, is writing the history of his 

 practical life on earth. He returns in the evening to his own 

 home, his own fireside, his own family, and finds there an 

 appeal to his better nature, which no man can resist, and which 

 calls on him to adorn and embellish, and refine that spot, which 



