AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 29 



obtaining it. The mechanic learns his system and his work is 

 done, whether it be to make a shoe, or build a house, or set in 

 motion a machine. The merchant learns his business, and 

 sagacity and an irresistible pursuit of gain perform the rest. 

 But to the farmer belong the discoveries of science, the skill of 

 mechanics, the problems of the weather, the investigations of 

 that great book of nature which is always open before him, 

 and which bear immediately upon the business of his life. 

 While other trades do not invite to books, or have no literature 

 connected with them, or by congregating men, inflame their 

 minds and perhaps corrupt them, farming has its quiet influ- 

 ences, its own important subjects, its special learning, its books, 

 and its various and important interests, which the human mind 

 has not yet exhausted. There is leisure for such education as 

 agriculture demands, for such literature as its affords. And 

 while the labor of the mill is relieved by reading, while from 

 the quarries comes forth a Hugh Miller, and from the forecastle 

 a Bowditch, while clerks and merchants, and mechanics asso- 

 ciate for intellectual relaxation and culture, and while our cities 

 are filled with libraries and a thinking population, let it not be 

 said that the farmer has no time to bestow upon his mind, 

 and a country life no inducement for healthy thought and 

 education. 



And, then, gentlemen, in addition to the practical advantage 

 to be derived from a good agricultural education, there is the 

 unbounded solace and relief bestowed by books, which as 

 Cicero says in his own sublime tongue, dwell with us wherever 

 we go. We may accumulate all the luxuries and elegancies of 

 life for ourselves, and those who come after us, but they are 

 trifles compared with that best possession, that richest legacy, 

 next to virtue and morality, a love of reading. It refines the 

 whole life. It brings us into an assembly where companions 

 may be found for all our finest tastes, our noblest impulses, our 

 acutest thought, and where there is congratulation for our joys 

 and sympathy for our sorrows. It fits us for labor, and pro- 

 tects us against the temptations which hang upon the skirts of 

 idleness and ignorance, and find their existence there. The fit 

 and appropriate volume — what has it not done towards sustain- 

 ing man in times of trial, and guiding him with superior 

 thought in his 'daily walk? Our own American Cicero, the 



