62 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



home, had done something — was a man — was better and more 

 to be respected than the rich man who might purchase or 

 inherit it; taught them that the tangled rushes and the rank 

 weeds and the grey moss would grow over the man who did 

 not work ; taught them that the man who could rule his farm, 

 could rule himself; and finally, when they came to open their 

 eyes and look into the matter, taught them all at once that 

 they were the real kings, and had been kings all the while, not 

 somebody's son over the sea. This was the democracy which 

 nature then taught to them, and repeats to us to-day. I love 

 to remember what naturalists have told us, that the symbol of 

 industry, the " busy bee," was unknown to America before our 

 fathers came here. The Indians called it the " fly of the 

 English," and learned to dread its approach. Even now, in 

 the western prairies, the bee is the scout and the pioneer of 

 civilization. Let us complain no more, then, of labor and 

 toil ; let us talk no more of disadvantages, and opportunities, 

 and poverty, and self-made men. 



The man who does not labor has no right here ; he is in the 

 way — the busy world crowds him out of the path ; opportu- 

 nities and advantages are all around us, but they are for the 

 men who wake up and open their eyes in the morning — not 

 for fops and sluggards. To be born poor is a blessing, not a 

 curse ; the only real poverty is inside the man, not outside, 

 and all men who are made at all, are self-made men; schools 

 are good tools, and colleges, and books, but they must have 

 men, not children, to use them. There is one great, true book 

 written by the finger of God, and its pages arc opened all 

 around us, of which those other books are after all only poor 

 and partial translations; the true book is written, as of old, on 

 tables of stone — written, not in ink, but in letters of light, and 

 the wide sky, and the wonderful ocean, and the mysterious 

 forests, and the green, cool meadows, and the dreaming flow- 

 ers, and bird, and tree, and man, are its living pictures and 

 illuminations. This, then, is your birthright, and your inher- 

 itance ; not a life of wealth, and ease, and repose, but a life 

 of brave toil and trust. Accept this heritage with joy and 

 gladness; work while it is yet day. Let your life be like the 

 tree, which pauses not in its climbing, until it has reached its 

 ordained height. The tree which, although rooted in the 



