DIGNITY OF LABOR. 63 



dark, cold ground, struggles towards the light, and stretches 

 out its great limbs, tossing and striving upwards towards the 

 sky. Take this thought with you, but take it in better words 

 than mine — in the words of our nob^le American poet, Long- 

 fellow, whose great, true thoughts have found fit utterance in 

 a psalm — a real psalm of life — a fit poem for America. 



Life is real, life is earnest, 



And the grave is not its goal ; 

 Dust thou art, to dust rcturnest, 



Was not spoken of the soul. 



Let us then be up and doing, 



With a heart for any fate ; 

 Still achieving, still pursuing, 



Learn to labor and to wait. 



But this rural life does not deal in utility alone, or in the 

 practical teachings of life and duty only — it has its lessons for 

 the heart, its influences upon the affections, its sweet, kindly 

 story of home. It seems a paradox to say that you separate 

 men by uniting them, and yet it is true. In the country you 

 live on your farm, and you have neighbors, though they live 

 half a mile away. In the city you live in a block, and you 

 know not even the name of the family at your next door. In 

 the country, nature, by constant laws, teaches that you are not 

 sufficient for yourself alone. You are dependent on your 

 neighbors in a thousand ways ; you need friendship and sym- 

 pathy. You must borrow and lend, you must help and be 

 helped. In sickness and health, in sorrow and joy, in wealth 

 and in poverty, there must be a perpetual interchange of good 

 offices. 



When we turn over the leaves of this wondrous book, there 

 is one page in which are inscribed the loftiest thoughts, the 

 noblest lessons, the most beauteous pictures of life. There is 

 one word which sounds and swells with universal music to 

 every heart — a music of fears and hopes, of memories, of joys 

 and sorrows, the one, old, dear word of " Home ! ' : How 

 many thoughts cling and cluster around it. How many mem- 

 ories rush unbidden with the word — of the past as well as 

 of the present — of those early days which we would fain recall, 



