70 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



factory boy — educated by poverty, great by the aid of his 

 struggles, sings thus in one of his songs for the people : — 



" Come from the den of darkness, and the city's soil of sin, 

 Put on your radiant manhood, and the Angel's blessing win, 

 Where weal their sunlight conies from Heaven, like welcome smiles of God, 

 And earth's blind yearnings leap to life, in ilowers from out the sod. 

 Come worship beauty in the forest temple dim and hush, 

 Where stands magnificence dreaming, and God burnetii in the bush. 

 Or where the old hills worship with their silence for a psalm, 

 ( )r ocean's weary heart doth keep the Sabbath of its calm. 

 Come let us worship beauty with the knightly faith of old, 

 O, chivalry of labor, toiling for the age of Gold." 



I am well aware that such thoughts as these are not the daily 

 companions of our farmers, the hourly emotions of all who 

 dwell in the country. The farmer who hoes his corn does not 

 spare the wild weed which grows there on account of its beauty, 

 nor when he is hurrying to save his hay does he watch the sub- 

 lime beauty of the thunder cloud, but whoever looks down from 

 his lofty pinnacle of self-complacency, upon our plain country 

 people, and believes they do not study, — do not reflect, — do not 

 appreciate what is beautiful and sublime, — do not appreciate the 

 great truth that all this beauty was not created without an 

 object, — do not refine and cultivate their hearts and brain by the 

 study of it, knows nothing of the hearts of our people, knows 

 nothing of life and its lessons. There are churls, to be sure, 

 who care nothing but for their fields and their crops, who think 

 only of manure, and pigs, and potatoes, but they are not repre- 

 sentatives (thank Heaven) of our New England farmer. 



There is a wild German story of the adventures of the student 

 Anselmus, in which it is related how an old magician shut him 

 up in a glass bottle, and placed it upon a shelf in his study. 

 Poor Anselmus was unhappy enough in his narrow quarters ; 

 but he was not alone ; he found on the shelf beside him other 

 students ; — Cross Church scholars and law clerks, shut up in 

 bottles too, like him, but unlike him they were unconscious of 

 their confinement, and thought themselves all the while enjoy- 

 ing life, drinking double beer and singing like true students, 

 " Guadianius igitur." There is much significance in that story ; 

 many men arc shut up in bottles, and all the while are uncon- 



