56 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTUKE. 



KEW ekgla:n^d home-life. 



From an Address before the Housatonic Agricultural Society. 



BY P. A. CHADBOURNE. 



A short time since I was called upon to deliver an inaugu- 

 ral address, in which I endeavored to lay down the principles 

 of the highest and best education. And I felt called upon to 

 say, what I here repeat, that the great want of our times is 

 not so much that we may know how to produce more, as that 

 we may know how to rightly use what we have. Nothing is 

 more evident than that two families with the same numbers 

 and having the same income, get very different degrees of 

 enjoyment out of their means. Some families will live for 

 one-half that another family spends, and live better ; have 

 more real enjoyment from life than the other. So, as I come 

 to this fair and see these beautiful products of the soil, these 

 specimens of handicraft, these evidences of production, I ask 

 myself this question : — Do the people know how to use to the 

 best advantage these products of their labor? or, are these 

 products to pass back again to the dust of the earth, having 

 done half their work for man ; having done none at all ; or, 

 perchance, having proved a curse to him? These are impor- 

 tant questions, for all production which is not made fully sub- 

 servient to human progress and human happiness, is so much 

 labor in vain. And in my opinion, very much of the hum 

 and toil of business is as useless as the wind that sweeps 

 through the cordage of a ship that is fast anchored in harbor. 

 It may be wafting other ships on their course, but for that 

 ship, fast anchored, it wears away its cable and hastens the de- 

 struction of the whole fabric. 



I propose then, to-day, to step aside from the ordinary, 

 and perhaps the natural, course of thought on such an occasion 



