134 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



one of the cotton mills in Fall River, and I do not know but 

 more, because, when Edmund Burke said it required more 

 judgment to make a man a good farmer than it did to make him 

 good in any other calling in life, he spoke the exact truth, and 

 no man can deny it. 



Now, what Mr. Goodman said about the use of a vegetable 

 diet, I do not want to be forgotten. It is so important a ques- 

 tion, that the Board of Health of the State of Massachusetts are 

 appealing to me continually to write an article for them to put 

 into their next report with regard to the value of vegetables. I 

 look upon them as almost indispensable here. I look upon the 

 use of salt meat as lying at the foundation of a great deal of 

 the disease from which we are suffering in the eastern section of 

 the United States, and in some other sections. I am sure there 

 is nothing in the world so tough as a well-fed man. You can- 

 not hurt him any more than you can a fox. You may take him 

 to the North Pole, and he will live year in and year out on 

 walrus or blubber, or anything else ; you may start him on the 

 dead run, and if he brings up at the equator, he is just as much 

 at home in his linen blouse as he was in his furs. All he wants 

 is a good stomach. A healthy digestion will carry him through 

 all the perils of life, social, civil, or whatever they may be. It 

 is a most remarkable fact in the history of nations, that those 

 peoples who are fed upon a proper admixture of animal food 

 and vegetable food are the most robust. The climate of Hol- 

 land is not desirable : it is low, humid, damp, cold and dis- 

 agreeable to a very considerable extent ; it is no better than the 

 climate of Massachusetts ; and yet the Hollanders, living as they 

 do largely on a vegetable diet, are hardy, tough, fat and round, 

 and have a good time generally. They look as if they meant to 

 enjoy themselves, and I have no doubt they do, and you can 

 attribute to their vegetable diet a large portion of their physical 

 condition. I hope that will be remembered. Now, I desire to 

 say, that so far as the health of this community is concerned, 

 if the farmers of the country are too busy to take up the rais- 

 ing of vegetables themselves, I hope they will put in a petition 

 to the next Woman's Rights Convention, held in New England, 

 and ask the women if they won't be kind enough to turn their 

 attention to the cultivation of vegetables, and if they will only 

 take up that as their part of the business of life, I don't care 



