68 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



The man who is to be benefited by our efforts, and who is to 

 benefit us in return, is the restless, enterprising man, who has a 

 steam-boiler in his stomach, an engine in his muscles, a gal- 

 vanic battery in his brain, and a lion in his heart. To such a 

 man we may look for work that tells. No matter whether he is 

 a farmer or something else ; he will succeed ; and it would be 

 a good short bit of advice to every young farmer to say " Go 

 thou and do likewise." 



If only we could insure their following of the advice ! 



Do you say that this is enthusiasm ? So it is — the enthusiasm 

 of money-making. Our energetic man has worked, as only 

 such a man can work — with a consciousness of the good he 

 was doing, no doubt, and with a delight in the doing of it — 

 but with the hope of gain as his most constant incentive. 

 There may be exceptions — men who work to their wit's ends 

 solely for the benefit of the human family ; but they are not 

 many, and I would pit a good, reliable money-maker against 

 the best of them in a race to see which should lay the world 

 under the greatest obligations. 



Money, after all, is only an expression of the progress that 

 work accomplishes. The freedom with which it is used, and 

 the comforts it secures, mark the solid advancement of our 

 own time. The men of every occupation, taken as a class, are 

 becoming, year by year, more prosperous ; there is more com- 

 fort, more luxury, more intelligence, more cultivation, less ill- 

 health, less contemptible meanness among them (though this 

 last quality holds its own bravely), than there used to be. 

 The progress is mainly due to the leaders of each class, — men 

 whose wealth has of course added some weight to their example, 

 but where great effect has been produced on the world by their 

 tvork, and by the activity their work has engendered in others. 



It would be folly to say that agriculture has not felt and 

 profited by the influence of the same sort of example, or to 

 suppose that there is any cause for discouragement in the farm- 

 er's condition. All that I desire is to draw attention to the 

 fact that it is to the influence of untiring work, — work done in 

 the hope of gain, done in pursuit of personal wealth, — that we 

 must look for that still further progress that is needed to make 

 New England farming, and, indeed, all other farming, as 

 attractive to the better class of young farmers, as New Eng- 



