LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 393 



to embitter, as it were, with its growth the lessons which nature teaches ; in 

 fine, it is capable of ministering most successfully of all arts and of all occu- 

 pations, to wealth, to intelligence, and to virtue." This is becoming more 

 and more true as time goes on, for every improvement in farm implements 

 and methods of operation takes away so much of the drudgery of farming. 



Many of the ideas entertained of the desirability of an occupation are, I 

 think, a sad perversion of nature. The prevalence and intensity of the desire 

 to obtain some position in the service of the government, as manifested on 

 occasions that call forth the least hope of realizing anything, is really appall- 

 ing. There is scarcely a position in the gift of any State oflBcer or Board, or 

 Legislature, from a janitor up to a U. S. Senator, but what the applicants for 

 it will be numbered by tens and even by hundreds. It matters little what the 

 position is, there is the same scramble for almost any office. Of these positions 

 it may be said generally, that they are among the least favorable to the devel- 

 opment of character. The young man who happens to be the successful com- 

 petitor for a clerkship in one of the State offices, thinks he has drawn a prize, 

 and he is truly envied by those who failed to get the position for themselves. But 

 watch that young man year after year. He becomes a sort of machine, he 

 fairly freezes to the capitol. The heaven of his ambition is to retain the office 

 that has proved the sepulchre of his powers. The hell of his fears is the 

 dread of losing it. 



I have heard the late Senator Chandler say that if he had a son he would 

 rather give him eighty acres of land in Michigan, than any official position in 

 the government, and the more I know of these official positions the more I 

 think he was right. I sometimes think that many of us sustain about the 

 same relation to farming that our first parents did to the garden of Eden. 

 In youth we go out with light hearts from the rural home, in the hope of 

 finding some imaginary pleasure and satisfaction which its quiet humdrum 

 life has failed to furnish. But as we grow old, there is a light and warmth 

 upon the recollection of these first homes, and we see attractions in farm life 

 that in our youth we failed to see, and we would fain go back to farming, but 

 some flaming sword, it may be poverty, or ambition, or a sense of unfitness, 

 keeps us out from that garden of the Lord. 



HOME LIFE. 



BY E. J. MAC EWAN". 

 [Spoken at Cassopolis, Berlin, and GrcenviUe.] 



The world is slow to recognize and record the influence of our every day 

 home life on national life and character. Charles Knight, in his popular his- 

 tory of England, makes the elements of national life seven, — civil and mili- 

 tary transactions, religion, government and laws, national industry, art, 

 science, and literature, manners and customs, and the social condition of the 

 masses. In all this great muster and parade of wisdom and folly, strength 

 and weakness, wealth and poverty ; war with its pagentry of horrors ; the long 

 procession of dynasties and kings, nobles and statesmen, prelates and priests ; 

 the grand array of churches and cathedrals, rites, and ceremonies j the grand 



