LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 231 



mind turns a deaf ear to any thing which tends in that direction. Yet there 

 are manners and customs belonging to good society which make it our duty to 

 inform ourselves, so as to become agreeable to those with whom we associate. 

 In looking over the history of society in the last century, it appears to be 

 divided into four classes — aristocracy of intellect, aristocracy of wealth, the 

 middle class, and the farmer; in all cases placing the farmer at the bottom of 

 the social scale. Let us consider for a moment the cause. 



We are told, in order to take a good position in society, we must have respect 

 for the thoughts and feelings of others, to be welcomed by cultured people we 

 must seek to improve those faculties of the mind which will lead us to higher 

 thoughts and nobler purposes. The world moves, and in order to progress we 

 must not expect to jog along in a stage coach in these days of fast express 

 trains. Manners and customs which were suitable one hundred years ago are 

 hardly acceptable at the present time. Many a mind with golden thoughts is 

 so shabbily clothed it fails to be appreciated. Of course we must have the 

 thoughts to clothe or the clothing avails us nothing. A minister of the gospel 

 whose whole appearance is slovenly, fails to flash the truth into the hearts of 

 his hearers. The merchant who shows his independence by keeping articles 

 which he thinks people ought to purchase, soon learns his customers go where 

 their wishes are respected. 



The first indispensable requisite for good society is education. This the 

 average farmer has neglected. The farmer has more time for mental 

 improvement than any other class of laboring men (we would not advance 

 the idea the learned professor is not a laboring man, for his duties are arduous 

 and his labors great). He is sure of the long winter evenings, and if he has 

 the taste, energy, or ability to improve them by acquiring useful knowledge, 

 he will rise above mediocrity. We must come to this conclusion. If we are 

 at the bottom of the social scale, we may well say in the words of Cassius : 

 "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but ourselves that we are under- 

 lings." The farmer whose whole mind is centered upon making money, own- 

 ing all the land within his reach ; who rules his family with a rod of iron, who 

 is not willing his children should have any social advantages, who looks upon 

 visiting as a waste of time, finds as he nears the boundary of life, he has 

 failed to reap that fruitage which is not only a pleasure to his friends, but a 

 comfort to himself. One thing we can look back to with pleasure. Many of 

 our great and good statesmen came from the farm. But read their 

 biographies, and we see the the desire to rise in the world while they are quite 

 young. They rise in the minds of their associates. There is a social mag- 

 netism about them which makes them leaders while in youth. If our boys 

 and girls will read carefully the lives of Washington, Benjamin Franklin, 

 President Edwards, and our illustrious Garfield, they will see how careful these 

 uoble men were in the cultivation of every positive virtue, in the weeding out from 

 their characters of every vice and frailty ; how they loved excellence, and how 

 hard they strove to attain it, and that it was by no accident that they became 

 men of mighty and long-enduring influence. 



The position of woman is that which has always given the key to civilization. 

 The mothers of the men of the nation were noble women, the language of 

 their prayers being, "I ask not for my children riches or worldly honors or 

 famef but I ask that they may be subjects of Thy converting grace," the 

 result being men of power. If the mother is true and tender, loving and 

 heroic, patient and self-devoted, she consciously and unconsciously organizes 

 and puts in operation a set of influences that do more to mold the destiny 



