LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 333 



" This world is not so bad a world 



As some would like to make it, 

 Whether good or whether bad. 



Depends on how you take it.'' 



Very many drag out an existence of self-imposed slavery, little less than the 

 serfdom of some of the European countries. The facts are too many farmers 

 try to do too much. The making of money, the accumulation of wealth, 

 seems to absorb every other interest; and this applies to the farmer with as 

 great force as to any other class of men. Although his condition might be 

 very much bettered, he seems to think that he is doing about as well he can, 

 not having ever known what the possibilities of a farm life are. It is work, 

 work, all the time from early morning until night, year after year, when he 

 finds himself an old man in the prime of years. At thirty-five he is as old in 

 appearance as he ought to be at sixty. He then stops in his career for money, 

 aud asks himself these questions, Why am I ruined in health? How is it that 

 this terrible life struggle, those sleepless nights, with all this hurry and worry, 

 have brought me only misery and premature old age? My accumulations have 

 sapped my very vitals without giving that imaginary something for which I have 

 been so arduously striving. Is this the normal condition of the race? Is this 

 all there is of earth life? I am told, and I believe it, that this life is prepara- 

 tory to the happiness of the next, and does that preparation simply consist in 

 hard work all the week, and perhaps attending church on Sunday, going home 

 without knowing anything about the subject of the sermon, having been asleep 

 during the service? No, this is not that preparation spoken of. This is all 

 wrong ; no man or woman should work so hard as to exhaust themselves to the 

 extent of being unable to keep awake ; for such prostration induces disease and 

 calls for stimulating drinks, either of which brings on old age and premature 

 decay. Nothing, unless it be rest and sleep, will restore the system to its normal 

 condition. But every such depression of the vital forces brings more gray hairs 

 each time, and renders recuperation more difficult. The over-worked man, the 

 tired man, is in a comatose condition; whatever he does, he does mechanically, 

 not knowing hardly how or why he does it. This condition of things destroys 

 all desire for literary attainments of every kind ; and the farmer comes to 

 believe that literature and a knowledge of the sciences belong to a class of men 

 with more brains, better opportunities, and more time than they have; and 

 thus they pass through life more miserable, more unhappy, because unsatisfied 

 than almost any other class of men with whom I am acquainted. He dies 

 without ever having known what true joys of farm life are. No man has any 

 moral right to so use himself that he cannot discharge those moral and civil 

 obligations he owes himself, his family, and his fellow men. His creation 

 demands of him a proper development of his physical, together with the high- 

 est possible attainment of the mental, that he may transmit this unimpared to 

 his offspring, is a demand that that offspring has to make. That these condi- 

 tions are kept inviolate is a necessity that society has a right to enforce. 



Such a state of things renders him incapable of defending his own inter- 

 ests, in case it becomes necessary. As a proof of this, we have only to look 

 at his transactions with the middle-men, who infest our laud, and of whom 

 the farmers are continually complaining, It is true, they make their money 

 out of the farmer. He is the dupe of all classes of business ; but there is no 

 one to blame but himself. He will take little or no pains to protect himself 

 in his business, as nearly every other business does. They have so little con- 

 fidence in one another, that they dare not trust their interests in the hands of 

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