SUMMER MEETING AT BROOKFIELD. 107 



Honor waits o'er all the earth 



Through endless generations, 

 The art that calls the harvest forth, 



And feeds expectant nations. 



And again : 



Honor and fame from no condition rise ; 

 Act well your part, there all the honor lies. 



The men who used to cry "mudsills" and "clodhoppers" are be- 

 coming scarce. It will not do to hurl insulting epithets at the people 

 who labor, because in this country, at least, the latter are in a great 

 majority. A laboring man in any honest calling is accounted worthy of 

 more honor than a lazy plutocrat, however large his bank account may 

 be, or the opinion such may have of his own importance or position. 

 The historian of the United States, in the record of her first hundred 

 years, will show, by abundant examples and testimony, that a laboring 

 man, though poor in purse, can be the peer of the highest, and that in 

 this country, at least, there is no station or office so lofty and exalted 

 that he cannot attain unto it. Let us thank God for this favor. 



But I should miss the highest proof of the dignity of labor were 

 I to ignore the examples found in the Book of Books. Elisha was 

 plowing in a field with twelve yoke of oxen, and he with the twelfth, 

 when Elijah threw his mantle on him and he became the prophet of the 

 Lord. Some of the apostles were fishermen, and the greatest of them 

 sM was a tent-maker. But each and all the illustirous names mentioned 

 as conferring dignity upon labor will pale before that of the Son of God? 

 who labored as a carpenter from his twelfth to his thirtieth year. I 

 cannot omit the names of a few women who labored in such a way that 

 their names have come to us in the Book, viz. : a Martha, a Lydia, a 

 Dorcas. And many are their followers and imitators to-day whose 

 names will shine when the books are opened, though we know them 

 not by name, and of whom it shall be said by the Master : " She has 

 • done what she could." 



Of late manual training schools have attracted wide- spread atten- 

 tion and great proportions, and justly so. We ought to feel proud that 

 St. Louis has furnished a model worthy of imitation. Every agricul- 

 tural college and every experimental station must of necessity train the 

 hand; otherwise how can we do with our might what our hands find to 

 do? How can we cut a scion, or set a bud, or plant a tree, or train a 

 vine ? When years ago Illinois Agricultural college needed an engine, 

 the professor asked for the funds. When these were granted, he said : 

 "Let us make one." And he and the boys did, and it gave one or two 

 of the boys an opportunity to get a patent for improvements on old 

 methods. 



