THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



125 



the bond of sympathy which in our first paper we dwelt 

 upon. By both occupying the same platform, and by 

 being able to traverse the same domains of thought, we 

 shall best be able to understand each other— our 

 thoughts, feelings, and motives — and " we shall all be 

 drawn nearer to each other, by means which at the 

 same time help to draw us nearer to the fountain of light 

 and knowledge, of truth, and holiness, and love." 



And here we would for a moment pause, to point out 

 one powerful means of urging the employed to avail 

 themselves of such education as now in nearly every 

 village and hamlet is happily placed within their reach ; 

 for it is a painful truth that they are amazingly indif- 

 ferent to the advantage which a liberal education bestows 

 upon them. This, however, is to be attributed to ig- 

 norance. Before we can persuade a man to take hold of 

 the rope which we throw to him while plunged in the 

 water, we must first make him believe that he is really 

 in danger, and secondly that the rope is strong enough 

 to pull him out. Now, in like manner as regards edu- 

 cation, our first duty is to explain to the employed that he 

 is plunged in a state of ignorance which is dangerous to 

 his future success in life — that it is in fact a state of 

 death he is in ; and next, that education will not only 

 raise him out of this condition, but in the surer footing 

 it will give him when out of it, he will be able to ad- 

 vance to higher life and a more influential position. And 

 to add urgency to this latter reasoning — perhaps, with 

 most of them, as it would likely be with most of us, the 

 most forcible argument — let the employers determine to 

 give the best employment they have to the best educated ; 

 lei the employed see that their power in gaining high 

 remuneration will just be in proportion to the extent of 

 their attainments ; that education is, in fact, a necessary 

 thing to be possessed of, as much so as a chest of tools, 

 or a capability of doing the work of the trade they profess 

 to follow. And if this plan is persistently followed out 

 by employers, not long will it be ere the employed will 

 perceive the advantages of education, and suffer no small 

 amount of self-denial to come between them and its at- 

 tainment. 



We have already urged upon the employed the 

 necessity of his ever learning ; but this im- 

 plies that he must be always in some way or 

 other ever taught. Education to be beneficial must be 

 permanent; and it is remarkable how rapidly the lessons 

 of the school, however well grounded at the time, fade 

 from the memory, if not perpetually renewed by re-study 

 and continued dressing as it were. Man's mind in this 

 respect is like the field, which, if allowed to remain too 

 long ixnstirred, becomes overgrown with weeds, that com- 

 pletely overshadow the fruitful plants. To aid them in 

 this after- cultivation and cleaning of the soil in which the 

 seed has been sown, means must be thrown in the way of 

 the employed of filling up his spare time by listening to 

 oral instruction in the way of lectures on subjects calcu- 

 lated to be useful, as well as in providing him with the 

 means of study by books in the reading room, or by 

 means of itinerating libraries. 



•* Tell me how a man employs his leisure hours, and 

 I will tell you what he is." Tested by this standard, 



how fearful must be the short-comings of our employed ! 



If their leisure hours were simply wasted with following 



out 



" All the tricks 

 That idleness liaa ever yet contrived 

 To fill the void of an unfurnished brain," 



the moral evil done would be bad enough ; but where, 

 to the addition of the waste of time incurred by the 

 follies of the working man's leisure hour, we find a con- 

 thiuity of vicious indulgence and determined depravity, 

 the evil which they suffer, and through them society, 

 becomes in its effects so appalling, that it well behoves 

 us to pay strict attention to the means by which they 

 can be obviated. The nature of the leisure-hour em- 

 ployment is, to be sure, not to be wondered at, seeing 

 that while we do everything to encourage the attractions 

 of the beer-shop, by doing nothing to counteract them, 

 we are hugely indifferent to all attempts to make the 

 houses of the employed calculated, by the comforts 

 which they possess and the attractions they offer, to win 

 him to stay at his own fireside ; and farther, while we 

 do offer him any amusement, it is of the questionable 

 character of the race-course, the low theatre, or the 

 harvest-home and rural fair, with their too-often-found- 

 concomitants of open vice and public profligacy. 



But with the attraction of a well-arranged, healthy, 

 and comfortable home, with its plot of ground, however 

 tiny, in which the labour of love will raise vegetables for 

 food and flowers for fragrance and delight — we have no 

 fear but that, with these attractions, the employed will 

 find amusements for himself and for his family. To 

 this end, however, we must sooner or later become con- 

 vinced of the necessity of providing the employed with 

 time— time for education, and time for recreation. 

 There "is a time to labour" and " a time to rest;" 

 and miserable is the condition of the workman, and un- 

 sound the condition of society, in which the time for 

 rest is swallowed up in that of labour. If it is true that, if 

 "man will not labour, neither should he eat ;" it should 

 be no less true that, if he labours, he shall eat—not 

 always true, good reader, in this boasted nineteenth- 

 century time of ours. The laws of Providence, if we 

 honestly work them out, and aid their application to the 

 purposes of every-day life, are so beautifully adjusted to 

 our social necessities, that, where labour is rightly man" 

 aged, it always affords not only the necessities of life, 

 but the delights of leisure and the health of rest. But 

 if we go contrary to those laws, and mismanage our 

 labour, then as a result we find poverty and the woes 

 of want around us. "Wherever you see want, or 

 misery, or degradation, in this world about you, there be 

 sure either industry has been wanting, or industry has 

 been in error. It is not accident, it is not Heaven- 

 commanded calamity, it is not the original and inevita- 

 ble evil of man's nature, which fill your streets with 

 lamentations and your graves with prey. It is only 

 that where there should have been prudence, there has 

 been waste ; where there should have been labour, there 

 has been lasciviousness ; and wilfulness where there 

 should have been subordination." 



Labour thus placed on its right basis, and worked 

 out in conjunction with the laws of mercy and justice, 



