SOLON ROBINSON, 1841 227 



their father's household? Why do the farmer's sons seek 

 to escape from their healthy occupation, and spend the 

 bloom of their life at an employment only fit for some 

 delicate female, measuring tape and calico behind the 

 merchant's counter, or perhaps stooping over the physi- 

 cians' mortar, and crowding into every class and kind 

 of employment, and often into no employment at all, 

 while the rich and teeming earth is ever inviting them to 

 dig for a golden treasure that is always found by them 

 that seek? Tis because a false estimation has been 

 placed upon the different classes of society. False edu- 

 cation, and pernicious ideas of respectability, have been 

 permitted to flourish to the great detriment of the whole 

 body public. 



"The youth of our day, unlike the ancients, seem to 

 count it an honor to be delicate and effeminate, rather 

 than hardy, manly, and daring in the field of enterprise 

 and usefulness" which should be their highest ambition, 

 thus to seek deserved honor and fame. 



I do most earnestly assure you that I am fully con- 

 vinced that here lies the first stumbling block in the way 

 of improvement in agriculture. 'Tis a universal blight 

 that has fallen upon the farming community. 'Tis the 

 effect of a false and pernicious system of education, or 

 rather a total want of such an education as is fit for the 

 cultivators of the soil. By the term education, I do not 

 mean solely what is taught within the school-room; but 

 what is taught by the existing state of society; and by 

 which many of our youth are brought up in the way 

 they should not go. 



"There is a vast room for amendment in our character 

 as a people; and, although the improvement of agricul- 

 ture, as an art and a science, is the chief object of this 

 Society," it may usefully devote somewhat of its attention 

 to the improvement of the farmer, as a man and a 

 citizen. "Too little attention has been bestowed on this 

 department, even by the agricultural press." "Let the 

 farmer be aroused to take a higher view of his own dig- 



