575 



time was given to work on the land. Industry and useful labor, 

 economy, frugality, contentment, universal kindness and love, 

 mutual affection and forbearance, and the fear of God and an 

 humble and entire reliance upon his providence, formed the 

 great principles which governed the whole household, and 

 which presented themselves strongly illustrated in the examples 

 of the father and mother of this household. This was exclu 

 sively an agricultural establishment, the girls and boys being 

 taught and accustomed to all the labors and duties of their con 

 dition. He had many difficulties to struggle with in feeding 

 and clothing so large a family ; and in the scarcity of 1846, from 

 the perishing of the potato, it was a most difficult effort to get 

 through, and he then received some slight aid from abroad. At 

 first his views were suspected, and he was treated with distrust 

 and ill-humor by the villagers. But he had conquered every 

 hostile prejudice j his disinterestedness and philanthropy are 

 universally acknowledged; his children are examples to all, of 

 good conduct and improvement ; his neighbors feel happy to 

 render him some aid, and he is known every where as the good 

 father of the village. This is an eminent example of the noblest 

 philanthropy of immense good being accomplished by the most 

 limited and humble means ; and of what may be done by heroic 

 self-sacrifice, by noble and generous purposes, by indomitable 

 resolution, and unslacking perseverance. I saw his school, and 

 witnessed his parental deportment among his family ; I sat down 

 at his frugal board, and partook of his simple meal of bread and 

 cheese and wine, and I felt myself in the presence of the true 

 nobility of human nature, and that no monarch in Europe had 

 power to confer upon me a higher honor. It is not difficult to 

 be charitable on a grand scale ; it is not difficult for a rich man 

 to give away his superfluous thousands to any splendid charity, 

 especially when he can use them no longer ; but to devote one s 

 life to the poor, to be willing to share in their poverty, to take 

 the stray lambs of the flock into one s bosom, and to make the 

 orphans, the outcast, the houseless, your own children, and give 

 them, in the midst of poverty, a useful education, and to qualify 

 them for the business of life, to be useful and respectable, is an 

 enterprise of the noblest character, conferring immortal honor on 

 him who undertakes it. 



