ADDKESS. 



FARMERS AND FRIENDU : I stand before you at your Society's 

 invitation, feeling the full force of the criticism which denies to 

 one of my habits and pursuits capacity to instruct fanners as to 

 their own espe.-ial vocation. "Shoemaker, stick to your last!" 

 is a sound though sometime^ misapplied admonition, and there is 

 givut >tivngth in tlu- natural presumption that every man can see 

 a little farther on his own proper pathway than can be seen by 

 an\ one else. I fully rcali/.e and cheerfully admit that any one 

 of you, who has devoted tin- la>t twenty or thirty years to Agri- 

 culture, must kno\\ very much more concerning it than I, who- 

 abandoned it at fifteen to master and pursue a imt exacting 

 mechanical and intellectual vocation, and have since been able to. 

 snatch hut here and there an hour from a constant pressure of 

 imperative duties and oppressive cares to revive the memories of 

 my youth among the busy seed-planters, or within sound of the 

 mown- sharpening his scythe. If I were to essay a lecture on 

 the Complete Husbandman to fix the proper time for planting 

 this or that vegetable, and for harvesting thisor that grain, and so on 

 I might, of course, be corrected, on many points, by some of the 

 youngest of my auditors. Little as I know of farming, I know too- 

 much of it to attempt any such teaching. What I shall endeavor, is 

 to set forth some of the principles which underlie the whole fabric 

 of Productive Art and Industry, (my calling as well as yours,) 

 and to show their application, as correctly as I may, to the Farm- 

 er's vocation as well as others. I may err in this or that ap- 

 plication ; but I shall endeavor to base my inculcations on prin- 



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