XXXI. 



THE FARMER'S CALLING. 



IF any one fancies that he ever heard me flattering 

 farmers as a class, or saying anything which implied 

 that, they were more virtuous, upright, unselfish, or 

 deserving, t]jan other people, I am sure he must have 

 misunderstood or that he now misrecollects me. I 

 do not even join in the cant, which speaks of farmers 

 as supporting everybody else of farming as the only 

 indispensable vocation. You may say if you will that 

 mankind could not subsist if there were no tillers of 

 the soil ; but the same is true of house-builders, and 

 of some other classes. A thoroughly good farmer is 

 a useful, valuable citizen : so is a good merchant, 

 doctor, or lawyer. It is not essential to the true 

 nobility and genuine worth of the farmer's calling 

 that any other should be assailed or disparaged. 



Still, if one of my three sons had been spared to 

 attain manhood, I should have advised him to try to 

 make himself a good farmer ; and this without any 

 romantic or poetic notions of Agriculture as a pur- 

 suit. I know well, from personal though youthful 

 experience, that the farmer's life is one of labor, 



(183) 



