AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITIONS. 229 



tribute with no expectation of personal benefit or 

 distinction. If we had but the right spirit aroused, 

 we might dispense with most of our petty premiums, 

 or replace them by medals of no great cost, and de- 

 vote the money thus saved to higher and nobler ends. 

 TV. Much of the speaking at Fairs seems to me in- 

 sulting to the intelligence of the Farmers present, 

 who are grossly nattered and eulogized, when they 

 often need to be admonished and incited to mend 

 their ways. What use or sense can there be in a 

 lawyer, doctor, broker, or editor, talking to a crowd 

 of farmers as if they were the most favored of mor- 

 tals and their life the noblest and happiest known 

 to mankind ? "Whatever it might be, and may yet 

 become, we all know that the average farmer's life is 

 not what it is thus represented : for, if it were, thous- 

 ands would be rushing into it where barely hundreds 

 left it : whereas we all see that the fact is quite other- 

 wise. No good can result from such insincere and 

 extravagant praises of a calling which so few freely 

 choose, and so many gladly shun. Grant that the 

 farmer's ought to be the most enviable and envied 

 vocation, we know that in fact it is not ; and, agree- 

 ing that it should be, the business in hand is to make 

 it so. There must be obstacles to surmount, mistakes 

 to set right, impediments to overcome, before farming 

 can be in all respects the idolized pursuit which poets 

 are so ready to proclaim it and orators so delight to 

 represent it. Let us struggle to make it all that 

 fancy has ever painted it ; but, so long as it is not, 



