FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE 107 



will throw up a building thirty or forty feet square, of 

 two or two and a half stories height, four rooms on a 

 floor, with an immeasureable length of outbuilding 

 behind. And what is the consequence of all this great- 

 ness? Why, often, for years the house will not be 

 wholly glazed; or if glazed, not clapboarded; or if 

 clapboarded not finished; the destined portico never 

 put up; the destined front step never put down; and 

 the ragged clapboards on each side of the front door, 

 there they stand, year in and year out, staring and 

 gaping at each other with a look of utter despair of 

 ever being united. And if you go into these mansions, 

 what do you see? Why, you will often find that while 

 the good man of the house and his consort are snugly 

 provided with warm, well-plastered rooms, the chil- 

 dren and all the rest of the family sleep about in un- 

 finished chambers, subject to every sort of exposure. 

 And the "best room," as it is called in the original plan 

 of the mansion, there it stands, the lumber room of the 

 family for half a century, the select and eternal abode 

 of crickets and cockroaches and all sorts of creeping 

 and skipping things, full of old iron and old leather, 

 the stuffing of decayed saddles, the ragged relics of 

 torn bed quilts, and the orts and ends of twenty 

 generations of corn cobs. 



When will man learn that his true dignity, as well as 

 happiness, consists in proportion? In the proportion 

 of means to ends, of purpose to means, of conduct to 

 the condition in life in which a kind Providence has 

 placed him. The pride of the farmer should be in his 

 fields. In their beauty, in their order, in their product, 

 he should place the gratification of his humble and 

 honorable ambition. The farmer's great want is 

 capital. Never should his dwelling be splendid at the 

 expense of his farm. In the farm all that is surplus in 

 his capital should concentrate. Whatever is uselessly 

 expended elsewhere is so much lost to his family and 

 his fortune. 



