12 INTRODUCTION. 



It seems that some such pursuit has been necessary in the economy 

 of civilization to check the ferocity of unscrupulous progress and to 

 prevent the excited juices of development from bursting the rind of 

 nature. In the quiet of the fields man finds rest. His exhausted 

 powers revive as he directs with the hand of intelligence the beneficent 

 forces of the natural world. In such a vocation he finds a safe refuge 

 from the clamor and jealousy of his fellow-men, and a hiding-place 

 from the haunting shadow of himself. 



It can not be denied that the avocations of the agricultural life are, 

 per se, the most pleasant which men have ever followed. Such a call- 

 ing brings into healthful exercise both mind and body. It neither 

 racks the one nor wrecks the other. Even to old age something of the 

 freshness of youth survives in him whose powers have been devoted to 

 the affectionate care of mother earth and the protection and increase 

 of the flocks. To such a man the aching bones, the stiffened joints, 

 the distorted form, and the hungry soul are still indefinitely postponed. 

 The author of the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes did not select his 

 famous type of decrepitude from a farm-house. The aged father is 

 likely to be a philanthropist. Under the influence and reactions of his 

 vocation he hides his face in the bosom of nature and learns to love 

 the order of the world ; he trusts causation, and believes in law. 



In our age, overheated, as it is, with excitement and frenzied with 

 speculation, it is delightful to turn from the conscienceless schemes 

 of trade and the mad struggle for riches to the green fields and pasture 

 lands, and to see once more the country home rising over the garden 

 croft and blossoming orchard. In the presence of such a scene the 

 old-time virtues revive, and the mind of man, reacting from its passions, 

 enters into quick and generous communion with the temperate spirit 

 of nature. 



It is simply a truism that, in a generation like ours, running into 

 every excess by the cultivation of secondary and the neglect of pri- 

 mary industries, we should hail with delight every agency and circum- 

 stance which is calculated to check the evil tendency of the epoch. 

 If a great man appears great by force of original genius and great 

 by his adherence to those fundamental callings upon which the real 

 progress of the world depends we should greet him with hearty 

 acclaim and cordial sympathy. Especially when a valuable book one 

 well fitted by its expositions and sound spirit to encourage the virtues 

 of industrial life and to discourage its vices is offered to the public, 

 we should give to such a work a hearty greeting and cordial indorse- 

 ment before the people. 



