14 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



around with tape, than will a tree in a gravelly road, where 

 the sun seldom shines upon it. 



The place where one lives is not without its effect. A flat 

 country produces flat heads, and a high, mountainous country, 

 with the free winds upon it, produces lofty and free minds. 

 Society has something to do with the character also ; and the 

 industrious and virtuous example of the farmer and liis wife 

 ■upon the son, is very unlike the influence of the streets of the 

 city. Solitude, likewise, has much to do with character. In 

 the city, life is a rush ; to the youth it is the morning paper, 

 the school, the noon telegrams, the school again, and the evening 

 paper. There is no cessation ; events crowd, and there is 

 little thought. Life is borrowed ; it is artificial ; and therefore 

 weak. In the country there is less schooling — thank God for 

 that — and more study ; less reading and more reflection — more 

 digestion of what is heard, seen or read, and more appropria- 

 tion to the life. The sermon of Sunday is food for thought in 

 the field, and in the woods, and in the barn. The newspaper 

 is read to be discussed, and not thrown down to take up 

 another, and another, till the mind, like the drunkard's 

 appetite, is so vitiated that we must have the details of a half- 

 dozen battles a day, and delirium intervenes if the telegraph 

 wire breaks for an hour. 



Now mark the results : the majority of great minds from the 

 beginning of time have come from rural life. As an illustra- 

 tion : this Republic has never had a President who was not born 

 in the country and brought up on a farm. So it is in every 

 department of business, and in every calling and occupation. 

 The surplus of population — and I am afraid, more than that 

 — flows from the farm to the city. The boy goes penny less and 

 unknown, and for a time he may scarcely hold his way with his 

 town associates ; for it takes him longer to grow, because he 

 lias longer to live, and there is more of him ; but, after a time, 

 inquire whence come the men who are master mechanics, lead- 

 ing manufacturers, rich merchants, who fill the professions and 

 find brains at court houses, State houses, and colleges, and they 

 will tell you of the young men from the hard hills, where their 

 fathers gained a livelihood by hoeing away the rocks, and sent 

 their sons to the town with cowhide shoes, homespun apparel, 

 and their little all of property — a cliangc of clothing, and the 



