46 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



ADVANTAGES OF EURAL PURSUITS. 



From an Address before the Norfolk Agricultural Society. 



BY BENJAMIN F. THOMAS. 



What lessons are written for us, farmers, in the earliest 

 record of the human race. The first man, fresh from the 

 moulding hand of his Creator, bearing his yet immarred 

 image, was a gardener. " And the Lord God took the man 

 and put him in the garden of Eden, to keep and to dress it." 

 As he looked with joy and admiration upon the new creation, 

 with what intense emotion must he have heard the voice of his 

 Maker, giving him dominion over the earth, and commanding 

 him to replenish and to subdue it. To the All-seeing Eye the 

 work was very good. Well might the morning stars sing 

 together, and all the sons of God shout aloud for joy. From 

 that hour to this, it is in the culture of the earth that man has 

 gone back nearest to the glory of his first estate, the Eden of 

 tranquil joy and peace. 



The next lesson is like unto the first. The curse that fell 

 upon the second man cut him off from the culture of the 

 earth. And the Lord said unto Cain, When thou tillcst the 

 ground it shall not yield unto thee her strength. And Cain 

 went out from the presence of the Lord and built a city. 

 Went out from the presence of the Lord ! How many a 

 young man who gives up the quiet occupations of rural life for 

 the struggles and terrible temptations of the market-place and 

 the forum, goes out from the presence of the Lord, leaving 

 behind him the simplicity and purity of life and thought by 

 which his childhood was drawn near to Him ; the loving eye, 

 which saw Him in the smiling bud of spring and in the golden 

 fruit of the harvest; the loving ear, which heard Him in the 

 falling shower and in the surging wave. And for what does 

 our young man give up the quiet, the beauty, the freedom of 



