ADVANTAGES OF RURAL PURSUITS. 47 



rural life ? To sport and flutter awhile in the gay saloons of 

 fashion ; to waste the vigor and freshness of youth and early 

 manhood in the pent-up air of some office, mill, or counting- 

 room, or, perchance, to be the servant of servants — the servant 

 of the people — now basking in their smiles, now shivering in 

 their frowns, kissed at one moment and kicked at another, with 

 no special cause for cither kick or kiss. Few errors of opinion 

 are more harmful than the underestimate of the worth and 

 dignity of rural pursuits, which hurries so many of our young 

 men from tlie farm into the already crowded ranks of profes- 

 sional and commercial life. The exchange and the forum may 

 have some brilliant prizes, but how many fail compared with 

 those who win, and how many of those who win find the fruits 

 of victory turn to ashes in their grasp. Who shall garner up 

 the blighted hopes, the wasted frames, the broken hearts that 

 lie thickly strown on the fields of the world's conflict and 

 struggle ? 



I know that 1 have always looked upon rural pursuits with a 

 loving eye ; but weighing tliem in the scales of a sober 

 judgment, they will be found wanting in nothing essential to a 

 happy, manly and useful life. 



If a young man seeks a competence of this world's goods, 

 there are iio shares — factory, bank, or railroad — that in the 

 long run pay better dividends than the ploughshare. Agricul- 

 ture, even in New England, pursued with system, with a wise 

 economy, and with the skill which results from science tested 

 by experience, and experience illumined by science, yields as 

 much wealth as it is good for a man to have ; more than the 

 average of other pursuits ; enough, at any rate, to enable us 

 to live comfortably, to educate our children, to provide for the 

 rainy day or shady slope of life, and to obey the calls of 

 Christian charity and neighborly kindness. More than this 

 Cometh of evil. We are beginning to understand that, even in 

 this world, the rich man has no place in the kingdom of rest 

 and of peace. When we add the comparative certainty of the 

 farmer's gains, his exemption from the sudden reverses which 

 test so severely not only the mental but the moral strength of 

 men, his freedom from corroding anxieties and cares, the 

 balance, even as a means of living, will be found in favor of 

 rural pursuits. 



