1890.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 7 



gant, still had the salt of truth in his utterance when he 

 said substantially, " It requires more brains to be a 

 farmer than to pursue any other calling." It would be 

 altogether true to say that more brains are found under 

 some farmers' hats than under many of those in other guilds. 



You will not, however, expect me to instruct you how to 

 transmute your gardens into better gardens, or your rugged 

 hill-sides into gardens ; how to transpose and relate bowlder 

 and loam, gravel, seed and tree, into delightful meads and 

 fair orchards. That task I shall not assume. This rather 

 will be done by the experts who are to address you. 



I venture some suggestions upon two other phases of 

 your sphere ; for every rounded fiirmer must be at least 

 three men. First, as I have said, he is to be a husbandman. 

 And that, he is to be intensively and extensively. AVhen 

 the remark was made by a gentleman to Mr. Maydole, then 

 for twenty-eight years a hammer maker of Central New 

 York, " Well, then, you ought to make a pretty good 

 hammer by this time," he replied, " No, sir ; I never make a 

 pretty good hammer, — I make the best hammer in the 

 United States." 



At the centennial exhibition held in Philadelphia, the 

 Webster plough attracted my attention. It was, I believe, 

 unusually large, and had with it these words of Daniel 

 Webster : " When I have hold the handles of my big plough, 

 with four yokes of oxen to pull it through, and hear the 

 roots crack and see the stumps all go under the furrow 

 out of sight, and observe the clean, mellowed surface of the 

 ploughed land, I feel more enthusiasm over my achievement 

 than comes from my encounters in public life at Washington." 



Every farmer should in his calling aim to be what is for 

 him colossal. Besides filling full his position as a former, 

 he is to be a citizen. Under the genius of our American 

 government, to be a citizen is as really his vocation. You, 

 gentlemen, are builders of our republic. It cannot succeed 

 best without your best service, and it can scarcely fail if you 

 shall give it superlative aid. National stability and grandeur 

 wait upon your bidding. For look at it. What is our case ? 

 We are, and are to be, increasingly for the present, a nation 

 of cities. Already more than one -fifth of our population is 



