32 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



I might take your time to tell you of the beauties of West- 

 field as I have seen them, of your people, well clothed and 

 intelligent looking, whom I have met on your streets, and tell 

 you of the names of the men who have given so freely of 

 their time for the best interests of the people, and have done 

 so much to make Westfield the model New England town 

 she is, but I am sure you would not care to listen to me 

 while I read a list of the members of the Westfield Board of 

 Trade. 



It will be one of the sorrows of my life that my children 

 are boys, and that I have no girls to send to Westfield to 

 educate in your girls' normal school, especially since I have 

 been told that the members of the Board of Trade are 

 bachelors. 



But I have not come here to praise Westfield or her people, 

 l)ut to tell you of the many beautiful things in the farmer's 

 life, and of the advantages the farmers have over the rest 

 of mankind. Whittier, the favorite poet of the American 

 farmer, the one who lies the closest to their hearts, tells us — 



Give fools their gold, and knaves theii- jjower ; 



Let fortunes' bubbles rise and fall ; 

 Who sows a field, or trains a flower, 



Or plants a tree, is more than all. 



You tired business men and manufacturers of Westfield, 

 you whose business cares have made old before your time, 

 you who have grown nervous, irritable, unreasonable, hard 

 to please, whose wives and children hear wath pleasure the 

 street door slam behind you as you go to your work, let me 

 beg of you to cease existing, even in a good town like West- 

 field, and come to the country and live. You will find in the 

 ownership of land, and in watching the grass as it starts in 

 the spring-time, — the mantle that nature puts on when she 

 arrays herself in all her beauty, with which she hides the scars 

 that man makes on her bosom, and hides in his hay field, 

 where he leaves them, the scythe and the rake, the mowing 

 machine and the hay tedder of the careless farmer of the west, 

 — that which the possession of no other property will give 

 you. And creeping everywhere through our valleys and 

 over our hills the grass will preserve the shape and keep 



