No. 4.] RESPONSE BY WALTON HALL. 33 



sacred the graves of the children of the farmer, when the 

 monuments of marble and of granite that mark the resting 

 places of the city's rich shall have crumbled into dust. 

 You will find no place better to live in than among the 

 farming people. There contentment makes her home, and 

 the laws of God and man are respected and obeyed. Richer 

 lands there are than those in New England. Richer are 

 the lands of Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines, but 

 fertile as is the soil of these islands, there is one crop, 

 worth more than all others, that they never will grow there, 

 and that crop is the boys and girls that in the years that 

 have gone have made the men and women of New England 

 and this country what it is. You will find no pleasanter 

 home to which to return than to the farmer's, where not only 

 the wife and children, but the dogs, the horses and the 

 cattle have a welcome for you. And it is for our children 

 as much as for our own sake that we should be farmers ; 

 these children who are the cords that have bound to- 

 gether many a husband and wife who would have fallen 

 apart but for them, and have kept the feet of many a man 

 and many a woman in the straight and narrow path that 

 would have strayed from it. For his children the farmer 

 labors as do the men of no other calling ; for them he denies 

 himself until he is often called niggardly, determined that 

 they shall have educational advantages that were denied him, 

 caring not if he never becomes known beyond the limits of 

 his own town if his children can only become famous as great 

 men, or, better, as good men, as good fiirmers. Our cities 

 spend millions of dollars for parks, because they know that 

 their children will be better men and women for being brought 

 in contact with nature and the purity of her works. We 

 want our children to have the same love that we have for 

 this old mother earth that has soothed so many of us in our 

 childish troubles as sobbing we have clung to her, — this old 

 mother that holds in her embrace so many who were once 

 so near and dear to us, and that is to provide a resting place 

 for all, when, tired of care and trouble, weary from pain 

 and the weight of years, we go to the rest, to the peace, 

 that a well-spent farmer's life and a place in her bosom will 

 give us. 



