34 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



But to return to the point I was considering, — why should 

 making and selling broadcloth and calico, salt and kerosene, 

 be thought more attractive than the care of a farm? Farming 

 is a more varied employment ; it is not so monotonous as 

 work in factories and shops. It may be harder at times ; 

 but it is not so unintermitting ; there is more leisure in it, — 

 leisure of rainy days and of the winter-season. And, theu, 

 the results are surer ; it is a more certain support for a family. 

 It has its anxieties, but no panic invades it to scatter the 

 gains of half a life. Farmers do not fail. To be sure, they 

 do not make fortunes ; yet few do that in any business. But 

 the body of them are better off than the body of those who 

 work in factories or marts or mines. And, finally, for the 

 products, — neither silken fabrics nor costly furniture, nor 

 gems nor gold, can compare in beauty with acres of corn, — 

 the most splendid of vegetable growths, — with waving grain- 

 fields and rich meadows, and the cattle upon a thousand 

 hills. 



I do not mean to make any romance of farming. There is 

 a great deal of hard work in it ; but so there is in everything 

 that is thoroughly and well done. I only say that no fabrics, 

 no furnished warehouses, show anything so beautiful as that 

 which springs from the farmer's hand. And I arm tempted to 

 say, that his especially is a religious calling. He who makes 

 or sells goods, he who tends the spinning-jenny, or chips all 

 day with the adze, or builds a house, has enough in his work, 

 it is true, to remind him of a Power beyond his own ; but he 

 who plants or sows the seed looks for the springing of that 

 which comes immediately from the hand of God. He does 

 not make it — he does not make wheat or corn — as a man 

 makes a house or a locomotive. And all around him are the 

 sunshine and the showers, the hills and valleys, and countless 

 forms of animal life, which the devout naturalist studies as 

 manifestations of the Power divine. 



But I find myself passing, in this observation, from mate- 

 rial to mental farm-culture. I mean the culture of the mind. 

 I will confine myself, in what I have further to say, to this 

 point. I have preached a great deal in my life, but I will 

 not preach now. Preaching, in my account, takes hold of 

 themes of infinite moment ; and you would not think it 



