HOW FARMING PAYS. 41 



Almost the only country in the "world not colonized and 

 settled in the interest of mammon, is New England. The lust 

 of gold brought to the rest of the New World, after its first 

 discovery, the adventurers whose deeds of cruelty have soiled 

 the pages of history ; but the men who left fatherland, with its 

 homes, its hallowed lives and holy graves, and lived in Holland 

 for a dozen years, and then tempted the tempestuous Atlantic 

 in vessels not larger than our coasting sloops and schooners, 

 and landed almost in midwinter on the bleakest coast of our 

 northern shores, welcomed only by storms, and "Indians, 

 lions, wolves," and prospective starvation, did so not to 

 increase their material wealth only, — though they were manly 

 enough not to remain a burden on their good Dutch friends in 

 Holland, — but to find a home where they could live as free 

 men, worship God in their own way, and get their children out 

 of the way of licentiousness and too much "taking of the bit 

 in their mouth," as the old chronicles expressed what is so 

 common in our households. 



These Pilgrims were all working men, living by their own 

 labor in Holland, — Brewster, who was a man of property, 

 learning to be a printer at the age of 45 ; Bradford, who had 

 owned and farmed laud in England, becoming a silk-dyer ; 

 Robinson studying and preaching ; and so soon as the season 

 allowed, after their landing at Plymouth, they commenced 

 work, "digged their ground and sowed their seeds," and then 

 and there was laid the foundation of a commonwealth whose 

 only title to nobility was honest labor, where each man was 

 free to develop and gravitate to his own place and society. 

 That men did not, in those old colony days, seek office very 

 much, is^ evidenced by the fact that a law was passed in 1632, 

 imposing a penalty of twenty pounds on whoever should 

 refuse the office of governor, and ten pounds for declining to 

 be a magistrate. That race of self-denying patriots has 

 certainly run out in our day. Our politicians are too much 

 like the benevolent individuals referred to by the country 

 minister who, addressing his congregation, said, "When I told 

 you in my last charity sermon, that philanthropy was the love 

 of our species, you must have understood me to say specie, 

 which may account for the smallness of your contributions"; 

 and, as a rule, whatever may be the opposition our public 



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