THE FARMER. • 79 



harness will not come off so easily as they thought, that the 

 bonds of long use and wont hold them with a firmer grip than 

 they supposed. Comparatively few realize their dream. 



And of those who do realize it or try it, not all succeed in it. 

 To some the new way of life that looked so beautiful and suffi- 

 cient in the distance, turns out to be too tame and slow. They 

 find in it privations, annoyances, various drawbacks, that were 

 not foreseen. No earthly condition is perfect, not even this. 

 Tiie experiment fails. They are not contented. 



Or perhaps with a shrewd foresight of the possible shortcom- 

 ing, they have kept some hold of the old way of life, and diver- 

 sify the monotony of the farm life with some hours weekly, or 

 even daily, spent amid the operations of State Street, or the 

 gossip of the insurance offices, or the din of tiie factory, or the 

 odors of the wharf and dock, or the court-house, or the com- 

 modities and account books of a silent partnership in trade. 

 And wherever this combination of diverse interests is necessary 

 for producing content in the farm life, and does produce it, 

 why is it not well ? 



To belong to this class of farmers, and to find contentment 

 in it, by whatever means, wliether in itself alone, or by help of 

 its accompaniments and alternatives, — what condition on earth 

 is so beautiful and desirable ? To us who are not in it, it looks 

 like the top of the world, the culmination of human well-being. 

 We should covet it if it were not wicked to covet what is our 

 neighbor's. 



The second class of farmers comprises those who from very 

 early life have been inured to the actual labors of tlie farm, 

 with no other business, or but incidentally, witli no habits of 

 life but tliose of the farm-house. As a class, these men are 

 the healthiest and strongest class in the community. Frugal 

 in their ways of life, and generally temperate in meats and 

 drinks, with habits of early rising and regular industry, they 

 become hardy, capable of much endurance and long-lived, as a 

 class. Farmers, as a class, are as rich as any other class. 

 Take, for instance, all the property of the mercantile class at a 

 fair appraisal, and deduct from the amount what has been sunk 

 in bankruptcy, and then average the remainder among all those 

 who have engaged in mercantile pursuits, and I am confident 

 that average would not exceed that of the whole farming class. 



