80 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Farming is as profitable on the average as any other pursuit. 

 The same intelligence, industry and moral rectitude and self- 

 control which produce prosperity in other avocations, will pro- 

 duce it in this in an equal degree on the average. In cities and 

 in commerce, money runs more into heaps, and there are greater 

 inequalities. We are deceived by the few instances of great 

 wealth thus acquired. We must look to averages. The heaps 

 are comparatively few and far between. The holes are many, 

 and wide and deep, and a ghastly spectacle of life they present, 

 such as is not to be seen among the green hills of the I'ural 

 districts, where none, indeed, are very rich, but where even the 

 poorest poor can hardly be said to know what real poverty is. 



We find thus among farmers that condition of moderate 

 prosperity and comfortable but limited independence which the 

 wise have always regarded as most favorable to virtue and con- 

 tentment, to patriotism and good citizenship. 



This class of farmers, which for convenience of composition I 

 have called the second, is in reality y?/-s^ in numbers, in power 

 and national importance. Indeed, it is every way so vastly 

 predominant, that it maybe said almost to absorb the other, 

 and I fear it was putting too fine a point on the matter to make 

 tlie distinction at all. 



Tiiere is one way of putting this distinction that is inadmis- 

 sible — that by which the smaller class is sometimes spoken of as 

 gentlemen farmers, the others being plain farmers. Gentlemen 

 are of no one class in society, but are individuals scattered 

 through all classes. Soft hands, rich clothes, and a leisurely or 

 luxurious life do not constitute a man a gentleman, nor the 

 fine language and graceful manners that characterize the more 

 exclusive social circles. The gentlemanly qualities pertain to 

 the soul, and consist of kindly dispositions, the unselfish spirit, 

 forgetting one's self in taking thought for others, acting and 

 speaking in deference to the feelings, wants and intei'ests of 

 others, loving to gratify and benefit them. These qualities nat- 

 urally express themselves in certain courteous and intrinsically 

 graceful modes or manners, which in the course of time get 

 collected into a code, and are called the manners of a gentle- 

 man. Any man favorably situated, can study these manners 

 and practice them, but if he have not the inner qualities of 

 heart, from which they would come unstudied, he is but a 



