JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM'S ADDRESS. 415 



\ 

 sneering tone, *' do you expect to eat wheat bread of your own 



raising, on land that is yet to be cleared and broken up? You 

 are going there to dig your own grave." " Ah ! (said the old 

 gentleman, pointing to an orchard near by,) you see those apple- 

 trees yonder; I was sixty years old when I planted them, and 

 your father laughed at me as you do now, and called me a fool. 

 But they have yielded me many a bushel of good fruit, and 

 many a barrel of cider, which I have sold to you and your 

 father. I hope that God has yet in store for me some more 

 good, and that I shall be permitted to enjoy the fruit of my new 

 enterprise. If not, my children will have the pleasure of tell- 

 ing what their father has done." The old man's hopes were 

 not disappointed ; for he lived almost to a hundred years, and 

 left a well-cultivated farm to his family. Are not the resolution 

 and perseverance of the old patriarch worthy of admiration? 

 Does not his example teach an impressive lesson to those (if 

 there be any) who neglect improvements, because they may 

 not live long enough to see the good, which such improvements 

 may produce for others ? Who would refuse to drain a swamp 

 or reclaim a bog from the merely selfish supposition that his 

 neighbor's cattle, and not his own, might live upon the product 

 of its regenerated surface ? But even self-love may find grati- 

 fication under all the uncertainties of life. It is some reward 

 for labor, and a very rich reward to one of an enlightened and 

 liberal mind, to know that he shall leave the earth in a better 

 condition than that in which he found it ; that it has been im- 

 proved, beautified, and rendered more conducive to happiness, 

 through the agency of his industry and intelligence. Such 

 considerations will lighten toil, and sweeten reflection when 

 toil is over. 



It is generally believed that many farmers are more careful 

 to add to the number of their acres, than to exhibit specimens 

 of neat and profitable cultivation ; and we often hear it affirm- 

 ed, as a general fault of American farming, that labor is ex- 

 panded over too large a surface. I will not undertake to say 

 to what extent such opinions are well founded ; but one thing 

 is evident, if, under a system of judicious management, a sin- 

 gle acre will produce as much as two acres, under careless and 



