C. F. ADAMS'S ADDRESS. 431 



desert into a garden, will, in every moral and intellectual at- 

 tribute, be a very different person after the operation, from 

 him who has gathered, where he has not sown, the richness of 

 the bounty which luxuriant nature has without his toil sup- 

 plied him. 



But I may be told that the hardest labor can be misapplied 

 so as to make but poor returns for the expenditure. Unques- 

 ably this evil must be guarded against. I am disposed to sus- 

 pect that it is the experience of this waste, which creates the 

 aversion many of our most industrious fellow-citizens entertain 

 towards the management of farms. Not long ago, meeting 

 with one of this class in our county, a man whose thrifty man- 

 agement of every thing around his dwelling showed his capa- 

 bility of doing more, if he would, I asked him the question, 

 why he did not cultivate a farm ? His answer was this. " The 

 work is too hard. I can make money easier." But although 

 his faculty was such that he would probably have prospered 

 anywhere, and therefore he chose to use it in the way that gave 

 him the least trouble, it may be well to remember that there 

 are others not so lucky, who would yet be glad to make up for 

 the deficiency by a more dogged application of that which they 

 can command, their labor, to the land, provided only they could 

 see by it a way to gain an honest living. To such persons, it 

 becomes a matter of the first importance to make no mistakes. 

 Above all things is it desirable to be placed in the way which 

 will be most likely to secure the ends they have in view, an 

 honest livelihood. 



The question now arises, what is that way, in farming ? 



Of course I am not the person to undertake to speak with 

 knowledge on this point. One thing I see pretty clearly, and 

 that is, that large fields and little crops ; much stock and 

 nothing to keep them on but acres ; the old beaten round of 

 planting without sufficient manure and with inadequate labor 

 to work them, will never do. Let any man go into some of 

 the few remaining purely agricultural towns in this State, and 

 he will soon perceive traces of the dilapidation which follows 

 from this system. On the other hand, by visiting other towns, 

 he may be made certain of the fact that it is not farming 



