No. 4.] PLEASURES OF FARMING. 377 



of business have been many times doubled in his experience. 

 His favorite expression is, "I shall die with my nose on the 

 grindstone," and he will. 



The young men in our country towns who see these travel- 

 ling salesmen that I have just spoken of, only at the stores or 

 hotels, see in them a well-dressed, self-assured lot of fel- 

 lows, who seem to have a mighty easy berth. As a class 

 they are eminently respectable, and they have to be to secure 

 and maintain their responsible positions ; but there isn't 

 one of them but what will tell you his is a dog's life, and so 

 it is. No loitering, no rainy days for him. His work is 

 laid out for him arbitrarily for every day and it must be 

 done faithfully at all reasonable hazard, if he means to be a 

 valua])le man. They are the first to arrive at hotels in the 

 day and the last to leave them at night, so much of their 

 travel on long trips being made on the trains in the night. 

 Go into Cooley's hotel in Springfield any night in the week 

 except Saturday or Sunday, every man who isn't reading or 

 playing whist is copying his day's orders to send home, and 

 at the long writing tables there isn't space enough for any 

 one else until late in the evening. I have brought this class 

 of young men to the front conspicuously to contrast their 

 occupation with that of a similar class of men l)y nature, 

 whose conditions and surroundings have located them on 

 farms instead of in factories or in stores, and I mio-ht con- 

 tinue it indefinitely, to the advantage of the latter class. 



I contend that the farmer's life is the easiest and most 

 pleasant, because there is less intense brain work in it. 

 Statistics prove that there is less nervous prostration, less 

 loss of brain power, and fewer suicides among farmers than 

 in any other equally large class of working men. Do not 

 think I am thinking lightly of the need of having brains in 

 farming or disparaging the intelligence of farmers, for it is a 

 well-known fact that a great majority of our most intelligent 

 men in every branch of business came from our farms. But 

 brain work almost always includes night work. Most of our 

 literature, whether for books or newspapers, is written while 

 farmers sleep. The merchant tosses on a sleepless bed, con- 

 triving how he is to meet maturing notes or hold and increase 

 his trade. The manufacturer is tortured day and night over 



