ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS. 39 



beauty of form and proportion ; the house, perhaps, draped in 

 tasteful simplicity, with festoons of living vines, and with 

 surrounding ornaments of flowers and of shade and fruit trees, 

 occupied by the intelligent and warm-hearted farmer, with his 

 neat, tasty, frugal, industrious and affectionate housewife, their 

 cares and labors being lessened by the aid of sons, bearing the 

 image of the mother, and by daughters in likeness of the father, 

 and who, through the diligent training of the experienced 

 parents, are the aspiring candidates to like positions. All these 

 may be seen in the rural portions of New England ; and in no 

 place on earth do we find nearer approaches to the garden of 

 Eden, or a nobler and purer type of that being who was made 

 in the image of God. 



The farmer should feel that his employment is an honorable 

 one ; that in no class of society are found so many of the 

 elements of human enjoyment as in that class who deal with 

 the soil and all that pertains to animal and vegetable life. It 

 is the common nurse of all persons in every age and condition 

 of life. It is an innocent pursuit. It detracts from no man's 

 reasonable enjoyment. It is an honest pursuit. It has nothing 

 to do with the ills, the wills or the temptations of man. It 

 makes no depredations upon the peace, the happiness, the 

 safety or the purse of others. It was the primitive employment 

 of man. The farmer should feel that labor is dignified, when 

 associated with intelligent action. There is no employment 

 which calls for so diversified and general knowledge as agricul- 

 ture. As a science it has no limits. To make agricultural 

 labor popular, it must be associated with the highest degree of 

 intelligence, and the widest attainments in knowledge. There 

 must be more thinking and less hard toil. We must promptly 

 seize upon any new and useful inventions and mechanical 

 improvement by which labor is lightened or made more effective. 

 Every such improvement will increase the leisure of the farmer, 

 and also his ability to supply his personal wants. " Knowledge 

 is power," and the more extensive our attainments, the more 

 easily shall we continue to acquire. The object of the farmer 

 should be to increase the production and improve the qualities 

 of animal and vegetable life, and to add thereby to the amount 

 of his comforts and enjoyments. And this can best be accom- 

 plished by the acquisition of knowledge, which will give him 



