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Illinois; visit a grain-growing community; then pass to the adjoining 

 stock-growers. The contrast is so great that a dullard cannot fail to mark 

 it. He seems to have been transported to a different world. The grain- 

 grower is so dependent on the fickleness of the seasons and the unreliable- 

 ness of human labor, that he seems to have lost all independence of char- 

 acter ; the stock-grower, less affected by these troubles, presents an ideal 

 of manly independence. The grain-grower sees the fertility of his lands 

 decreasing, and with it his income, talks of selling out and moving west 

 to fresher fields, to Kansas or Nebraska ; he is filled with the spirit of 

 unrest and discontent, and they brand their mark on his and his family's 

 foreheads. The stock-grower sees' that his lands are annually becoming 

 richer, and in consequence his income larger; for him Kansas and Ne- 

 braska have no charms; he thinks of no change, unless it may be to buy 

 a gold mine in California or a palace in Chicago, after he has bought and 

 stocked all the desirable lands in his vicinity; he is filled with quietude 

 and content, and upon his and his family's foreheads they too impress 

 their mark. From January to December the grain-grower and his family 

 spend a round of constant toil. Too busy in the daytime, too fatigued at 

 night, they neither study nor read. Of the literature, science and art of 

 the world, they know little, care less. Their intellects become narrowed 

 and dwarfed, incapable of a noble thought or a generous feeling. The 

 stock-grower and his family, with more of leisure and less of wearisome- 

 ness, find time for reading and for society. Their taste becomes refined, 

 their intellect expanded. Books and periodicals become a luxury and a 

 necessity. An interest is created and cultivated in the affairs and the 

 thoughts of the great world lying beyond the horizon of the belfry of 

 ther village church. In their views of things they become cosmopolitan, 

 noble in their thoughts, generous in the impulses of their hearts. This 

 contrast is not exaggerated. All intelligent travelers will perceive its 

 truth. The writer has marked it in scores of instances in different 

 portions of our country. 



We conclude with the language of Mr. Grey to the Hexam Farmers' 

 Club in England: "The wealth and success of a farmer may be pretty 

 well calculated by the amount of his sheep stock. Sheep are said to be 

 the animals with the golden hoof ; they enrich where they go. They not 

 only enrich the master, but the soil." 



