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curiosity. I will not deny that our farmers' wives and daugh- 

 ters may possess and communicate knowledge reasonably, but 

 I do affirm, and from much acquaintance with them, that they 

 make habitually better use of their tongues than that person 

 does of his, who calls them, as a class, lovers of scandal and 

 gossip. 



Besides giving him a good support in ah established home 

 and neighborhood, the farm offers to the farmer, further, the 

 advantages of a business primary and central in its nature and 

 relations. 



The husbandman deals freshly and at first hands with 

 nature, as no one else does. His main concern is with the 

 great natural powers of the earth, the air and the light ; and 

 with those living forms which these powers sustain. He is 

 brought near to that presiding Intelligence by which these 

 agencies are ordained and controlled. There is a dignity upon 

 him in this place where he stands. He is a child of the globe 

 itself, upon which he lives : and more than any other his 

 dependencies are removed from among men. In all this there 

 ought to be, and is, some helpfulness towards sobi-iety and 

 devoutness and manliness and courage. 



There is a satisfaction, too, in the farmer's work of pure 

 production. It is a fresh addition beneath his hand to what 

 the world contains. There is a pleasure in the growth of a 

 field of corn, beyond what its bare value in money could give. 

 And this sense of satisfaction passes over upon the returns 

 received. Almost every one, I think, must be aware of a 

 certain difference between the worth of a hundred dollars the 

 farmer has from the corn he raises and the like sum gained by 

 its rise upon the trader's hands ; though for his time and care 

 and skill the trader also is a producer of value. 



The business of the farmer is primary also in the matter of 

 its standards of prices of labor and of production. With 

 land at a moderate cost, the best rule for determining the 

 average value of labor is the measure of what a man can earn 

 in cultivating the soil. That is the great, leading occupation. 



