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homes of the men, the reapers of tliis perilous harvest of the 

 sea, buried beneath the furrows, upon the fields they tilled. 

 We wish for you the return of more prosperous years, and the 

 care in your present troubles of the Greater Husbandman, who 

 makes perfect often His choicest fruits under the shadows of 

 clouds and tempest. 



But again the farm does well by the farmer in giving him an 

 occupation full of variety, with the benefit of frequent change 

 in what he does. This is refreshing both to the body and the 

 mind. 



Many descriptions of mechanical and of mercantile work are 

 monotonous. They are the same thing day by day, and year 

 after year. They are carried on within doors and in the same 

 room, with no change for storm or sunshine, or winter or spring. 

 The farmer's occupation is all different. It is largely in the 

 open air, which is itself healthful and exhilarating ; and which 

 brings him into the presence of all the variety of the sky and 

 the fields. Then there are many kinds of work, and they 

 change with the weather and the seasons. There is no other 

 occupation in which there is so great a number and variety of 

 things to be done, or in which the work depends so much upon 

 the time of the year or the sort of a day it is abroad. Upon a 

 large farm there are not far from thirty distinct classes of 

 labor to be performed : and each of these may have many 

 divisions of its own, as haymaking has, or the care of the 

 farm stock in winter. 



The work changes, too, with the shifting weather. It is not 

 the same work for the clear and the cloudy day. In May, if 

 it is too hot, the oxen must rest, and the lad plants his water- 

 melons. If the east wind blows freshly in October, and the 

 sky is hazy at the southwest, great loads of corn are brought in 

 for husking while the storm lasts. A shower in July rallies 

 all the help to save the dry hay. It is flung quickly upon the 

 cart, to the music of the coming thunder. And there is a 

 sharp eye, too, from the younger people, upon the neighbor's 

 field, to see that ours is cleared the first by a few minutes. 



