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gathering handfuls of straw and cutting them with a sickle, 

 represents muscle. The steamboat, plowing its vva} 7 with 

 ease against the strongest current of our swift and noble 

 rivers, is brains. The dug-out slowly creeping along the 

 willow-margined shore, propelled by *the Indian's paddle, 

 is muscle. The sewing-machine, which stitches faster than 

 the eye can follow, and never eats and tires, is brains. The 

 weary, pale, and worn wife, painfully toiling over the mid- 

 night task, is muscle. How futile the attempt, then, for 

 muscle to compete against mind in the great battle of life ! 

 A wise man once wrote, 'The wisdom of a learned man 

 cometh with opportunity of leisure;' and in that sentence 

 is food for reflection and thought, sufficient for an entire 

 sermon. Unless farmers devote more time to the use of 

 the brain and the improvement of the mind, and less to 

 wearying and exhausting muscular labor, how can they 

 hope to successfully compete against the vigorous minds of 

 the present age? It is not the skillful hand, the strong 

 arm, or the watchful eye alone that will in these days bring 

 success to the farmer. These are needful, but a cultivated, 

 intelligent, active brain to direct them is of ten times more 

 importance. 



"Again, I say, we work too much and think too little. 

 A farmer rises at four o'clock, goes out and does the chores 

 among the stock, chops wood for the day, mends the har- 

 ness, and is very industrious. By breakfast time* he has 

 got all ready for the day's work. All hands then pitch in- 

 to severe labor till noon. Dinner is called and dispatched 

 in haste, and labor renewed till supper. This unavoidable 

 but necessary hindrance to labor is hurriedly performed, 

 work resumed until darkness compels a cessation of labor 

 in the field, and then the laborers return to the house. A 

 lantern is procured, by the aid of which the milking and 

 other chores are 'done up,' and by nine or ten o'clock at 

 night the day's work is closed, and the family, tired and 

 stupid, retire to bed, only on the following day to repeat 

 the same routine of slavery. And yet such men are called 



