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desires. It will doubtless be a matter of surprise for them 

 to learn that farmers may possibly entertain some wish to 

 enjoy life, and have some other object in life besifjes ever- 

 lasting hard work and accumulating a few paltry dollars 

 by coining them from their own life-blood, and stamping 

 them with the sighs of weary children and worn wives. 



"What we want in agriculture is a new Declaration of 

 Independence: We must do something to dispel old pre- 

 judices, and break down these old notions. That the far- 

 mer is a mere animal, to labor from morn till eve, and into 

 the night, is an ancient but abominable heresy. We have 

 heard enough, t ( en times enough, about the 'hardened hand 

 of honest toil.' The supreme 'glory of the sweating brow,' 

 and how magnificent the suit of coarse homespun which 

 covers a form bent with overwork, and which has incorpo- 

 rated in its every thread moments of painful labor which 

 the over-worked wife had stolen from her needed rest. 



"I tell you, my brother tillers of the soil, there is some- 

 thing in this world worth living for besides hard work. 

 We have heard enough of this professional blarney. Toil 

 is not in itself necessarily glorious. To toil like a slave, 

 raise fat steers, cultivate broad acres, pile up treasures of 

 bonds and lands and herds, and at the same time bow and 

 starve the god-like form, harden the hands, dwarf the im- 

 mortal mind, and alienate the children from the home- 

 stead, is a damning disgrace to any man, and should stamp 

 him as worse than a brute. 



"It is not honorable to sacrifice the mind and body to 

 gain. It is not a trait of true nobility to bring up children 

 to thankless, unrequited labor. It is not just or good or 

 noble to wear out the wife of your bosom in the drudgery 

 of the farm without a just return. You have no right to 

 make agriculture so disagreeable as to drive all young men 

 of spirit and enterprise into other branches of business. 



"I will be met right here with the thousand time re- 

 peated rejoinder, 'Oh, we farmers have to work hard. We 



