170 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the various uses to which we apply it, room must be made, not 

 only for the harness-maker and saddler^ but for the tanner as 

 well. 



Three important callings I have omitted, which cannot prop- 

 erly be called trades. We call them professions — that of the 

 doctor, the lawyer and the minister. Before introducing the 

 professions I should have mentioned the cooper, the tinner and 

 the tinker, — and still another calling, which, to have left out 

 would have been fatal to a/l the rest. For where would our 

 grandfathers and grandmothers have been had it not been for 

 the miller. 



Now all these trades and professions used to be represented 

 in our goodly New England towns. And, if we except the hat- 

 ters and the tanners, who seem of late to have localized their 

 trades at points somewhat remote from each other, we still have 

 them all ; and it is quite astonishing how numerous they are. 

 I was about to speak of New England homes, and to regard 

 them almost exclusively as the homes of the yeomanry, as 

 farmers' homes. But I was reminded of the store where we used 

 to carry our grain, butter and eggs ; and this suggested the 

 storekeeper and the other trades and callings, each asserting its 

 right to live, on the ground that it supplied some human want 

 — artificial wants, perhaps, in some cases, yet wants which 

 belong to civilized man. 



Tlie catalogue above given, however, large as it is, and nearly 

 complete as descriptive of the olden time, is still far from being 

 complete as descriptive of our times, which have witnessed an 

 influx of trades and manufactures, of which no one dreamed at 

 the opening of the century. These trades and callings, how- 

 ever, whatever they may be, and however numerous, are all 

 subordinate to that great industry which occupies itself with the 

 soil ; wliich stirs the earth and stimulates it, and adds to its 

 productive power. The man who draws the waxed ends cannot 

 live on the leather he sews ; nor he who smiths the anvil, on the 

 iron he welds, and so on to the long chapter of trades and pro- 

 fessions. Even the " king himself is served of the field." 

 Whilst, therefore, the homes of New England are the homes of 

 all her people, we must rather look to her country homes — to 

 the homes of those who manage her landed interests and culti- 

 vate her soil, as her real typical homes. In such homes, those 



