APPENDIX. xix 



life the weaiy and heav}- hours abound. But, while even the sor- 

 rows prevail, the memor}- of the bright and jo_yous days will remain, 

 and the}' will cast their cheering raj-s through all the darkness. 

 There is no such thing in all God's creation as unmitigated gloom. 

 And so, around every condition and calling in life, the bright days 

 will gather, the remembrance of which makes life dear to all men. 

 Where, then, does the sun shine brightest? Where do the most 

 delightful associations cluster? Where do the sweetes' memories 

 throng ? Not where man, with his artificial wa^'s, is supreme, but 

 where he divides his power with nature, and submits to her influence 

 one-half his life. The morning may dawn brightly on him who pur- 

 sues his way to his mill or his office, but with what surpassing radi- 

 ance it breaks for him who in the early sunlight walks a-field, and 

 who, even in the midst of his toil, feels the sudden, and perhaps 

 momentary, sense of awe and inspiration and freedom and joy, with 

 which nature fills the souls of all her sons, and from which the 

 dullest and most material cannot always escape. A resplendent 

 sunrise over one's native hill, once seen and realized, do you think 

 it is ever forgotten? Never! But all down the long and tiresome 

 jourue}-, even to the close, will that ray of morning beauty stream 

 and eradiate many an hour which, but for that God-given picture, 

 might be unsupportable in its gloom. The associations, too, of the 

 field and the fireside, how they endear ! And as the festal and anni- 

 versary days come round, where on all the earth do the}' mean so 

 much as they do to him who, gathering his generations about him, 

 points to the fruits of his copartnership with nature, and traverses 

 those lands which were his father's, and which he intends shall be 

 his son's ? It is because the bright da^-s of the farm are the bright- 

 est given to man in all his occupations, that the charms of nature 

 are always recognized ; and its fascinations are felt even by the weary 

 farmer, who, when worn with toil for his land and animals, loves 

 them still ; and also by the poet, who knows and feels what beauty 

 and truth God has written on the face of earth and sk}'. 



And yet, triumphant as agriculture is, and will be, over the affec- 

 tions of all men, it is by no means successful in subduing their 

 reason and judgment into a true recognition of its power and impor- 

 tance. It requires more defenders than all other occupations beside. 

 The value of a farm all men doubt, and it has become almost the 

 universal and accepted doctrine, that agriculture is a failure, and 

 that agricultural regions, in New England at least, are in a hopeless 

 decline. The important relations which agriculture held with the 

 early prosperity and power of our country are forgotten. The fact, 

 that even to-da}', but for its abundant and superfluous products, our 

 country would be plunged into permanent and hopeless bankruptcy, 



