24 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



in Middlesex County, as he would be in tlie cotton fields of the 

 South. 



Tlie question then becomes one of great practical importance. 

 Is the occupation of the farmer worthy of respect, and has it 

 intrinsic merits tliat can secure to it the love and attachment 

 of a sensible and industrious man ? Pardon me if I become 

 prosy in the discussion of this point. The question I sup:gest, 

 has got to be deliberately settled. It has two sides to it. Hus- 

 bandry has long been the theme of the poet. From the days 

 of Theocritus, to the present hour, it has been very pleasant 

 " to babble of green fields," and pastorals are very pretty, as 

 they come to us from Virgil and Gay. But some things which 

 are quite delightful in the abstract, are quite otherwise, when 

 reduced to actual experience. The dignity of labor is a grand 

 theme for a sermon, or a cattle show address ; but upon actual 

 experiment, the dignity becomes very small, and the labor very 

 great. Most of us have seen Mr. Shanghai's experiments in 

 farming, in a recent number of Harper's Magazine, and verily, 

 the joke of the thing is a very near approach to the truth. It 

 is a not uncommon remark, that when a man is proved to be fit 

 for nothing else he can become a farmer. Of course, the first 

 thing to be done, to dispossess the community of this idea, is 

 to show the inherent advantages, the pleasures, and the profit 

 of intelligent husbandry. But this is what I shall not attempt 

 at this time ; on the contrary, I shall take it as a fact conceded, 

 by an audience like this before me. On a certain occasion, an 

 inexperienced lawyer, in addressing the court, became exceed- 

 ingly tiresome, by going into unnecessary details, and was at 

 last stopped with the quiet remark from the bench, that he must 

 be willing to take it for granted that the judge of the supreme 

 court, knew something of law. It is a matter of more imme- 

 diate interest, to determine how this dread and distaste of agri- 

 cultural life and labor is to be done away. In this matter, as 

 in most other reforms, a beginning must be made at home. 

 There is altogether too much complaint in the household, about 

 hard work and hard times. The parents start the mournful 

 music, and the children stand ready to join in the chorus. 

 Now there is no denying, that there is hard work, and enough 

 of it, in every farmer's family. It is of no use to wink this 

 fact out of sight, or to think it can be otherwise. It is of no 



