AGRICULTURAL HEART-WORK. 27 



about in a frenzy, because a hawk has swept away her little 

 ones. As studies in moral science, these subjects may be all 

 'reckoned in the same category. As to music — that finest of 

 the fine arts — a rural home will always offer great facilities for 

 its cultivation. The boy begins his essays on his trumpet made 

 from the tube of a pumpkin leaf; and the daughter need not 

 despair, till she has mastered the sonatas of Haydn. " We 

 speak that wo do know, and testify that we have seen." Two 

 or three years since, Mr. President, I had the honor of being a 

 member of the Committee on Farms, of this society, and therefore 

 with my associates, enjoyed some special opportunities of seeing 

 the families as well as farms of this county. I could point you 

 to towns, in which the progress of the inhabitants in all that 

 constitutes refined life, would furnish ample illustrations and 

 proofs of all that I have asserted. 



These are only a few of the facts that need to be universally 

 known and appreciated. As they become more extensively 

 known and applied, agricultural life will assume a new attrac- 

 tiveness, and agricultural labor become more and more pleas- 

 ant and profitable. And there is much to encourage in us the 

 belief, that this is the tendency of things, among farmers at 

 the present time. The education of the children of Massachu- 

 setts is becoming more and more tliorough and practical ; it is 

 covering a broader space ; it embraces a continually widening 

 range of subjects ; and more than all, it is under the superin- 

 tendence of practical men, who know what life is, and what it 

 requires. Our State Board of Education may be made the 

 instrument of incalculable good in this respect. 



Again, I find a ground of hope in what is sometimes regarded 

 as an omen unfavorable to the agricultural prosperity of ]\Iassa- 

 chusetts. It is said despondingly, that the young men leave 

 the farming towns and flock to the great centres of business, 

 and that ere long our farms will all be in the possession of 

 foreigners, because they alone will be wilHng to undertake the 

 labor of carrying them on. This will not happen in your day 

 or mine, Mr. President. I say, let tlie boys go. I am glad 

 they have the enterprise to go. What is there to l^eep them 

 at home ? Their fathers have hitherto had their " day of 

 small things." They have been obliged to live from hand to 

 mouth ; consequently the farm has been, and in most cases 



