28 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



now looks, like a hard-worked horse. Its soil is impoverished, 

 its walls are fallen down, the honse wants paint, and the barn 

 wants every thing. And still, go where you will, you see signs 

 of improvement in all these particulars. There is somebody 

 at home yet. As you go about our county you will find new 

 and beautifully constructed walls, formed out of the old mate- 

 rials, new barns, or old ones split in halves, always standing 

 apart just twelve feet, and covered in with new materials. 

 You will find new dwellings of every size, from the pretty cot- 

 tage, to the magnificent villa, all of them proclaiming the effi- 

 cacy and worth of our agricultural press. And how happens 

 this ? Partly because some of the boys staid at home, and 

 partly because some of them didn't. The wealth acquired by 

 farmers' sons in the cities, has been piously, as well as wisely, 

 devoted to improvements upon the old and loved homestead. 

 And this process will go on ; and I look with hope to the day, 

 when the migration which now sets in the direction of cities, 

 shall send a refluent wave back upon the country. 



A city experience, in cases innumerable, prepares a man for a 

 happy and useful life in the country. Mammon is not omnipo- 

 tent ; and many a man learns experimentally, that after all, 

 the joys of a country life are the most solid and enduring. 

 Especially may this fact be learned and appreciated, amid the 

 perplexity that now reigns throughout the world of finance. 

 The profits of agriculture, too, are beginning to be better 

 understood. There are popular fallacies on this subject, which 

 I should like to expose, but cannot now. But let two men 

 start together in life, one with a view to agricultural and the 

 other to mechanical or professional pursuits ; let them practice 

 the ordinary discretion of sensible men, and the ultimate suc- 

 cess of tlie farmer is more siu'c than that of the other. Look 

 at the condition of those men when they shall have reached 

 the age of fifty years, and my life for it, there will be no cause 

 for complaint on the part of the farmer. I bethink me of many 

 who started with me in life ; some of them beguiled with the 

 hope of commercial prosperity, some dazzled with professional 

 renown to be acquired, and others content to work that mine 

 of wealth that lies within twelve inches of the surface of a 

 farm. Of my early acquaintances, many lie buried in the 

 ocean ; others, worn out with fruitless toils, and discouraged 



