HOW TO BE BETTER FARMERS. 61 



barns almost liable to be mistaken for clnirclies, I say these farm- 

 ers must be doing well for themselves. Should you not justify 

 me in that conclusion ? But this is uot all. They are doing 

 well for the country. It is such farmers as these, in conjunction 

 with manufacturers and mechanics of like spirit, that are to 

 make our country glorious, if the politicians do not spoil it. 

 Think of the children trained there. They can hardly help 

 growing in the same way. 



But I come to an eleventh farm, and it is quite different. 

 "What a house ! What a barn ! You would not blunder in 

 there to worship, if you were ever so devout. What lands ! 

 Cattle ! Fences ! Every thing ! You know just how it loaks. 

 Now that man is doing badly — badly for himself, badly for his 

 children, badly. for his neighbors, badly for the adjoining lands, 

 which are worth less for being so near his, badly all around. 

 Enough such farmers would ruin the best country that God 

 ever made. Wonderful, far beyond what most of us can com- 

 pute, is the difference between the influence on the public u^el- 

 fare, of a worthy and an unworthy farmer. The stranger 

 passing the first would say, This is a fine country, this must be 

 a well-governed people ; surely industry is rewarded here. 

 Passing by the second, he might say, A wretched country this. 

 What tyrant has clutched the reward of industry and left the 

 people to stagnate in poverty? The short sighted, aimless, 

 inefficient farmer, whose territory bears false witness against 

 the religion and government and laws of the country, is to be 

 pitied, is to be blamed ; but too much praise can hardly be 

 accredited to the farmer whose house, barn, fields, stock, every 

 thing, is a living testimony to the benignity of the institutions 

 under which we live. 



These considerations should oi)erate a mighty influence upon 

 the cultivators of Worcester West. Your fathers were good 

 farmers, and you are better. There is progress. Your sons 

 are to be better still ; and you too, are yet to be still better ; 

 that, I understand, to be the meaning of your assemblage here 

 to-day. You come not so nnich to carry off a few dollars in 

 premiums, as to learn something from each other, and to form 

 and strengthen, that you may hereafter carry out, high resolves. 

 Supposing it should he admitted — as for aught I know it might 

 be with truth — that the farmers of this cluster of towns, con- 



