FORETHOUGHT IN FARMING. Ill 



to give mc an introduction as to the best way of making much 

 of a meal out of small means, and the reason therefor, I will 

 be an attentive listener to those instructions. This will be the 

 head-work. The kneading of dough may be tlie hand-work, as 

 much of all agricultural labor is and must be hand-work, but 

 head-work is chief; tliought and drudgery, contrivance and 

 execution, mind and body, these must go together to make a 

 good farmer. This thought I will not press, but will proceed 

 to notice the retrospective view of an agricultural life. Being 

 now, as it always has been, the very ground- work of national 

 prosperity, and the cultivators of multiplied means of happiness, 

 as well as the constant reproducer of life's necessities, we shall 

 surely find some pleasure in looking back on its progressive 

 history. We all know how pleasant it is to tell over and over 

 again, our deeds of former days. To no person can this be 

 more pleasant, than to the farmer. 



Sitting in his beautiful home, surrounded by all that is 

 improved and elegant, the work of his own hands, memory 

 carries him back to the forest which covered the land when he 

 first on foot, and axe in hand, entered the deep, dark woods. 

 He points to the spot, where yielding to his sturdy blows, the 

 first giant of the forest fell with a crash which was pleasant 

 music to his ears ; telling him as it did, that an openiiig had 

 been made, that the first sunshine had been let in, that the first 

 blue sky had been made visible. He will relate, step by step, 

 the building of the first log-house, speak with enthusiasm of the 

 first fenced field, the first planting season, the first framed barn, 

 the first crop, the first sale of produce, the first neighbor, the 

 first saw mill, the first grist mill, the first school-house, the first 

 church, and so on, noting all the successive improvements in his 

 farm — farming, garden and flower culture, houses and out-houses 

 — till he closes his oft told tale by asking you to walk about the 

 premises and see for yourself. You do this, and the result is, 

 you come to the same conclusion that we have ; that the culti- 

 vation of the soil tends to the cultivation of the taste, of the 

 social relations, of the arts ; in short, of all those improvements 

 every where being made, to which the word culture is applied. 

 Indeed, this very word " culture" or cultivation, however gen- 

 erally used now, is the sole, original property of the farmer, 

 and has been lent by him to all other trades and callings. You 



