128 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



powers arc yet tender and willing to be moulded by her influ- 

 ences, and when the feelings are moved by her faintest touch. 

 She requires a quick response. And that response she gets 

 only from those "who sit early at her feet, and learn her wisdom 

 while yet young. It is astonishing how keen man's instincts 

 become under her teachings. The birds of the air and the 

 beasts of the field are not quicker to recognize her changes 

 than is man, when he is devoted to her cause. We may be 

 told tliat John hates the sunrise and the sweet morning air of 

 summer, because they but open to him another day of toil. 

 But take John into the noonday labors of a crowded city, and 

 see how heart-sick he will become for the habits and the whole 

 aspect of his ancestral acres. He has genuine love for the 

 country, in all its very slightest movements. So, too, of his 

 observance of natural phenomena. All the meteorological 

 tables and theories of storms in the world are not so serviceable 

 as his knowledge of the "face of the sky," got by gazing 

 there. It is with the very dawn of our existence that those 

 powers begin to be cultivated, which lie at the foundation of 

 success in agriculture. And if we will but look beneath the 

 hard exterior wdiicli is too often perhaps acquired by constant 

 toil, we shall find those faculties and sensibilities to which we 

 have referred, as belonging peculiarly to the farmer, and which 

 are the rudiments of a good agricultural education. 



If our farmers would bear this in mind, if they would really 

 recognize how much more substantial are the simple tastes 

 which they acquire than the nervou.s pleasures of more active 

 life ; if they would remember how much more certain are their 

 moderate gains than the inflated promises of more hazardous 

 business, they would dedicate their sons with peculiar care to 

 the soil. Education, which is now considered a means of eleva- 

 tion above rural callings, would be considered merely as a part 

 of the preparation for a proper discharge of those callings. 

 Those glittering temptations which turn men from steady, hard, 

 and honest industry into what are deemed easier paths of wealth 

 and honors, would all be powerless. We should seldom wit- 

 ness that dismal picture, now too often seen, of a young man 

 toiling wearily and heavily in the pulpit or the school-room, in 

 the counting-house or at the bar, while his father's corn fields 

 are suffering for the want of his sturdy arm, and the world 



