48 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



still be well worth while to attend to it. For the man is of more 

 consequence than the farmer, and the first concern of every far- 

 mer, as well as of every lawyer and every doctor, and every 

 preacher should be to cultivate his own manhood ; to raise large 

 crops and make money out of them if possible, but at any rate 

 to be a man, in the highest and noblest meaning of that word. 

 And I suppose that while you want to learn how to do farm work 

 well, and to obtain the best results of your labor, you want to 

 know something more than that. The chief end of man is not 

 to be a ploughing machine, or a mowing machine, or a threshing 

 machine. The chief end of woman is not to be a milking ma- 

 chine, or a churning machine, or a sewing machine. The far- 

 mer and the farmer's wife ought to be proud of their vocation, 

 ought to magnify and honor it in their lives ; but 1011116 loving 

 it, and working at it diligently, they ought to determine that 

 they will not be swallowed up in it, but that they will, by God's 

 grace, be all that he meant them to be in body, soul and spirit ; 

 and if that is their high ambition they will feel that some time 

 may be worthily given to the cultivation of their minds and their 

 hearts as well as of their fruitful acres. And what I say is that 

 the farmer may, easily, withoTit neglecting' anything that needs 

 to be done, so arrange his work that he shall get abundant leis- 

 ure for this class of pursuits ; that, indeed, the opportunities 

 afforded him for these pursuits are rather better than those en- 

 joyed by industrious workers in almost any other calling. 



Another circumstance of the farmer's life which is favorable 

 to the cultivation of manhood is in the fact that he is called to 

 deal mainly with realities of nature, instead of the deceits and 

 shams which abound in town life. Truth and reality are always 

 good for the soul ; pretense and affectation are hurtful not only 

 to him who practices, but also in many cases to him who wit- 

 nesses them. And our town and city life is largely made up of 

 pretence and affectation. Whether they are disquieted by it or 

 not, the passengers on the pavements walk always in a vain show. 

 Our architecture is dishonest ; almost every house pretends to 

 be something that is not. Not long ago I got a rear view of 

 what passes for a three-story building on one of the business 

 streets in my own village, and found out that the building had 

 but two stories ; the front was built one story above the roof. 

 And that is only a sample of the way in which wood and brick 



