SOIL CULTURE AND SOUL CULTURE. 49 



and stone are made to deceive our sight every day. There are 

 very few honest buildings. The churches ought to be true, but 

 many of them are gigantic lies. With mastic and stucco, and 

 paint and sand, they contrive to look, or at any rate try to look, 

 much more costly than they are. If the religion of the wor- 

 shippers should turn out to be hypocrisy it would not be strange. 

 And not only in architecture, in furniture, in raiment, in 

 equipage, in the whole outer life of the town, we are met on 

 every side with all manner of deceit ; veneering, gilding, paint- 

 ing, padding, stuffing — all with the design to make the exterior 

 showy at the expense of reality. And what is true of their be- 

 longings gets to be true of men and women ; many of them 

 will hardly bear inspection. Strip them of the falsehoods in 

 which they disguise themselves, and many of them would make 

 but a sorry figure. Now, with all the advantages of town life, 

 — and town life has its advantages, — this is the one stupendous 

 disadvantage to the cultivation of true manhood or womanhood. 

 To be obliged to live in the midst of so much that is fictitious 

 and false ; to talk and deal every day with people whose man- 

 ners are affected and artificial, is a hard strain upon the sin- 

 cerity of any human soul. Before we know it, we have the 

 mask on ourselves, and go about parading our deceptions before 

 the eyes of our fellows. This vice of pretence, more than al- 

 most any other, justifies Pope's often quoted verse. It looks 

 ugly enough at first sight : — 



" But seen too oft, familiar with her face, 

 We first eudure, then pity, then embrace." 



This, I say, is a crying evil of town life, and it is an evil that 

 is assailing the very foundations of good society. There are 

 true and honest men and women in the cities and the villages, 

 but it is hard for them to maintain the virtues of simplicity and 

 sincerity in the midst of the deceit that abounds. And you, 

 my friends, the farmers, are but little exposed to this evil. 

 Honest old Nature — who does nothing for show, who never pre- 

 tends to be more than she is, who never puts on fine colors that 

 she cannot afford, who never smirks at you, or patronizes you, 

 or tells you white lies — honest old Nature is your daily com- 

 panion ; and if she does not make you truthful and sincere, it 

 is your fault and not hers. And I am bound to say that affec- 



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