50 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



tation is not the besetting sin of farmers generally. They have 

 faults enough of their own, but this is not chief among them. 

 They are sometimes crabbed, and sometimes miserly, and some- 

 times conceited, and sometimes uncharitable ; but you can gen- 

 erally find out what they are ; that which is worst in them lies 

 on the outside, and there is no effort at concealment. There is 

 a little danger that their contact with the town's folk will dam- 

 age this good quality of their characters. Even now we some- 

 times see the country maidens, and the country matrons, too, 

 trying very hard to imitate the city manners and the city fash- 

 ions ; and so far as this helps to introduce a little taste and 

 elegance into the farmhouses, it is well ; only let them beware 

 how they bring into their rural homes the shams and falsehoods 

 that disfigure the urban life. Let them love and study and 

 copy the traits of the country, that God made, rather than of 

 the city, that man made, and keep for us the beautiful simplicity 

 of life and character that is growing so conspicuously rare. 



The last thing I shall mention that helps the farmer to be a 

 man, is the consciousness that ought to possess his soul that the 

 work about which he is employed is productive, and therefore 

 beneficent work. I am speaking on the supposition that he is a 

 good farmer, and not only raises good crops, but improves the 

 condition and increases the value of his land with every year's 

 cultivation. For the man who is spoiling good land by bad til- 

 lage is one of the worst of malefactors, and his work can have 

 no tendency to make him a better man. But one who is doing 

 his best to reclaim waste land and make the good land more 

 fruitful, who is gathering every year larger crops of better prod- 

 uce with less labor, he is engaged in a work which is really en- 

 riching the earth ; he is providing for the sustenance and adding 

 to the comfort of the earth's inhabitants ; he is diminishing the 

 dangers of famine and pestilence ; he is a real benefactor of the 

 race ; and the knowledge that this is the nature of his calling 

 ought to make a farmer proud and happy — ought to inspire him 

 with that just self-respect which is one true constituent of the 

 highest manliness. In the nature of the case, we cannot all be 

 producers ; our complex civilization calls for other kinds of 

 work ; traders and artisans and professional men are wanted ; 

 but after all, the producing classes are doing the best kind of 

 work. And as a man's calling is apt to react on his character, 



