H. K. OLIVER'S ADDRESS. 565 



But turning to the more grateful subject of the farmer's agri- 

 cultural education, I find a wider field of interest opening out 

 before me, too extensive to be discussed in detail, even if such 

 discussion were not an unpardonable exaction upon your pa- 

 tience. I shall do no such thing; but I do urge, with special 

 earnestness upon you, that while you cultivate your farms and 

 bring to bear upon them, every appliance that can enrich and 

 invigorate them, and so increase their productiveness, — making 

 two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before, — 

 making two golden apples to smile from the branch, where 

 but one before 



" Did glitter in the sunbeam ;" 



that doing so much for earth, you should not omit to do some- 

 thing towards enriching and invigorating your own intellect, 

 that you may make two useful thoughts to spring where but 

 one sprang before ; something towards the cultivating of your 

 moral nature, that you may make two useful acts to live and 

 do their blessed work, where but one had blessed before. 

 Your own interest is deeply concerned, and certainly promoted 

 by a steady perseverance in such cultvire. I tell you that the 

 wiser you are, in all proper and useful wisdom, the better and 

 the more abundant will be the results you can secure from 

 every acre of your property. The more you acquire by careful 

 study and thought and observation, with the wiser and surer 

 judgment, and with the greater certainty of success, under the 

 blessing of Him who hath given the earth to man for a pos- 

 session, and hath insured by His promise that can never fail, 

 that "seed time and harvest, and day and night, shall not 

 cease, while the earth remaineth," will you prepare the fields 

 of that earth for the reception of that seed, and wait the just 

 time of day and of night, for the coming and the gathering of 

 that harvest. 



The farm was made for the farmer, and not the farmer for 

 the farm ; and is not, then, the farmer greater than the farm, — 

 the man, than the soil he treads upon? Will you "rise up 

 early and sit up late, and eat the bread of carefulness," that 

 you may improve the lesser, and will you, with stolid indiffer- 

 ence, neglect, and waste, and destroy the greater? Nay, do 

 not commit so short-sighted a folly! Cultivate yourselves; 

 and your homes, your wives, your children, and your farms 



