J. H. W. PAGE'S J\DDIIESS. 643 



beino'. Without going, for contrasts, to the serfs of Russia, 

 who are almost a part of the soil, or to the farm laborers 

 of England and Ireland, who are too often below the hope to 

 rise, except to the gallows, and below the fear to fall, except 

 into distress, and thence into the poor-house, or worse, where 

 will you find a class of men so favorably circumstanced, in re- 

 lation to physical, intellectual and moral development, as New 

 England farmers, as Massachusetts farmers, if they are but 

 true to themselves ? 



" In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." That is 

 generally regarded as the curse of the Lord upon Adam ; but 

 unless our great progenitor was constituted differently from his 

 children, the love of the Lord was therein abundantly mani- 

 fested. Any man who has made a fair experiment of idleness 

 and physical inactivity will probably have come to the conclu- 

 sion that Paradise, with its spontaneous and ever-springing 

 fruits and flowers, its tame and submissive beasts, and birds of 

 brilliant plumage and sweetest song, were a poor boon with 

 the condition annexed that the face should never sweat from 

 exercise or labor. 



Be that as it may, for physical, intellectual and moral growth 

 and health, daily labor, of some sort, is as essential to men 

 women and children, as daily bread. While nearly all other 

 classes, including all the professions, pursue their callings under 

 circumstances more or less unfavorable to physical development 

 and health, the farmer follows his vocation in the pure air of 

 heaven, and his daily habitudes fit him to receive the kisses of 

 the keenest blasts of winter without shrinking. His work ex- 

 pands the chest, strengthens the lungs, exercises* and develops 

 the whole animal, which, I may be permitted to say to-day, is 

 as necessary in reference to men, women and children, as in 

 regard to sheep, hogs and cattle. However much sentimental 

 philanthropists bewail the physical condition of other classes, 

 they never presume to indulge in the luxury of tears over the 

 condition of the farmer. 



The man whose life is devoted to the operation of making 

 the point of a pin, with the help of machinery, may, or may 

 not, and I have no time to go into the consideration of that 

 question, do his work as well without as with intellectual cul- 

 ture. But the farmer cannot. Farming is an intellectual as 



