46 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



professional pursuits, than the one who has been hot-housed all 

 his life in infant and boarding schools. The history of all our 

 public men will furnish evidence of this fact. The strong mind 

 needs the strong body for its support. The strain upon the 

 physical in all pursuits in which the intellect is continually 

 brought into activity, is immense, and it requires the continued 

 infusion of fresh blood from the country to fill the vacancies in 

 the pulpit, forum and legislative halls. 



Let us see, then, that our boys and girls have a thorough train- 

 ing at home in morals, manners, labor, and the elements of book 

 learning, and at the proper season give them all the facilities of 

 a higher intellectual education. Don't be afraid of their know- 

 ing too much. It is too late in the day to present an argument 

 in favor of farmers' sons becoming thoroughly educated. Public 

 opinion has forced the establishment of institutions adapted 

 especially to their wants. The State has ascertained that its 

 relations towards agriculture demand that it should make pro- 

 vision for the continual growth of that class of men upon whose 

 labor, patriotism and intelligence, it leans so heavily. The 

 success of the agricultural college at Amherst is assured, and it 

 is gratifying to know that the best students are the hardest 

 workers in the field, thus showing that physical and intellectual 

 labor are in no wise incompatible. 



" The education which a man needs to enable him to act well 

 his part in life is threefold : that of the head, the hand and the 

 heart. With the head he knows, with the hands he does, and 

 with the heart he is guided to will and to do what is right." 



Upon these main branches may and should be engrafted the 

 ornaments of life. Tastes should be cultivated. The ordinary 

 isolation of the farmer's life should be broken into by the inter- 

 change of frequent friendly visits among neighbors, by the 

 establishment of reading circles, farmers' clubs, at which the 

 females should be frequent guests ; and farmers' festivals, at 

 which all should gather, and talk and laugli off the megrims of 

 life, which, like cobwebs, will gather and remain until some 

 fresh arrival brushes them away. 



Almost as necessary as education of the mind is care and 

 attention of the body. Exercise and diet have nearly as much 

 to do with the mental condition as with the body. It has been 

 affirmed that man partakes of the nature of the animal of whicli 



