EDUCATION OF FARMERS' SONS. 6 



as working men, with cultivated minds and aspiring souls, they 

 will respect themselves and be respected by others ; they will 

 dignify and adorn labor; they will feel and know, and the world 

 will see how enviable and exalted is their position, and that 

 with the farmer's lot there is none wliich can compare for real 

 happiness and solid good. 



Having started, then, to become a farmer, not with a sort of 

 floating idea that such may possibly be his permanent business, 

 but, in the first place, with a fixed and well-defined purpose, 

 and, in the second place, with a correct idea of the nature and 

 importance of the business, and what it imperatively demands 

 for full success — the young farmer is ready to go to work, or 

 rather he is ready to learn how to work, to serve his apprentice- 

 ship, to fit himself for the duties of life. In truth, this prepa- 

 ration is to last his whole lifetime. Whoever has to deal with 

 nature and her processes, is a perpetual learner. He studies in 

 a school whose lessons are never completed, whose teachings 

 have no end. The great forces and the very elements are his 

 instructors. Each rolling year, each passing season, unfold new 

 problems to be solved, new mysteries to be fathomed, and the 

 scholar, as he grows wise, grows humble, for he realizes how 

 infinite is the wisdom of the Creator, how wondrous are his 

 ways. And when death ends his labors, and he goes down to 

 rest in the bosom of the earth he has lived upon and loved so 

 long, it is with the humility and yet with the faith of a child, 

 that in another state of being, where the vision will be clearer 

 and the soul unfettered, he will pursue his studies and gain 

 truer views, as he basks in the light of infinite knowledge. 



But how shall the young farmer prosecute his work ? Of 

 course industry is to be inculcated, — unfailing, never-tiring, 

 which finds for every hour some work to do, and without which 

 nothing can be accomplished. Economy, too, which allows no 

 waste or extravagance, which saves the little here and the little 

 there, which accumulates, earns, produces, before it spends and 

 consumes, which is the handmaidof industry and the foundation 

 of wealth. Habits of order, also, should be impressed, which 

 for every labor has its time, which never puts oflf till to-morrow 

 what can as well be done to-day, which has a place for every 

 thing and keeps every thing in its place, — that order or system, 

 which although it may seem more natural to some than to 



