EDUCATION OF FARMERS' SONS. 11 



population. To make her truly independent she should do 

 so. The responsibility rests upon the risinj^ generation of 

 fiirmers. Let us hope that they will cheerfully assume and 

 nobly discharge it. 



A few words, and but a few, upon one other topic, and I 

 have done. You may call it, if you please, a3sthetics, poetry, 

 sentiment, by what name you will, but it is a subject upon 

 which, if I had felt at liberty to follow my own inclinations, I 

 should have filled my whole discourse. The young farmer will 

 mistake his mission who makes that an end which should be 

 but an incident or means. He may grow rich, may add barn 

 to barn, and acre to acre, but if he neglects to wreathe the brow 

 and soften the hands of labor with refinement and grace, his 

 whole life will be a failure and his example a wrong. Farming 

 must be made attractive; and though its profitable exercise 

 will tend to this, yet if, through the want of other attractions, 

 it docs not gain the right class of recruits, it will soon cease to 

 yield profit. Is not our farm-life too rugged and harsh ? Has 

 it sufficiently recognized the amenities of life ? Has it ade- 

 quately encouraged social culture and delights ? Has it not 

 deemed exclusive devotion to labor as indispensable to success, 

 frowned upon whatever interfered with unremitting toil, and 

 grudged the expended mite which would have added to its 

 hoards ? Has it not looked upon the exercise of taste, the 

 gratification of the eye, the love of ornament and beauty, as 

 something foreign and out of place, and recognized nothing as 

 desirable or useful which would not pay in dollars and cents? 

 Such, at all events, has been the prevailing tendency, and in it 

 is to be found the great secret of that aversion to farm-life 

 which " has taken directly from our farming population its 

 best elements — its quickest intelligence, its most stirring enter- 

 prise, its noblest and most ambitious natures." 



Let the young farmer, then, begin life aright. Remembering 

 the well established fact of physiology, " tiiat hard labor, fol- 

 lowed from day to day and year to year, absorbing every 

 thought and every energy, has the direct tendency to depress 

 the intellect, blunt the sensibilities, and animalize the man," 

 let him be sure to cultivate the mental, moral and social 

 natMre. Let him feel that " his farm has higher uses for him 

 than those of feeding his person or his purse." As he looks 



