THE FARMER AND HIS AIDS. 13 



plishes her work. The lesson one learns in fishing, yachting, 

 hunting, or in planting, is the manners of nature ; patience 

 with the delays of wind and sun, delays of the seasons, excess 

 of water and drought, patience with the slowness of our feet, 

 and with the littleness of our strength, with the largeness of 

 sea and land. The farmer, or the man with the hoe, times 

 himself to nature, and acquires that immense patience which 

 belongs to her. Slow, narrow man — he has to wait for his food 

 to grow. His rule is that the earth shall feed liim and find 

 him, and he must be no large and graceful spender. His 

 spending must be a farmer's spending and not a merchant's. 



But though a farmer may be pinched on one side, he has 

 advantages on the other. He is permanent ; he clings to his 

 land as the rocks do. Here in this town, farms remain in 

 the same families now for seven or eight generations, and the 

 settlers of 1635 have their names still in town ; and the same 

 general fact holds good in all the surrounding towns in the 

 county. This hard work will always be done by one kind of 

 men ; not by scheming speculators, nor by professors, nor by 

 readers of Tennyson, but by men of strength and endurance. 



The farmer has a great health, and the appetite of health, 

 and means for his end. He has broad land in which to place 

 his home. He has wood to burn great fires. He has plenty of 

 plain food. His milk at least is not watered. He has sleep, 

 cheaper, and better, and more of it, than citizens. He has 

 grand trusts confided to him. In the great household of nature, 

 the farmer stands at the door of the bread-room, and weighs to 

 each his loaf. It is for him to say whether men shall marry or 

 not. Early marriages and the number of births arc indisso- 

 lubly connected with abundance of food, for, as Burke said : 

 " Man breeds at the mouth." The farmer is the Board of 

 Quarantine. He has not only the life, but the health of others 

 in his keeping. He is the capital of health, as his farm is the 

 capital of wealth. And it is from him and his influence, that 

 the worth and power, moral and intellectual, of the cities 

 comes. The city is always recruited from the country. The 

 men in the cities who are the centres of energy, the driving- 

 wheels in trade or politics, or arts or letters ; the women of 

 beauty and genius, are the children or grand-children of farmers, 

 and are spending tlie energies which their hard, silent life accu- 



