THE FARMER AND THE MAN. 27 



own. Between your success and liis there need be no clashing. 

 Nay, in many ways you can assist and help each other. Second, 

 is the fact that the products of your labor minister most directly 

 to human life. For its continuance that life is dependent on 

 your labors. Agriculture is the base and support of all industry, 

 and therefore ought to be on friendly terms with all. In this 

 feeling all engaged therein should individually participate. 

 And third, is the beneficent relation which you hold to mankind. 

 " He is a benefactor to his race who makes two blades of grass 

 to grow where but one grew before." Whatever improvement 

 you introduce, or progress you make, tending to increase the 

 quantity, quality and variety of the fruits of the earth, is a 

 direct enlargement of the comfort and enjoyment of your fellow 

 men. 



IV. But not only sympathy with humanity, but sympathy 

 with nature, is to be cherished — that sympathy which shows 

 itself in the love and appreciation of the 6eaM^i/w/, with which 

 nature abounds. It has been perhaps a very common impres- 

 sion that the farmer has to do with uses, and not with beauty ; 

 and certainly in many cases that could have been, possibly can 

 now be, found, the whole aspect of his farm, his neglected 

 barns, his unpainted, unadorned dwelling, his coarse, unculti- 

 vated family, show too plainly that the farmer has discarded 

 the beauty and left it entirely out of his plan of life. Yet there 

 is no condition that has naturally such a complete envelopment 

 of the beautiful as his. There is no man so continually met 

 by it as he. No beauty in the farmer's life ! Go through your 

 exhibition halls and mark not alone the tinted flowers, but the 

 ripened fruits, that have grown beneath your eye and the 

 culture of your hand, and bid men match if they can in any 

 other workmanship the external attractiveness whicli these 

 present. The " fruit and flower pieces," on which artists of 

 every grade devote their genius and their skill — of these you 

 possess the originals. Landseer and Bonheur may paint animal 

 life in its finished grace and strength ; but your ploughing match, 

 your cattle show, your trotting course, gives you not the imita- 

 tion but the reality. They may attract admiring eyes with 

 their picturesque and pleasing groupings on canvas ; but the 

 living group, which they but copy, it is yours to see every day. 

 It seems to me that the farmer, above all other men, should 



