DISCUSSION OF SPECIALTIES. 100 



I wanted to know how much of his success had been due to 

 her hibors and her sacrifices ; for I see, as I go up and down 

 the land, that the burdens of the farm and the home are not 

 borne by the man, thoy are borne l)y the industrious, de- 

 voted and self-sacrificing wife. (Applause.) That has been 

 my experience in life ; and it proved true then, as it will 

 prove true in too many cases, that the man's success had been 

 bought at the sacrifice of his wife. She had broken down 

 under the trials, the labors and the exacting demands upon 

 her physical strength, and she was a confirmed invalid, while 

 he was a well-kept man. 



Now, you have got to take these things all together, and I 

 think the time is now coming when the husbandman of this 

 country must .say to himself, "Here I am, a member of the 

 community ; I have my family to rear ; it is my aim, my 

 ambition, to rear them in comfort, so that they shall become 

 creditable members of society when I pass away. I must 

 do what I can to promote their comfort and happiness, pro- 

 vide for their education and support, and leave me in such a 

 position that, as my productive power diminishes, I can live 

 upon the little accumulations that I have acquired." I may 

 illusti'ate this point. It comes right in here. Many years 

 ago I wi'ought in a machine shop, where 1 commenced my 

 active life. There was a young man who wi"ought at a bench 

 by my side, — a very quiet, plethoric man, but a man upon 

 whom you could always depend to do the very best that was 

 in him. He was never employed at great wages ; probably 

 never commanded over $2.25 a day. That was thirty-five 

 years ago. I met him ten years ago. I said, " AVell, friend 

 Tilden, how are you getting along?" He told me he had 

 prospered in a moderate way, and then he unfolded to me 

 the secret of his purpose in life. He said that when he 

 was a workman he always intended to live within his means, 

 hiying up something, for, said he, "I realized that I should 

 not always produce as much as I Avas producing then. I 

 always laid by a little something so that as the years gath- 

 ered over me and I began to decline, I should have something 

 to make me comfortable." He is a man sixty years of age, 

 is in possession of a comfortable property, so that he is not 

 obliged to labor at all ; he has reared his family so that they 



