4 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



of the husbandman, and thrown themselves into the vortex of 

 speculation, high contract, and jobbery. A pure-spirited 

 agriculture is too good a friend to honesty to satisfy such ; 

 they turn their backs on the farms of inner New England, 

 and, pressing into the cities and greater towns, seek for that 

 fevery meat that alone can answer the appetite of a Tweed or 

 a Winslow. I say that the fact that husbandry owns almost 

 none among such misdoers, is enough to raise more than a 

 presumption that the field and the pasturage are not good 

 soils in which to grow a first-class rascality. The motive to 

 all this obliquity seems, mostly, to be a restless haste for 

 premature wealth ; but the atmosphere of the farm is, doubt- 

 less, always rather that of contentment. There is meanness 

 enough, usury enough, hard bargaining enough, among the 

 agriculture of our country ; but it does not tempt the cupidity 

 of man like the brokers' board or the stock office. The 

 narrow-souled man may rot his apples rather than lower his 

 price, or bargain his corn to the whiskey-maker for a slight 

 advance over the hungry of the land, — these are bad enough, — 

 but they are legitimate and fair beside the traffic in building- 

 jobs, the clandestine trade in patents and pardons, the corners 

 in fancy shares, and the flying of "kite-paper." And again I 

 say, the art of the husbandman is blessedly removed from 

 these by its nature, and its influence on him must always 

 be in the direction of an honest trade, that seeks to render 

 equivalent for equivalent, and thus only. But I hold that 

 agriculture is related to civilization, as the promoter of its 

 education. 



I am not about to open again the debates that have distin- 

 guished Massachusetts for the last thirty years, nor to bring 

 forward for fresh worship the idea that teaching is good only 

 in proportion to its magnificence. I think no one will oppose 

 me if I say that I recognize a true, real, natural education 

 of youth, before, above and beyond all special systems yet 

 enunciated. It is that education that seeks to develop the 

 young man or woman symmetrically, to give broadening and 

 deepening views of life, its method, and its needs. It is that 

 which tells the boy that patient growth is earliest perfect, 

 but that soon ripe is soon rotten. It is that which encourages 

 him to be excellent in something, but not wholly ignorant in 



