450 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



could easily find a good one. Indeed, it is possible that, if he 

 has gone back, he has taken with him the daughter or sister of 

 some one of you farmers. If so, I hope he has got one of the 

 best — " a real, genteel, well-informed, and pleasant-tempered 

 and handsome wife," and one used to hard work, for she will 

 find enough occasion for it at the West — a smart, noble, exem- 

 plary young woman, — 



" The fairest garden in her looks, — 

 And in her mind the wisest books." 



Perhaps the youth came to seek out a schoolmaster for the 

 West, where schoolmasters occasionally die before their time, 

 as victims of chivalry. Perhaps he wanted a minister, or an 

 engineer, or an engine, or an invoice of shovels, or of clocks, 

 or of medicines for fever and ague, or funds for a church, a col- 

 lege, a bank, or a railroad, where the money and the directors 

 often run off faster than the cars. On either of these errands 

 that young man may have come ; and my hope was that, after 

 he had stared the rocks and the mullein out of countenance, he 

 might reason with himself thus : " If this soil has produced 

 New England fathers and mothers, good wives, schoolmasters, 

 churches, books, engines, and all sorts of notions, including my- 

 self, it must have some credit; and though I am too poor, or 

 lazy, or ambitious to stay here, I shall always be proud to hail 

 from it." 



There is a robust strength of character, and a common-sense 

 philosophy, and a healthful development of all the human facul- 

 ties, to the production of which agriculture is more favorable 

 than is any other occupation of life. If one should spend a 

 week of familiar intercourse with a scholar, and another with a 

 clear-headed farmer, lie would be struck with the differences 

 manifested between them at almost every point. In rugged- 

 ness and robustness of frame, in their bodily and nervous sen- 

 sations, in the practical character of their information and in 

 their views of life, they would stand distinguished. Even if 

 they knew sonic of the same things in common, the different 

 ways in which they have learned them would make their knowl- 

 edge seem different. Our old farmers used to carry in their 

 heads a vast deal of information of their own getting, which a 



