REWARDS OF AGRICULTURE. 451 



young generation cannot carry in their heads though we take 

 the trouble to put it into them in our schools. Our old farm- 

 ers could stand in their fields, and, pointing off in all directions, 

 — north, south, east, and west, — could tell you " the lay of the 

 land," the boundaries of towns and states, the course of 

 streams, the signs of the weather, and the fair promise of a 

 crop. Our children have all this information given them in 

 maps and books ; but not one in twenty of them can impart it out 

 of school. Such is the difference between having knowledge in 

 your head or in your hands. Practical skill, ingenuity in devising 

 makeshifts, the habit of making cautious calculations, the slow 

 but safe wisdom that is matured, not in one season, but gener- 

 ally before the head is bald or whitened by the frosts of age, — 

 these are the valuable talents of an intelligent farmer. Leave 

 New England to the guidance of its old sterling principles, with 

 the infusion from year to year of that wisdom which is left after 

 the fermentation of old follies, and here shall be scenes of hap- 

 piness for ages to come — of such happiness as the world any 

 where is designed to afford — of such as the thoughtful know is 

 alone good for them. And the hardest tasks on the hardest 

 materials will still be found by the Creator's sovereign law to 

 be the most rewarding. The richest and fairest spot of earth 

 that lies on the whole twenty miles of road over which I trav- 

 elled in riding here from my home this morning was, a few 

 years ago, a foul and dreary bog. New England will yet find 

 a use for every rock and cobble stone over all her fields. This 

 is but a specimen piece of the whole condition of human existr 

 ence, where we labor upon rough, and hard, and often con- 

 demned materials. 



