MASSACHUSETTS FARMER. 463 



The great difficulty in the way of a farmer's contentment is, 

 that, -while he toils for a respectable independence, his gains 

 are necessarily somewhat slow in their accumulation, and he is 

 too ready to assume that those who put on the outside marks 

 of competency are, in fact, more successful and more favored by 

 Fortune than himself. He allows himself to be led away by 

 that haste to be rich with which so many are infatuated. 



He sees, perhaps, the merchant, the professional man, or the 

 speculator dressing in the style of a gentleman of fortune, liv- 

 ing in a showy house, or sharing more liberally than he in what 

 the world calls its honors, and he looks for some similar chance 

 for success in life for his children instead of training them up 

 to his own pursuit, though a hundred times more certain of 

 ultimate success. His great mistake consists in confining his 

 observation to the fortunate experience of a few individuals 

 instead of regarding the history of these employments as 

 classes. Of the many who enter these walks of life, he does 

 not stop to inquire how many fail ; how few, compared with the 

 farmers as a class, attain to even a comfortable independence. 

 The instance of an industrious farmer becoming bankrupt is a 

 rare phenomenon; but for him to want the means of giving his 

 wife and children the real comforts of life, and of fitting the 

 latter by education for any ordinary position in life to which 

 they may aspire, is still more rare in Massachusetts. 



The statistics of success in life in the various callings and 

 pursuits in which men engage would furnish a curious study for 

 speculation if they could be accurately reached. 



At one of our legislative agricultural meetings, a few years 

 since, some statements were made upon this subject which will 

 serve to illustrate what I have said. " Of all the merchants," 

 said one of the speakers, " who have done business on a certain 

 wharf in this city (of Boston) within forty years, only six per 

 cent, have become independent : the remainder failed, or died 

 destitute of property. Of one thousand merchants with whom 

 accounts had been opened at one of our principal banks, within 

 the last forty years, only six of the number were ascertained 

 to have become independent." Another highly-intelligent gen- 

 tleman, from our own county, who had been both a merchant 

 and farmer, stated " that from actual investigation it had been 



