No. 4.] NEW ENGLAND AGRICULTURE. 80 



not to direct, but to suggest ; not to instruct, but inspire ; 

 not to relieve, but to kindle enthusiasm for rural life, to 

 help open the eyes to see what in the limelight of the pres- 

 ent is an open highway for him who thinks, and a life free 

 from the treadmill of the shop, store or factory. 



Hard work, you say? Yes, thank God for hard work, 

 for it alone insures a soul worth saving ; it is the only safe- 

 guard against mental, moral and physical decay. 



Labor is rest from the sorrows that greet us ; 

 Rest from the petty vexations that meet us, 

 Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us, 

 Rest from worhl-sirens that lure us to ill. 

 Work, — and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow; 

 Work, — thou shalt ride over eare's coming billow ; 

 Lie not down wearied 'neath woe's weeping willow, — 

 Work with a stout heart and resolute will . 



We grow only out of our adversities, and hard work is 

 our greatest blessing, provided that as we labor we think. 

 Brains must direct the hands, or life becomes drudgery ; and 

 no man is so inspired to think as he who, at every turn, 

 touches fingers ^\ ith the Almighty through the myriad forms 

 of life in natin^e. 



Failure has been written all over the })ast, and our agri- 

 culture has been degraded because the effort has been to 

 help by relieving from thinking ; in telling men how to do, 

 thereby degrading the conception of what is to be done. 



The effort in the future must be to inspire enthusiasm for 

 investigation, to kindle desire for a larger grasp of gi'eat 

 principles and a closer touch with nature. Already returns 

 are coming which will enrich the State. The history of the 

 ages confirms the claim that nations have grown strong or 

 weak as they acknowledged or suppressed kinship with the 

 soil. 



The primal difference between the civilized and uncivilized 

 man is love of home and its surroundings, and the more 

 powerful the race, the stronger this instinct. As people 

 become migratory in their habits, shifting here and there, 

 as fashion or fancy dictates, love of home, kinship with the 

 soil, faith in one's country and quality in the individual 



