PRESIDENT HITCHCOCK'S ADDRESS. 157 



with nature ; and thus an inquisitive and discriminating spirit 

 is excited. The farmer of experience likewise soon learns how 

 much he may be aided by a good education in his calling; and 

 thus is he prompted to secure such an education for his children. 

 But above all, his active habits give him so much physical 

 vigor, that the old adage may be applied to him ; mens sana in 

 corpore sa?io ; a sound mind in a sound body. He can sit 

 down calmly to his books with little of that nervous irritability 

 and restlessness, and little of that cloudiness and debility of in- 

 tellect, that torment and retard so many of sedentary habits. 

 Those only can appreciate the value of such a state of body 

 and mind, who have had to struggle with its opposite. If I 

 may be allowed to give my own experience on this subject, I 

 would say, that decidedly the best time for study which I have 

 ever known, — when the mind was the clearest and the nerves 

 most quiet, — was the evening that succeeded a hard day's work 

 in hoeing or mowing. After having mowed an acre of grass, 

 I found my mind prepared to mow an acre of Geometry or 

 Astronomy ; and often in subsequent days, when study was a 

 task, and there seemed to be a muffle over the mind, I have 

 sighed for the return of that period, when the intellect had as 

 keen an edge by night, as the scythe had by day. 



In correspondence with these views, we find that primary 

 schools, as a general fact, are better sustained and better im- 

 proved by an agricultural population than almost any other. 

 So too, in New England at least (with the exception of pro- 

 fessional and literary men), reading is more common and more 

 thorough in such a community. And what is read, is better 

 digested than among classes of society who have less of calm 

 leisure, and learn the art of talking rather than of thinking. 

 For fluency in conversation is often in the inverse ratio of the 

 amount of ideas in the mind ; and men often talk much, not 

 because they are so full of thoughts, but because they are des- 

 titute of them, just as a stream bubbles most which has the 

 least water in it. The farmer, it may be, talks less and with 

 less grace of manner ; but he thinks more, and with more logic. 

 For these reasons, the sons of farmers are peculiarly welcome 

 at our higher literary institutions; although the inquiry there 



