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pursuit of agriculture. Go ask the grey haired man of business, at 

 the close of a successful career, in what part of his eventful life 

 his mind dwells with most satisfaction and pleasure, and will he 

 not instinctively revert to that period when perchance as a boy 

 on his father's farm, he drove his team afield and followed his plow 

 in the furrow, swinging his scythe in the meadow and gathering 

 in the ripened sheaves and fruits of Autumn ? He will tell you 

 that often in the battle of life, amid its alternations of prosperity 

 and adversity, the tempting vision of the home of his childhood 

 has passed and repassed before him, as if to win him back to the 

 innocence and freedom of his early days ; how amid the conflict 

 of life he yearned for the time when he could return to the Old 

 Homestead and there pass the evening of his existence amidst the 

 repose and beauty of nature ; to renew the golden associations of 

 his boyhood which never forsook him in his active life ; to feel 

 again the inspiration of sky and hill and valley, musical with the 

 songs of birds and fragrant with the breath of the fields and wood- 

 lands. 



We all subscribe to the truth of the lines of New England's 

 greatest poet when he says, 



" Give tools their gold, and knaves their power! 

 Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall ; 

 Who sows a field, or trains a flower 

 Or plants a tree, is more than all. 



" For he who blesses most is blest, 



And God and man shall own his worth, 

 Who toils to leave as his bequest 

 An added beauty to the earth." 



Had the principles of agricultural reform and improvements 

 been as well understood as the principles which govern our mer- 

 cantile interests, and been as well applied, our New England farms 

 would not present the barren spectacle which in some instances 

 we now behold. 



You cannot violate the laws of the soil any more than you can 

 the laws which govern your physical system. Similar laws govern 

 both. Nature will supply the demands of growth according to 

 her resources, and when exhausted, must receive back the elements 

 of which she has been robbed, or she refuses longer to yield her 

 wonted harvest. Science enjoins upon agriculture the condition 

 of a self-sustaining vitality. Whatever is taken from the soil by 

 the harvest must be returned to it again ; otherwise a great in- 

 jury is inflicted, not only upon the farmer but upon the whole 



