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BERKSHIRE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



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die. He can have no pleasure in the work. It is wholly an ex- 

 haustive process. He must soon succorab. There is nothing in- 

 spiring in the work; nothing uplifting. It is lifting at a dead 

 weight. It is thus that men and women by the thousands and 

 thousands are working in our free land. They live a brief life full 

 of gnawing want from the first to the last. Their average life is 

 25 years in New York City, while the average life of a New Eng- 

 land farmer is full 60 years. In one there is the joy— the pleas- 

 ure — of work: in the other it is a life of " pump or die." Many 

 are martyrs of toil; many are the human victims sacrificed on the 

 altar of Mammon to the golden calf. But at the same time man is 

 so endowed, so constituted that he may find pleasure and satisfac- 

 tion in the work of his hands. There it is that work is health- 

 giving, resulting in the robustness of the whole being — a robust- 

 ness that wrings a song out of toil; wine out of perspiration; life 

 and vigor out of weariness; revealing the true powers of humanity, 

 and polishing and solidifying the pillars that lift society out of the 

 slums. 



Thus work is more beneficent than hospitals and poor houses. 

 The best and most nutricious bread is in the true, real work. Mrs. 

 Bowning put the thought in her own strong way: 



" Get leave to work. 

 In this world, 'tis best you can get at all, 

 For God in cursing gives us better gifts 

 Than man in benedictions. God says sweat 

 For the foreheads; man says crowns, and so we are crowned. 

 Oh! gashed by some tormenting circle of steel, 

 Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work, get work! 

 Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get." 



The same fire-lit author speaks again: 



" If heads 

 That hold rythmic thought must ache perchance, 

 For my part I choose headaches." 



These words tell the story of how this poetess came to plant 

 her feet high up on the mount of song. We have seen the same 

 thought illustrated by a blacksmith. He took a coal black bar of 

 iron and placed it on his anvil; then like a Thor he lifted his ham- 

 mer and in a few minutes pounded the cold iron into a red hot 

 heat. And thus it was that this female genius took the cold ore 

 of thought ami placing it on the anvil of her work shop, midst 

 head-iiches and heart-aches and thoughts of anguish, smote it and 

 smote until she raised it to white heat for all coming generations. 



There is nothing worth doing that has not cost some such effort. 



