12 



row-souled man may rot his apples rather than lower his 

 price, or bargain his corn to the whiskey-maker for a slight 

 advance over the hungry of the land — these are bad enough — 

 but they are legitimate and fair beside the traffic in building- 

 jobs, the clandestine trade in patents and pardons, the cor- 

 ners in fancy shares, and the flying of "kite-paper." And 

 again I say, the art of the husbandman is blessedly removed 

 from these by its nature, and its influence on him must always 

 be in the direction of an honest trade, that seeks to render 

 equivalent for equivalent, and thus only. But I hold that 

 Agriculture is related to Civilization, as the Promoter of its 

 Education. 



I am not about to open again the debates that have distin- 

 guished Massachusetts for the last thirty years, nor to bring 

 forward for fresh worship the idea, that teaching is good only 

 in proportion to its magnificence. I think no one will oppose 

 me if I say that I recognize a true, real, natural education of 

 youth, before, above and beyond, all special systems yet 

 enunciated. It is that education that seeks to develope the 

 young man or woman symmetrically, to give broadening and 

 deepening views of life, its methods and its needs. It is that 

 which tells the boy that patient growth is earliest perfect ; 

 but that soon ripe is soon rotten. It is that which en- 

 courages him to be excellent in something, but not wholly 

 ignorant in anything. ' It is that which shows him that 

 he has a perfect right to be President, but lays its hand 

 on his head and prays God he never may wish to be. In a 

 word, it is that which can instruct the child, and will, wher- 

 ever it meets him, whether in the school-room palace, or the 

 factory at noontime ; whether in the woods by the sled, with 

 the oxen chewing stalks in the snow, or at mother's knee by 



